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13/05/2012 by
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Email Productivity: How To Get Shit Done

Improving productivity is a never-ending discussion among the business community.

Email Productivity: How To Get Shit Done

Employers want to know how to make their team more efficient and employees want to get more done in less time (so they can work less). There are countless resources out there – everything from tools and articles to actual productivity coaches.

Simply Business culled together these resources into an interactive graphic that covers productivity in five different time-sucking areas:

  1. Collaboration
  2. Travel
  3. Email
  4. Meetings
  5. Workload

Click image to open interactive version

What I found to be the most useful guide was email. Email is the silent killer among the above five topics. We can’t really avoid it, and no one really monitors other people’s email habits. Thus, oftentimes we don’t realize it’s a time sucker until we fall into unproductive habits.

I personally work on email all day, so I thought I’d share some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way. I use Gmail primarily, so my tips will be focused around this, but the basic principles will remain the same regardless of your email client. I’ll dive into what tools I use and general practices that not only significantly improves productivity, but helps keep your sanity.

Gmail shortcuts

One of my favorite features in Gmail is the shortcuts. Basically, this allows you to execute different actions by pressing buttons on the keyboard. There are countless actions you can take, as Google outlines. Some of my favorite include the following:

  • M – mute a conversation
  • C – compose a new message
  • R – reply to a message
  • A – reply all to a message
  • F – forward a message

I’ll admit I don’t use it to its most advanced capabilities, but you can put these shortcuts together to conduct advanced actions that can really cut out on time.

Why The Mute Feature Is The Best

A bit of a tangent from the above, but I need to dedicate a whole section to the “M” (mute) shortcut in Gmail. My favorite thing about Gmail is how it compiles emails between the same recipients into “thread,” rather than separate emails. It really helps minimize clutter in your Inbox, and also makes the mute feature especially exciting.

Basically you can use the mute button to stop messages in a thread from showing up in your inbox as a new message, but keep the message in your archive so you can refer back to the conversation if you ever need to. I particularly love this because my coworkers oftentimes send around emails that require intense discussion.

While it is interesting, they don’t always apply to me. So I simply mute them for future reference and keep my email from constantly telling me I have new messages, which can be a serious distraction.

Gmail Labs

Gmail has a section called “Labs” in its mail settings. This allows you to activate fun add ons that can really customize your email experience. Here are some of my favorite:

Canned Responses

This allows you to save templates of emails so you do not have to keep copying and pasting the same verbiage into another message. This is great for a lot of different uses, everything from sales and PR to internal reports.

Undo Send

Okay, I’m not sure this helps with productivity, but definitely sanity. Basically, it gives you 30 seconds to quickly hit “undo” if you accidentally send a message before you were ready. It has really saved me from making a complete fool of myself in a lot of cases so I highly recommend activating this.

Rapportive

This is a Gmail plug-in tool that I use obsessively. It is owned by LinkedIn and pulls a person’s profile into a pop-up window directly in Gmail when you compose a message. It is activated whenever you type in an email and is a great way to capture information about people quickly, without having to dig for it. The more involved they are with the Internet, the more information you can gather from this tool.

At its best it offers the person’s full name, job title, location, twitter, Linked In, G+, Facebook, and even past conversations you’ve had with this person. You can also add notes about the person! All in all, it’s a great way to minimize time wasted trying to find contact information for different people, which can be particularly useful to PR, social media, marketing, and sales professionals.

Boomerang

This allows you schedule emails for future sending. You can also use it to automatically send follow up emails if there is no response. This is awesome for productivity because you can send a bunch of emails out in one sitting and stagger them, plus auto send reminders to someone without having to go back and actually do it.

The only sucky thing is you have to have a paid account to schedule more than 10 emails a month, but it is well worth the investment if you send large amounts of email out to people.

This is only the tip of iceberg in terms of email productivity, but hopefully this has helped you take control of your mail and make your way toward a more productive future!

 

Adria Saracino is a marketer and blogger. When not consulting businesses on their content and PR efforts, you can find her writing about style on her personal fashion blog, The Emerald Closet.

 

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