So a few days ago I decided to transfer all the non-work Emails into one Mail account: GMail. Why? First of all, because I just got confused and overwhelmed with all those different addresses and providers. There were literally four Email apps on my phone. I couldn’t even deal. The second reason was the handy operating system of GMail. Bless Google for their easy to use products. The design is very simple and adaptable to my needs, which is amazing. But the biggest reason for switching everything over was the great hacks that GMail provides, that just make my life (and soon yours) so much easier. 

 

So let’s get right into it. I will make you acquainted with the 10 GMail hacks for ultimate productivity, that I use and love daily. 

 

 

I am one of those people that can concentrate and work way better at night time. Which was fine while I was at school or Uni, because nobody else cares about what time you actually study as long as you do it. Now, however, people do not appreciate you sending them mails at 2 o’clock in the morning. Weird right? So after I got a weird look from my boss, asking me why I was working so late at night a few months ago, I did the one thing every smart night owl should do: I started using Boomerang. 

 

Boomerang is a free extension to your GMail, that allows you to write an Email at whatever time you choose and then schedules it to be sent at a more reasonable hour. That way it will look like you’ve arrived early to work at 7.30 am when you actually send your Email at 11pm at night. It literally changed my life. Or at least made me look a lot more professional. 

 

 

 

Basically, Boomerang adds a “Send Later” button under the usual “Send” button you already know. Once you press this button, it gives you some pre-installed options of when to send your Email like “Tomorrow morning” or “Monday”. If you need your message delivered at a certain time, you can also specify the date and time of your choosing. And that’s it already. Your Email is scheduled and you don’t need to think about it another minute. The extension will even send your Email if you are not logged into the internet at the time. Amazing, right? 

 

 

Ever wrote an Email to your boss and then detected this hideous spelling error AFTER you hit send? Or starting writing an Email and accidentally hit send mid-sentence? No more! GMail has this amazing feature now, that lets you unsent an Email in the thirty seconds after you send it. Now every time you hit send, a little message pops up that says “Your message has been sent” with an “Undo” button right next to it. This is what we’ve all been praying for, guys. 

 

 

 

To enable the feature, all you need to ist click the gear-wheel icon in the top right of your GMail Dashboard. Press “Settings” and it will take you to the adjustment page. If you scroll down a little bit in the general settings area, you will find a section that says “Undo Send”. Just click the box next to “Enable undo send” and adjust how much time you want for unsending you Emails. The timer goes up to 30seconds. 

 

 

These days it feels like every blog and company has their own subscription mails. And I used to almost drown in them. Some of them I actually signed up for because I love getting the info they send out, most of the time though they are unwanted Emails that I delete before even reading them. So all they are doing for me is mess up my inbox. Unroll.me is an app that takes care of these subscriptions for you once and for all. They have two features that made my Email-life a lot more easy and organized.

 

 

 

After you have signed up to Unroll.me, you will see a list of all your subscription Emails. The first feature I absolutely adore is the option to unsubscribe to Emails without even opening them. Next to the name of every subscription there is a little green check mark. When you hover over it becomes a red x, which you only have to click and the subscription is gone. Yes, it is that easy!

 

Now that you have sorted out the unwanted, let’s take care of the subscriptions you actually do want to read. In my case, thanks to all the amazing blogs out there, there are still a lot of Emails left, which lead to a still messy inbox. And now we will come to a feature of Unroll.me that blew my mind. Listen: With The Rollup, you can combine all of your subscriptions in one Email! Let that sink in for a second. One Email instead of hundreds! It still amazes me. 

 

By the way, if you want to sign up to Berlin and Other Stories, all you need to do it click the button below 😉

 

 

 

Another game changer for me is the opportunity to use GMail anywhere I go with GMail Offline. I live in a big city, where I get to work using the subway. And what better way to use this time sitting in the dark than catching up on your Emails right? Well, because of the bad internet connection in the tunnels this wasn’t possible for me until I discovered GMail offline. This Google Chrome extension allows you to read and respond to your Email as well as search for mails and archive them without needing even the slightest bit of internet connection. It’s such a time saver. 

 

 

 I probably don’t need to tell you, how important it is to backup your data. But if you need a little reminder anyway, read up on this post I did about it. I personally back up my data once a month just to be sure everything is safe and sound.

 

 

 

The first thing you want to do is sign in to your account. Next step is to visit the Takeout Page by Google, where you can select which of the Google Products you want to include in your backup. After you have chosen press the “Next” button. On the following page, you can pick the file format that you want your information to be downloaded in. I always download as a zip file, since they don’t take up much storage space. Now click on the button “Create Archive”. Google is now bundling up all of your selected files. Depending on how much you have chosen, this might take a while. After the process is done, a button will appear that say “Download”. Press it and the files will be downloaded to your computer. 

 

 

One thing that has always stressed me out with pretty much every Email provider is deleting more than one Email at once. We’ve all been there, where we had to click the little square next to the Emails one after the other. And god forbid you messed up than all of your hard work was done. Most frustrating thing ever! GMail also has those little squares and it drove me crazy. Until somebody told me that there is actually a much easier way to do this. 

 

 

 

Press “Control” on your keyboard and instead of checking the boxes, you simply click on the individual Emails, which is much easier considering the difference in size. 

 

 

Mass Email about this one work project, that you are not a part of? Email invite to a party with 200 people that you can’t attend? And everybody replying in ten-minute intervals? Here’s a quick way to finally shut them up!

 

 

 

To stop mass Emails from clogging up your inbox, you select the Email you want to mute. Above it gives you different choices on what to do with it. Instead of deleting it and having to deal with five more responses to the mail later, you click on “More”. Click on the option “Mute” and you’re done!

 

 

Have you ever sat in front of an Email thinking “I must have sent that same response about a hundred times by now”? If you have, then save yourself some time and nerves by using canned responses.

 

 

 

Go to your settings through the gear-wheel on the top right corner of your GMail Dashboard. In the column “Labs” you will find a few useful tools. The one we want to go to right now is “Canned Responses”. Enable the feature. Whenever you have composed an Email now you can save to your canned responses. Simply click the button in the bottom right corner, to show you more options. When you open it, choose the row “Canned Responses”. Now you only need to save it and for the next Email, it’s all there waiting for you in the bottom right corner. This has saved me so much time. 

 

 

Ok, when I got this information it blew my mind. You know how some people have super complicated Email addresses with lots of dots between the individual words? Here it comes: The dots don’t matter!!!

 

In their help forum, GMail explains that they actually don’t recognize the dots in the Email addresses. so if I was berlin.and.other.stories@gmail.com or berlinandotherstories@gmail.com, it’s all the same. So next time you have to type in this complicated dotted client Email, just leave out the dots it and it works the same!

 

 

Now I realize this does not actually help anything when it comes to productivity or organization. So let’s call it an extra tip. Because what’s that saying? You eat with your eyes first! I am a huge fan of a nice, simple design as you can probably tell by the blog design. It helps me declutter my brain. 

Now we come to the fun part. Again through the gear-wheel button, you will get an option called “Themes”. Here you can choose different designs for your dashboard. Choose whatever design makes you feel a little better when opening your GMail and our work here is done. 

 

 

 

Alrighty love, that was all my cumulated wisdom about GMail hacks for you. Let me know if you got any tips from this post. Or do you have any Gmail hacks for ultimate productivity that need to be added to the list? Let’s chat in the comments.