I usually I blog about Angellist, Startups, Founders, the Future and especially Metrics but I have shown this “lifehack” to so many people that I thought it’s worth it’s own blogpost. Hope it’s useful.

If you struggle with keeping on top of your emails in Gmail you want to maybe try my setup. It’s hard for me to lose track and trust me - i am easy to distract

This is how i use Gmail since 2010:

GTD - Getting things done

An easy to manage, usually empty inbox on the left

on the left All “todos” in the first box

All emails “awaiting a reply” in the second

All “delegated” emails in the third

All emails related to meetings, flights, etc easy to find in the fourth

All done with 0 plugins, using only standard gmail features

It’s hard to lose overview using that setup

I couldn’t even imagine using gmail any other way. No seriously. I see those messy priority inbox tab inbox systems and I am just scared. Scared that google will someday force me to use those features.

Btw: This approach is not particularly new. I learned it from a person (forgot name) at LeWeb 2010 and it was mentioned on a blogpost which was called “Gmail Ninja” (couldn’t find the link).

How I manage daily work

An email comes in

Handle those you can instantly

The others mark as todo

If you want to keep track of them when you replied, you mark them as “Awaiting Reply” or “Delegated” (that way you can always quickly find them and follow up)

You archive all emails

You inbox on the left is empty again

All important ones are in the special boxes ones the right

Example:

Received an email

Was able to reply instantly (if i wouldn’t have had the time i would marked it as yellow bang (Todo))

I replied

Marked with “awaiting reply” (question mark)

Archived the email

The email is no longer in my inbox but in my “awaiting reply list” on the right side

His reply will come into my inbox (and we start over with replying instantly or marking as action)

Archive - Inbox Zero

That’s it! You are done.

Hope fully that workflow also helps you.

Interested? - It takes about 15minutes to set up…

… but might change how you work with email forever ;)

In a nutshell it’s

Multiple inboxes

Special stars

The multiple inboxes have searches matching the special stars

Several filters to avoid repetitive tasks

Step by Step guide

Add multiple inboxes

Go to Settings (you will find it under the cogs icon on the top right)

Go to Labs

Enable Multiple Inboxes

Choose right side layout

Choose the correct special stars

Go to Settings > General

Scroll down to Stars

Add the stars you will want to use

I use:

Yellow bang for Todo

Red bang for Important Todo

Question mark for emails I expect or await a reply. (so i can followup)

Orange guillemet (double arrow) for emails i delegated to someone but expect to be done. (so i can follow up)

Purple star for any arranged meeting, flights, event tickets, call or anything else related to an event where i might need to find that stuff quickly.

Filter the inboxes to match the stars

Go to Settings > Multiple Inboxes

Switch to right side layout - the option is in the bottom (!)

Add the filter rules you want for your inboxes

Here is the list of all names of the stars:

has:red-star

has:orange-star

has:green-star

has:blue-star

has:purple-star

has:red-bang

has:orange-guillemet

has:yellow-bang

has:green-check

has:blue-info

has:purple-question

You can btw also do more complex filters by adding OR, AND or basically anything else you can use in search. Eg. I use OR to show both important and VERY important todos.

Note on mobile: If you use the mobile Gmail App a lot i would suggest to use the normal yellow star for todo. That way you can at least mark todos in mobile. Unfortunately the other features won’t work as well because the gmail app doesn’t support them.

Enable the inbox layout (aka kill the tabs ;) )

This part is a bit annoying - basically you need to disable a lot of fancy default features of gmail. If the new multiple inbox layout doesn’t appear in your inbox after you finished the guide you might have missed some step here.

Go to Settings > Inbox

Switch to “default”

Turn off any configuration you might have regarding tabs

Turn off any configuration regarding priority, important emails or filters

Go to your inbox

Click on the cog and click on “Configure Inbox”

Remove everything

And while you are at it: Switch layout to “compact”

Now reload

Getting to inbox zero the first time

Let me guess you got a lot of emails in front of you right now or? I had several thousands the first time.

You need to get from several thousands it to Inbox Zero. And this needs to happen now. But it’s actually quite easy.

Go through the first two or three pages of email.

Mark everything that is a todo with a todo icon (in my case yellow bang).

Every thread where you had the last email and await a reply mark with your awaiting reply icon (in my case question mark).

The same for your delegated and events emails.

When you went through the first two or three pages and you have the feeling nothing (still) important appears anymore do the daring move.

Click select all (the checkbox on the top left)

Confirm that you really mean all 6523 emails

And click on archive

Now your inbox should at zero and your right areas full.

More Gmail Workflow Tips

If you like the suggestion above you might be also interested in my other gmail workflow tips:

Robot the majority of your emails

I am pretty sure you receive dozens of newsletters, groups etc.

Unsubscribe what you don’t need

Filter what you only need if you search for it (i do this eg for follower updates etc)

Filter everything that can be automatically processed (eg all my invoices get a label, all my commercial invoices get a label and are forwarded to my assisstent who will then use it for bookkeeping)

By now i have over 100 filters and i only see new emails if i really need to see them.

Keyboard navigation

Enable shortcuts in settings

Learn them

Most important y for archive, r for reply, a for reply all, s for star

Auto advance

Choose auto-advance in Settings so you can cycle through your new emails in the morning really fast

Undo sending

Enable Undo send in Settings > Labs

Wonder for the rest of your life why this is not a default feature

Merge your email accounts to one

Screw multiple logins

Fetch all your email to your main gmail account

Be sure to use the “smtp” feature to avoid the emails being send as “on behalf of”

Choose to always reply from the email you got the message sent to

Ideal if you have private and professional emails coming now to the same inbox

Install rapportive. But i am pretty sure you already have done so. ;)

Update:

A few people mentioned that they suggest using labels instead of stars. Labels are accessible in the mobile app and also in other apps.

Personally I prefer the stars because they are quicker to access. But if you are looking for a way to have the same workflow also accessible in your mobile - labels might be the solution.

That’s it.

I hope this workflow helps you as much as it helped me and several people i showed it too - If you want please tweet this article. And also feel free to hit me up on twitter if you have any further questions or suggestions how to improve my workflow: @andreasklinger

Until then, lifehack the planet,

Andreas