
How to use Gmail more efficiently (2013) - craigkerstiens
https://klinger.io/post/71640845938/dont-drown-in-email-how-to-use-gmail-more
======
nickjj
My inbox is always 0 shortly after I check it without filtering any emails
that aren't automatic.

No fancy layouts required. It really just boils down to if I open gmail then
I'm agreeing to myself that I'm spending whatever time it takes to address
everything right now.

This is coming from someone who usually wakes up with 10s of emails since I
offer personal support for 30,000+ people who take my video courses. A lot of
these questions are quite technical too (Docker / Flask / programming things)
and require writing custom responses and sometimes troubleshooting. I do this
a couple of times a day but the bulk of the emails come up at night since
that's the longest period of time where emails go unchecked for ~8 hours.

I wouldn't ever consider ignoring or not replying to an email from a person
who isn't spamming me. To me that's almost the rudest thing you can do online.

For the people who struggle with email, how much email do you get and what's
the nature of those emails?

~~~
jbverschoor
What about emails/conversations that span several months?

~~~
nickjj
It's no different. If I see a reply from those people I reply back when I
enter gmail.

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Vinnl
Snoozing now fulfils most of these purposes for me - instead of having to keep
"awaiting reply", etc. visible at all times, they simply disappear until they
need my attention again. Starring them as a reminder as to why they need my
attention is a good idea though.

The main feature I'm still missing is an easy way to add my own TODOs there. I
currently send emails to myself, but that's quite cumbersome (press `c` for
compose, enter my own email address, <Tab>, type reminder, <Ctrl>+<Enter> to
send, `x` to select that email, then `b` to snooze it to the desired time - in
Inbox, this would be `t`, type reminder, set snooze time, <Enter>).

~~~
zeisss
My gmail has a little tasks component on the right now. Not sure whethere that
is stored though.

~~~
wodenokoto
I think that is part of the GSuite. I don't see it on my non-GSuite gmail.

Or maybe it is slow to roll out to old accounts.

~~~
milankragujevic
It's not GSuite-only, it's available on my Gmail acc from 2009.

------
Causality1
The past few months I've transitioned to using Gmail almost exclusively on my
phone. Various aspects of the redesign utterly crippled its desktop usability.
The inbox now takes three to five times as long to load as it did before. All
the functions are now tiny minimalistic icons and more often than not I have
to use a tool tip just to figure out what a button does. It needlessly
crunches the folders into a two inch column on the left side, forcing multiple
mouse clicks just to expose the option to get to your spam folder despite the
acres of whitespace directly below their tiny truncated list.

~~~
climb_stealth
I have moved to Thunderbird on the desktop since the redesign. Nowadays I
don't even miss the original gmail webinterface anymore.

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lunchables
>How to use Gmail more efficiently

Step 1: Switch to basic HTML mode

Seriously though if you use the normal mode, there is a split view that allows
you to have a preview pane that makes gmail a lot more bearable. Ever since
the last big update it is painfully slow to load for me. Pinning the tab in
Firefox and adding preview pane made it almost usable.

~~~
ProAm
I just ditched Gmail for fastmail because the user interface was finally so
bad it was unusable.

~~~
function_seven
Fastmail’s web UI is the only one I’ve ever used that feels as snappy as a
native desktop application. It’s so nice.

My initial reason for leaving Gmail was equal parts de-Google-fying my life,
and the terrible no good UI changes in Gmail.

After using FM, just the UI improvement alone was well worth the effort it
took me to update my email address everywhere I have an account.

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highhedgehog
I have a huge problem with email, in my previous job I basically never had to
use them for real, so I don't really know how to keep track of them in an
organized way. I just changed job and now I get a LOT of email, in 3 weeks,
more that I have ever seen.

My inbox is a mess, just collecting more emails every day. Something like this
would probably be useful.

Are the "multiple inbox" still available today? Is it basically the labels?

~~~
rak00n
Yes, multiple inbox is still there. It's basically last n mails in a certain
label.

~~~
highhedgehog
I see why I can't find it. My company gmail has blocked labs, apparently.

~~~
itazula
In [https://gmail.googleblog.com/2009/02/new-in-labs-multiple-
in...](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2009/02/new-in-labs-multiple-inboxes.html)
click on Labs tab.

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boomskats
I have attempted this at least three times over the last few years, but
ultimately given up.

As a system it feels like it's just the right amount of simple, but as a UX
it's horrid. I shouldn't have to give up inbound mail autocategorisation or
lose my keyboard workflow, especially since I've been spoilt by awesome
extensions such as mgsloan/todoist-shortcuts for my other workflow tool.

New gmail has improved a lot of things, but it's disappointing that this
isstill the nearest we've got to 'good' in the last 5 years.

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jivings
There are a few products out there trying to fix Gmail in the same way.

KanbanMail ([https://kanbanmail.app/](https://kanbanmail.app/)) and Drag
([https://www.dragapp.com/](https://www.dragapp.com/)) spring to mind. Both
give this same kind of task separation.

~~~
andreasklinger
there were a lot of different tools when i wrote this post several other
inbetween

main reason i never switched (even with all compromises) is that i didn't want
to be forced to switch back if i pick the unlucky one (eg google inbox)

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SanchoPanda
I decided to implement this today and struggled with gmail consistently trying
to force the priority inbox on me with each reload. I eventually went through
each of my existing categories and wiped them clean, literally 10 years of
miscellaneous labels applied to 92,495 emails(1), and that finally got it
working correctly. Maybe it just needed some time to reflect, who knows.

The shocking thing about this is that gmail is FLYING now - the difference is
night and day. I've been fairly despondent about g mail performance for a
while now, but I'm just about speechless. I would love to know if anyone has
noticed anything similar.

(1) Emails, not threads.

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plibither8
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6988529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6988529)

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martin-adams
I've been doing Inbox Zero in Gmail for about 2 years now using 3 simple tags.
I highly recommend it. It's made me feel more in control and less forgetful.
If anyone wants to know more, I wrote up the process here:

[https://meda.io/all-you-need-to-know-about-inbox-zero/](https://meda.io/all-
you-need-to-know-about-inbox-zero/)

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pbiggar
I've been doing this system for nearly 5 years, and have sent it to dozens of
people who have email issues. It hasn't been perfect, but it's the closest
thing I've found.

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ewhauser421
I’ve been using ActiveInbox to achieve the same thing. It’s not perfect - and
has been a bit buggy with the redesign - but its been an effective tool for
me.

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VampyrLee
Klinger, how would you suggest a person that has been "ignored" (with just
cause) begin recompense?

Such as in the VampyrLee instance.

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womitt
Met Andreas in Budapest like 4-5 years ago, showed me this post, using Gmail
this way since then, and it's a bliss. Thanks Andreas.

~~~
biascsongor
Same here :)

~~~
andreasklinger
:)

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highhedgehog
What about all the emails you are part of as a CC recipient, but maybe you
will never write in the conversation? How do you catalogue them?

~~~
aliceryhl
Read them and archive them. If you need to be able to find them quickly later,
you could use the purple star.

~~~
andreasklinger
i approach it the same way

or mark as "delegated" if someone else of my team is handling it and i might
want to keep track

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hartator
> Unfortunately the other features won’t work as well because the gmail app
> doesn’t support them.

That’s kind of a deal breaker for me.

