Productivity Hacks: Organizing Your Gmail for Maximum Efficiency
Published: 2023-01-31 02:28:50

This was supposed be posted a a month ago, but I didn't feel okay with posting it originally because I felt it was to clickbaity. Anyways I hope you all like 

``` -- Go to my hashnode blog, to get a audio version --```

There is one thing, that will help you with email organization. And that is **Labels**.

```jsx
Gmail can be messy, having newsletters, ads, updates, your teacher emailing you, GitHub Authentication, etc. So in this blog, I will guide you through the steps to getting a clean organized Gmail, where you can easily see emails for certain things.
```

## 1. Unsubscribing from old services

This might be an obvious step, but many do overlook it.

It’s extremely important to delete and unsubscribe from old services/newsletters/and app update notifications.

For example, I have been getting emails from a chess tournament I used to join.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/93n7nodcm9etjn721v4o.png)

With this, I would un-subscribe. I then went on to mass delete, by copying the email address, then clicking the delete icon.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/hffdn24e5k4zpqc7se39.png)



## 2. Labels

**There are 2 ways of doing Labels**

Having only folders:


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/670wjma6nnsidwe5urqr.png)

Or Having a folder with subfolders:

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/kitzky45o04kgl2tnxev.png)



To create these labels, all, you do is click the + button next to labels, for different sections of your email. If you’re going for a subfolder direction then I would go with a 3-section folder structure.

```jsx
1. Personal/Life ( or for me, emails from colleges )
2. School/Work/Freelancing 
3. Other ( things that don't really fit in the first 2 )
```

To organizes all of your former inbox emails into these folders, we have to use filters.

There are a few ways of creating filters, but the easiest way is from the actual email you are looking for.

To get started, all we have to do is click the 3 dotted bar on the top of the email:


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/yjio598u0cmp41104rc4.png)

Then click Filter messages like these.

From there once you input all the things you want to be inputted, click the grey create filter button.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/akadbgh5go2cxs6gbsrf.png)



On this screen there are 3 things you need the filter to do:

1. Prevent these types of emails from piling up in your inbox
    
2. Put emails like these under your created folders ( labels )
    
3. Have it be applied to the rest of the emails with the same email address
    

```jsx
So, 
Skip the inbox ( Archive it ) ✓
Apply the label: Label_Name ✓
Also apply filter to matching conversations ✓
```

And there you go, less pilling up emails all organized into a folder structure.

If you continue doing this for the rest of your emails, you get to a concept called Inbox Zero, and that’s what this all is, Make your Inbox say ***No new mail!***

---

## Final Thoughts

This blog is a little bit different from what I have posted in the past, though if you like this sort of productivity tutorials blogs, consider reacting to let me know. Or if you didn’t write to me in the comments.

If you might like my former blog post On [4 Apps, that help you study smarter](https://ota.hashnode.dev/4-apps-that-help-you-study-smarter)

Or If you are up for a coding challenge consider trying my [52 weeks of code challenge](https://dev.to/ota200/what-is-52-weeks-of-code-and-why-you-should-join-ogf)