I belong to a couple of listservs and one of them had a conversation recently concerning tools such as email and calendars. After the conversation had gone on for part of an afternoon, I offered my take on things. And one of the tools I talked about using was Gmail.

I also briefly mentioned Gcal, Jott, Remember the Milk (RTM) and sync’ing all of the data with each other. Because each of these and others are such an important part of my every day functioning and being productive, I have decided to break them out into a series of post. And the first one we will discuss is Gmail.

First of all, some of what I am going to discuss and the ideas I use are not original to me. There are some huge gurus of Gmail out there. And Steve Rubel is one of them. Some of what I am going to discuss are some of the ideas Steve has posted about.

Gmail to organize your emails:

I get a ton of emails on a daily basis to multiple email addresses. There is no way I could manage this without Gmail and the built in tools it contains. One of the built in features I use the most with Gmail are labels and filters. First, I set up labels for the different type of emails I get. Labels are actually like folders in other email programs or services. For example, I have labels for staff emails, client emails, listserv emails and even one for social media emails. And those are not even all of the ones I use.

To get my emails directed to these labels (folders) I have set filters inside Gmail. Another very important built feature of Gmail. Setting up filters is easy to accomplish with Gmail. You first need to choose a search criteria. You start the process by deciding what email addresses you want to be sent to a label (folder). Than you decide on the action you want it to take. I usually have mine skip the inbox and send it right to the label (folder).

The only emails which go to my inbox are those who don’t get filtered to a label. One key to this is to make sure you keep the emails filtered “marked as unread” so you know how many unread emails are in each label. I also use the process to manage the number of comments I get from my blogs and any “quick contact forms” I get from my blogs. In other words, I have one label marked as “blog management”. And another marked as “contact us form”. You should get the point by now. You can make any label and filter you want which will help you to be more productive and keep track of the emails you get. Oh, and lets not forget about the label I have called “listserv”. All of the listserv emails I get go there so they don’t plug up my main inbox.

Have I mentioned lately that I love Gmail? However, I don’t use Gmail in my browser window. I use a great third party program called Mailplane. Mailplane is for Mac OSX and it is wonderful. You get all of the features and benefits of Gmail in a desktop application. It does cost $24.95 and in my opinion is worth every single penny.

Gmail to organize your data:

Besides using Gmail to organize your emails, you can use it to organize the amount of data and information you deal with on a daily basis. One of the tips I use almost on an hourly basis is “turn Gmail into your personal nerve center from Steve Rubel. Steve provided such a great idea when he suggested you can use Gmail as a massive database. And he is right. If you use Firefox and the Google Toolbar, you can use the send to Gmail function to send items right to Gmail. To do this, you should first set up a secret email address. What I mean by this for example may look like this: grant.griffiths+[secretword]@gmail.com. Keep in mind [secretword] can be anything you want. For example you can call it notebook, data, archive, or whatever you want. The main thing to remember is the +[secretword] acts like a filter. You than set up a label (folder) in Gmail and set up a filter to send all the emails you get with the +[secretword] to that label. I also set the filter to mark these as read since I know what I just sent myself and will view them later.

Because Gmail has the same great search abilities as Google itself, you can search and find anything you have stored in these labels you have set up as database storage.

I also have one of these special +[secretword] Gmail addresses to be a location where I send blog post ideas too. If I am reading items in my browser, I can send a link and an idea to myself as a blog idea for later use. How many times have you been looking for something to blog about. If you use this system, you can search the blog idea database in Gmail and come up with ideas.

Just remember to change the subject line in these emails so they aid in your searching of these labels (folders).

iPhone and Gmail:

What I love about this system is that I can use it with my iPhone too. Gmail works great with the iPhone’s built in mail application. And lets not forget that Google has optimized Gmail for the iPhone with its own iPhone interface Gmail web based service.

Tomorrow, I will discuss how I use Gcal and a couple other select web based applications to manage my events and to-do’s. In the meantime, leave your comments on how you use Gmail to organize your own daily life.