Website and Internet Hints and Tips Blog

I just wanted to quickly share a good GMail setup I am trialling to help me stop checking email all the time which can be very counter productive (this is a follow up to my Blog asking what the best email client is for GTD which I have come to the conclusion does not exist!). This little tip could be used for any email client which instantly checks and notifies you of new email. Windows clients like Outlook should have a control to stop checking email so you wont need this.

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In a recent post I talked about searching for a perfect task management system to help organise my work project and tasks with the goal of becoming more productive. I have since started to use Todoist, and although lacking in some areas, it is so far the best Task Manager I have found to suit my needs. Integrating with my GMail is crucial and this was one if it’s selling points.

But now the focus is on my email management. With so much email coming in and out it is crucial to manage email effectively. Some days I have been known to spend all day answering emails and not work on any important projects at all. That is not good! It is of course important to answer all emails effectively and quickly, but there is something seriously wrong when it takes too much time away from money earning projects.

In my opinion email clients are not designed with effective work practices in mind. They are designed for emailing not working. With automated sending and receiving, pop up notifications, lack of task manager integration, your email client only serves to push as much emailing activity on you as possible! This is not good for your actual work.

At the time of writing I cannot find a suitable email client that supports effective working and the principles of Getting Things Done. The key points for me are:-

• Manual Receiving – Check email when you are ready to deal with email, not when email wants you to (which is usually immediate if you keep your email client open)
• Manual Sending – If you have many emails to reply to, do not send them one at a time after writing it because it is possible your recipients would reply back before you exit from your email client, and if you decide to reply back again then you could get stuck in an endless loop of emailing. It is important to write all your replies first, hit the Send button to send all at the same time, then close your emails and get back to work. Check for any more replies at your next scheduled emailing time.
• Fast Software – I used to use Outlook, but with thousands of emails archived, even across multiple Outlook files, it was sloooooooow.
• Fast Searching – Nearly all my tasks and project information are in emails. Having a good archiving system (and empty inbox) means I need to search for emails often. Not only searching the content, but labels too. Again, I found Outlook too slow due to so many emails.
• Online Storage – I work from multiple computers and need to access my email often, in varying locations. So it’s crucial my email is stored on the email server (or in the cloud) so I can access it from any computer. I also do not want my email client downloading the email to my computer, because I will have several Gbs of space taken up on every PC. Leave it on the server please! So that’s another no no for Outlook.
• Browser based – Not essential, but if I don’t have to install any software then fantastic (thumbs down Outlook!).
• Task Manager Integrated – When an email comes in that requires a task (most of my emails) I don’t want to copy and past the information into a new task in my task manager, I want to save that actual email, or link to it, in the task itself. This is one area email clients seem to be seriously lacking in and only integrate with selected task managers. The task manager I use needs it’s own features so I cannot just use any task manager like Outlook Tasks.

At the moment I use GMail. It does excel at many features over other email clients such as fast software (browser), fast search (they are a search engine after all), excellent labeling and filters to be organised and online storage for access anywhere, integration with popular task management systems. But it is crucially missing a manual send and receive that to me is extremely important for more efficient working. GMail immediately shows your new email in the Inbox, and sends email straight away. You can save a message in Drafts to send later, but it’s not an Outbox. You have to send each email one at a time.  I suppose I can close down Gmail when not in use… but I need to access my archived email for project information often so  this is not practical. As a workaround I have to setup some filters and labels to deal with incoming email so I am not distracted by it, but it’s not ideal.

So I now have another quest, to find that perfect email client to support Getting Things Done. Any comments welcome!

I’ve wasted hours and hours trying to find a perfect task management system. There are many task management systems out there, with Remember the Milk (RTM), Google Tasks and Todoist all coming to mind… but not a single one I have tried seem to have a crucial component which is email integration. Maybe it’s a bad time for me, I understand there are Google/Greasemonkey issues and also add-on issues with Firefox 3.6, both of which task manages use to integrate their systems into email, but the developers have had long enough to fix these known issues, so maybe they just aren’t good enough.

For someone who’s tasks mainly arrive in the form of emails, it is crucial that a task manager has the following features:-

1. One click creation of a task from an email – I don’t want to have an email with all the data I need, to then have to click New Task and copy and paste the information from the email to the task. That defeats the object of using a task manager, which is to help time management. RTM states it can do this, although at the time or writing neither the GMail Gadget nor Firefox addon work for me.
2. Separate Tasks from Email – I actually use GMail as my task manager at the moment and it works fantastically well using Superstars and Multiple Inboxes. There is one major flaw… because I have so much email coming in I can sometimes spend all day in email conversations without actually working on my tasks! Therefore your task list needs to be separate to your email, so you can work through tasks, and check your email only a few times a day. An important GTD philosophy!
3. Tasks “Home Page” – Following on from above, even if not using GMail as a task manager, and using one of the GMail integrated gadgets that sit next to your email, such as RTM and Toodist provide (or Tasks in Outlook), you still have your email to distract you from your tasks. So a separate “home page” or task manager system that just shows your tasks is required, then you can close your email and Get Things Done.

Although there are of course many more features a task manager needs, the above points are crucial if you actually want to get things done, you need to separate email from tasks and to create tasks from emails easily, but seem to be a weakness in many of the systems I found.

With the above features you of course still need to have a labelling/tagging, prioritisation as well as target dates, mobile access such as from the iPhone, and reminders.

I hope I can find one soon because “I am wasting so much time trying to find a system to improve my time“!

Any ideas and comments welcome

GMail (see previous blog) is many things to different people, but a few things everyone agrees with is it’s simple, efficient and flexible. I emphasise flexible because you can configure it to work that suits your needs. I use it not just for email but as my Task Management System.

To use GMail as your task manager, you will need to:

1. Setup Superstars or Labels for different priorities
2. Setup Multiple Inboxes to show the emails assigned the Superstars or Labels

Add Superstars and Multiple Inboxes to Your GMail

Click on Google Labs (the green beaker in the top right menu ) and you will see a list of useful features you can enable to improve your GMail.

1. Find Superstars and enable it
2. Find Multiple Inboxes and enable it.
3. Click Save Changes at the bottom

Setup Superstars

Now you have added the Superstars feature, you can choose the Stars that you want to use for your email messages. At the time of writing there are 12 icons to choose from:-

1. First decide what priorities you need to assign to your emails, and then choose the stars to represent them. For example, I use the following:-
   • Urgent - Red Exclamation
   • Medium - Red Star
   • Low - Orange Star
   • Whenever - Yellow Exclamation
2. In Settings click on the General tab
3. You will see the Superstars row which displays the stars you can choose from
4. Drag the required images to the “In Use” row and drag what you don’t need to the “Not In Use”
5. Click Save Changes at the bottom

Now when you view your messages, you can click the star icon to the left of your messages to assign a star, and keep clicking to move through the order of stars you have setup.

So now you can assign different stars to the emails you will need to be able to group the stars together in “panes”, and in the order of high to low priority.

Multiple Inboxes

Multiple Inboxes is not the best name to give for this feature. It is not in fact Multiple “Inboxes”, but is multiple “panes” on your Inbox page that show emails that match a certain criteria. You can add any search, label or star criteria to one of these Inboxes and it will show the emails that match your criteria. The intention is to setup an Inbox for each of your stars.

1. In Settings, click on Multiple Inboxes (you should see this tab once you enable it in Labs)
2. You will see 5 rows of boxes for the “Panes”. The boxes are for the “Search query” and the “Panel title”.
3. For the Search Query you need to enter the search query that represents the Superstars. For example, entering “has:red-bang” (without quotes) will show all messages that have the red exclamation. To find the right term for the star, hover over the star to see the name pop up, and this is what you use. I’ve included the list below.
4. For the name, enter the term you want to assign for the stars, for example, my red-bang (red exclamation icon) is for Urgent email, so I name it “Urgent”.
5. Make sure to enter the information in the boxes in the order you want them. So my “has:red-bang” for “Urgent” messages is in the top so its displayed in the top pane.
6. Choose how many to display in a pane
7. Choose whether to show the panes Above, Right or Below your main Inbox. I choose to put mine above so I see my tasks and priorities as soon as I reach my Inbox page, and no need to scroll down.
8. Click Save Changes

GMail as Your Task Manager

Now when you go to your Inbox you should see the new panes you have setup, and within them the emails you have assigned the stars to.

Using Labels

You don’t have to use stars of course, you can use Labels. By going to Settings and the Labels tab you can create Labels named after your priorities, then create the Multiple Inboxes to show the labels (for example, by entering “label:urgent”), and then assign emails the Labels. I find assigning superstars much quicker (one click) than assigning Labels so I don’t use them.

Removing the Email / Marking as Complete

Once the email has been dealt with and you no longer need it in the pane, just click the star to the left of the email to remove it. You may need to click Refresh above the pane in order to refresh the view. The email will be removed.

Hope that helps!

Search Query For Superstars

• has:red-bang (or l:^ss_cr)
• has:yellow-bang (or l:^ss_cy)
• has:red-star (or l:^ss_sr)
• has:yellow-star (or l:^ss_sy)
• has:orange-star (or l:^ss_so)
• has:blue-star (or l:^ss_sb)
• has:green-star (or l:^ss_sg)
• has:purple-star (or l:^ss_sp)
• has:blue-info (or l:^ss_cb)
• has:orange-guillemet (or l:^ss_co)
• has:green-check (or l:^ss_cg)
• has:purple-question (or l:^ss_cp)

Google Apps (or Google Products) is a collection of free, browser based, online tools from Google that can dramatically improve your productivity and save costs by replacing commercial systems like Microsoft Outlook. A list of all the free free products Google provide can be found at http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/options/. To access all these tools all you need is a free Google account.

I have written a small series of blogs aimed at describing three of the most common Google products for business users:-

1. Google Mail (GMail)
2. Google Documents
3. Google Calendar

Read more…

Part 1 of my Google Apps Blog Series describes what GMail is and the benefit of using it over conventional email accounts with your hosting provider for example.
Read more…

Part 2 of my Google Apps Blog Series describes what Google Documents is and the benefit of using it over conventional office applications like Microsoft Office.
Read more…

Part 3 of my Google Apps Blog Series describes what Google Calendar is and the benefit of using it over conventional calendar applications like Microsoft Outlook.
Read more…