Digital Chaos Control

Tag: gmail

Do You Swipe?
If you have a smartphone, you probably do. Apple’s iOS first popularized the use of swipe gestures such as swiping between app screens. In later iOS updates, Apple added more swipe gestures, such as swiping down to see notifications. Now, smartphone applications are adding their own swipe gestures, which are similar to clicking on something in a computer application and then selecting an action. But swiping is so much simpler, isn’t it?

When you think about all of the actions that you can take with an email – reply to it, forward it, delete it, archive it, move it, flag it, etc., have you ever wondered if there’s a more efficient way?

Swipe Gestures for Apple Mail

Apple, Microsoft, and lots of other application developers have been thinking about it too. Here’s what you can do now with Apple mail on your iOS 9 device:
- You can swipe on an email from left to right and mark the email as “Unread”.
- As you swipe slowly from right to left, you can select “Archive”, “Flag”, or “More…”. From “More..”, you can select “Reply All”, “Forward”, “Mark..”, “Notify Me…”, “Move Message”.
- Swiping quickly from right to left will delete the message.
If you don’t like these gestures, you can go to your Mail settings and change them.

On your Macintosh, you can swipe left on an email to delete it, or swipe right to mark it as read.

Other Applications are Going Further

Some application developers are going further. Here are a couple of examples:
- Outlook for iOS adds the ability to swipe to schedule an email. This is like a “snooze” feature for an email that you don’t have time to deal with right now.
- In Google’s Inbox app, swiping right marks the email as “Done.” Swiping left will “snooze” it, similar to Outlook’s “swipe to schedule”. Swiping down or up will close the email.
One of the biggest breakthroughs in technology was the mouse and the ability to move a cursor around the screen, click to select, and click to perform an action. In the mobile-centric 21^st century, we are moving rapidly toward an all-touchscreen world. Knowing the swipe gestures and other kinds of gestures for your favorite applications will keep you working efficiently.

Confused about how to swipe? Contact me.
April 14, 2016
How to Integrate Email with Task Management

Staying on top of email chaos is not easy.

Even after you’ve followed the steps to manage your email inbox (see my blog post here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive ), you still need to “deal with” those emails that require a follow-up task. How do you make sure that you get those done, and that they don’t get lost in the daily shuffle?

The easiest way is to have a daily routine to review and act on those emails. If you flag the most important emails, you can sort your inbox by flag. You can then review those emails daily and then delete them or archive them as you finish your follow-ups.

However, a more efficient way is to merge your email with a task management system. Your emails will then become integrated with your daily to-do list.

If you’re an Outlook user, then you can use the built-in Outlook task manager.

Flagging an email in Outlook actually assigns a follow-up task. If your email account is a POP account, this is pretty straightforward: open the email and select a flag for Today, Tomorrow, Next Week, etc. If your email account is an IMAP account, you have only the option of a flag with no follow-up date. You’ll have to drag the email to Tasks (in your sidebar) and then assign a due date.

If you use Mac mail, you can drag an email to your Reminders list.

Click on the “i” at the right of the reminder, and then choose the day that you want to be reminded on.

If you’re a Gmail user, you can create a Google reminder from an email.

Open the email, click on “More”, and then select “Add to Tasks”. Your Tasks window will open in the bottom right-hand corner. You can then click on the arrow next to your new task to give it a due date. (If you use the Google Inbox app on your mobile device, then see my blog post here: How to Manage Your Gmail Inbox).

You can also integrate your email with dedicated task managers such as Wunderlist.

Here’s how it works with Wunderlist: when you’re running the app on your device and signed into your Wunderlist account, you can send emails to your Wunderlist Inbox by forwarding to me@wunderlist.com. Once the email is in your Wunderlist Inbox, you can give it a due date.

If you’re keeping your to-do list in Evernote, then I suggest creating an Evernote Notebook.

You could call it “My Tasks”, and then you can then forward emails into that notebook. (You find your Evernote email address by going to “Account Info”.) When you forward an email to your Evernote email address, you can specify a notebook by adding “@<notebook name>” to the subject line. For example, if you forward an email titled “Request for more information”, you would add your “My Tasks” notebook name to that title, so: “Request for more information @My Tasks”. If you’d like to tag the email, also add “#<tag>” to the subject line. You can then go to your Evernote app and assign a due date.

Many of us like to use our email inbox as a todo list. It’s possible to do this, particularly by using flags to prioritize, but it’s more efficient to have all of your to-dos in one place, including emails that you need to follow up on.

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April 7, 2016
How to De-Clutter Your Email Inbox
If you’re like most people, you’re getting too many emails in your inbox.

An overflowing inbox can create stress and cause you worry that you’re missing important emails.

One way to reduce the number of emails going into your inbox is to unsubscribe to as many automatic emails as possible, such as the ones from shopping sites that add you to their newsletter or promotions list. However, there still may be automatic emails that you would like to receive and read when you have time. Those emails can be filtered so that they’re being saved automatically to folders that you’ve created but not cluttering up your inbox.

Filters are automatic programs that run within your email reader.

As your email arrives, the filters search for specific criteria, defined by you, and then perform a defined action based on those criteria. For example, your filter can search the “from” field for your grocery store name and then save the email to a folder that you’ve created.

I suggest creating filters for:
- Your social media notifications
- Any mail lists that you’re a member of (school, church, community organization, etc.)
- Any newsletters that you’re subscribed to.
If you use Apple Mail, you create the filters using “Rules” under “Preferences” or using the “Smart Mailbox” feature.

A Smart Mailbox is a filter/mailbox combination (Apple calls folders “mailboxes”). However, a Smart Mailbox doesn’t move the original emails out of the Inbox, so it’s more like a saved search.

Apple Mail also has a useful “VIP” feature that creates Smart Mailboxes for your favorite people. To create a VIP when you open an email from a favorite person, click on the star next to the “from” line in that email.

If you use Outlook, filters are called “Rules.”

In Gmail, open the email that you’d like to filter, click on “More”, and select “Filter Messages Like These” from the drop-down list.

You can also create an email filter from the search box. Click on the down arrow at the right end of the search box, enter your filtering criteria, and then click on “Create filter with this search”.

Need some help with your email management? Contact me.
March 30, 2016
A Musing on Email Overload

How did we get here with our email overload?

If you read my last blog post here: Drowning in Email, you may have been amused by the trip back to 1980. I chose this date because it was before most people had email.

Email was actually invented back in 1971.

You can read about it here: The Man Who Made You Put Away Your Pen. AOL was the first widely-used public email platform, and many of you may still use your AOL email address. If you’re old enough to remember AOL mail, then you’re probably old enough to remember the audio notification “You’ve got mail”, and the movie of the same name. AOL launched in the early 90’s and by 2006 had nearly 50 million subscribers.

AOL’s fall from that base was rapid, with Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail (now the most popular) all passing them by 2010.

Email volume overtook postal mail volume by 2007.

By that time close to 100 billion emails were being sent per day, an increase of 500% in just five years, mostly due to corporate email. By 2015, that number has doubled, to nearly 200 billion emails per day. (So you’re not the only one dealing with email overload.)

You may be reading, responding to, and organizing your email on your device through dedicated email software, called an “email client” or you may be doing it through a web browser. One of the first email clients was Eudora, developed in 1988, followed by Microsoft Outlook, released as part of Microsoft Office ’97. Today, half of all email is being read on mobile devices, particularly the iPhone and iPad. On the desktop, most email is being read on mail.google.com, followed by Outlook & Apple Mail, with Yahoo mail losing steam fast.

If you find yourself accessing your Gmail mostly on your mobile device, you may want to read my post on Google’s Inbox here: How to Manage Your Gmail Inbox. And don’t miss my longer post on email management here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive.

Contact me if you’d like some help with your email management.

March 23, 2016
How to Manage Your Gmail Inbox
If you’re dealing with Gmail overload, then you have options to get organized and efficient. (If you haven’t yet read my blog post on email organization, then you may want to read it and come back: 4 Step to Becoming More Responsive). Google calls folders “labels”. Google starts you off with your email organization by automatically creating labels for “Promotions” & “Social” and filtering emails into those labels.

Here are three options for your Gmail organization:
1. Read your Gmail using any mail reader, such as Mac mail or Outlook. You can take advantage of the organization features built into those programs.
2. Manage your inbox through Google’s web interface. From that interface, you can create labels & filters, and also star important emails.
3. Manage your inbox on your mobile device using Google’s Inbox app.
Google based their Inbox interface on the idea that most of us use our email inbox as a to-do list.

Through the app’s interface, you “check off” an email item by swiping right to move it to “done”. You can also “snooze” an email, which allows you to select a time that the email will get moved back to the top of your inbox.

Filters are called “bundles” in the Google Inbox app. You can create new labels with rules. You turn filtering for each label off and on by selecting the label under the menu and disabling or enabling the bundle. If you have an email in a bundle that you want to follow up on, you can pin it so that it shows up as an individual email in your inbox. Then you can snooze it or create a reminder.

Here’s a great post on TechRepublic about creating Google Inbox bundles: Create Your Own Bundles

Your Google reminders are also part of Inbox. You can create new reminders or look at your reminder list and check things off.

Do you need some one-on-one or group help with your email management?
March 17, 2016
Are you Dealing with Email Chaos? Here are 3 Ways to Help Manage Your Inbox.
It’s very common to procrastinate dealing with your email chaos. Does this sound familiar to you?
- Email comes in and sits there until you have a chance to look at it.
- The size of your inbox keeps increasing.
- You have not just emails from your co-workers, clients, friends, and family, but also emails from school lists, notifications from social networks, and newsletters from retailers, vendors, and consultants (including mine! Sign up here).
Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to miss important emails in all of the clutter. It’s no longer possible to treat your inbox like it’s a to-do list that keeps growing and growing…

Here are my suggestions to get a handle on your email chaos:
I suggest creating a folder for each email list that you’re a member of, a folder for social network notifications, a folder for each category of newsletter, and a folder for “deferred” items. The point is to keep your inbox sparse enough so that you’re not spending a lot of time daily going through looking for the important emails.
If you use Apple Mail, you create the filters using the “Smart Mailbox” feature. (Apple Mail also has a useful “VIP” feature that creates folders for your favorite people. When you open an email from a favorite, click on the star next to the “from” line.) If you use Outlook, filters are called “Rules.”
1. Once you have your folders and filters set up, you should see a big improvement in your inbox. The next step is to flag your emails with priority levels (Gmail uses colored stars), and then to sort them by priority.
If you have a consistent routine – dealing with the most important emails first and also setting aside some time daily or weekly to flag, sort, and organize your inbox, then you’ll find that you’ve become efficient and responsive with your email management. No more apologizing, “Sorry, I missed that email”!

If you need some help managing your inbox, Digital Chaos Control can help! Contact us today.
December 27, 2013