just an asterisk

In the Part 1 of this series, I wrote about searching better. This article will be on using Gmail for productivity – we’ll call it remember better. Just for kicks, let me point out that this article was written from Istanbul. :)

Whether you use Gmail for work or play, it’s always good to have a technique for reminding yourself what to do and which email that started you on that path in the first place. As usual, Gmail does not let us down. Here are three thoughts to get things moving:

First thought – archive the email that is no longer actionable.
Your inbox full of email is like any other list. Each item is simply a task with one of only a few possible actions. My favorite view on this is by Merlin Mann and called “Inbox Zero”. Mr. Mann claims that all email shoud be handled with the following actions: Delete, Delegate, Respond, Defer, and Do. If you apply these criteria to each email in your inbox, the result should be a cleared space where you can more efficiently process incoming messages. If you’d like a bit more information, here is a video of the whole idea…
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=973149761529535925]

If you want to read some of Merlin Mann’s Posts on the subject go here.

There is much more that we can say about this, but we’re just trying to use the tools more productively, remember? The archive button in your email is (one) key to your inbox zero bliss. In Gmail, the inbox itself is really just a label. All email arrives in your all mail folder (duh perhaps), but because it has the inbox label, you see it in your inbox as well. You can archive email, keeping a copy in your all mail folder, but this removes the inbox tag. This is a great thing. Once completed, your inbox is clear to be the incoming task processing center that it was designed for (“in” – “box”) and your archive holds all the email from which you couldn’t bear to be separated or want to save for reference.  We already know how to search better, so finding an archived email is harly a problem.

Second thought – Use the Tasks lab feature to capture tasks directly from email.

So now that you have whittled your inbox down to the necessities (emails that you actually want to act on), you’re ready to process the list. But wait! Where do you put the tasks? Luckily Gmail provides with the labs feature “Tasks”.  If you go to settings -> labs and scroll down to Tasks, you can enable this feature.

One enabled, you should see tasks on the left under the contacts link. Now when you open an email, you can choose add to tasks (see picture below).

And then if you open the task list (from the tasks link on the left) you’ll see the following:

Ain’t it great?  Now that you are processing your emails and creating tasks, the final step is to schedule when you are going to do them!

Third thought – use the Calendar Widget to see your calendar from within Gmail

This is dead simple:  By enabling the calendar, you create a calendar on the sidebar (that area on the left of your email).  From there you can add calendar appointments for tasks and even include email reminders.

Final thought – if you have a windows mobile phone, blackberry or Iphone, you can sync your calendar and contacts from your phone.

Below are links to the instructions. NOTE – YOU HAVE TO BACKUP YOUR STUFF BEFORE YOU DO THIS!). If you are in anyway uncertain on how to backup your stuff, shoot me an email.

• Iphone
• Blackberry
• Windows Mobile

So that’s probably enough for now.  Check out the links and post any questions in the comments.  More Gmail articles on the way!

~ab

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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