Tools For Maintaining Your Email

By Author: Rohan Leo
Total Articles: 13
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I wrote an article titled “Breaking free of email shackles”, a few days ago and I hope you did yourselves a massive favour and made time for clearing your inboxes deleting and archiving as you went? If you haven’t done that yet, I hope you have at least started. I promise you, the difference it has made to my life has been amazing. You may have convinced yourself you don’t have the time for any of this… Guarantee you, you are wrong. There should be absolutely, no excuses as to why you aren’t doing this. No excuses!!

Maintaining an empty inbox is much easier than trying to remember and categorise a over crowded packed inbox. I’d like to share a couple of tools I found that manage my email and saves me a ton of time with little distraction.

First tool. And an ABSOLUTE MUST, is Boomerang for Gmail.

This tool is awesome!!

When I am busy, or if I want to deal with an email some other time without clogging up my inbox. I’m able to schedule the email to return on a date convenient for me. Boomerang for Gmail archives the email, keeping my inbox clean, and my mind focused on the tasks at hand. ...
... Another awesome feature, is the ability to schedule your outbox. You write an email or reply, schedule the send date and time, and Boomerang for Gmail will take care of the rest. Whatever you choose is up to you. With Boomerang for Gmail my minds’ free of email shackles, my inbox’s clean and no longer used as an over organised to do list that’s much to long. It’s the perfect tool for those times you don’t want to seem to available?

Which brings me to another quick point… If you are using your email as a reminder or to do list… Stop it immediately!! There plenty to do list apps, available for free, and a pen and small notebook work wonderfully.

The next tool I love and saves me a bunch of time is, Canned Responses. What this allows me to save standard replies I have for customers or enquiries, etc. When it comes to replying or sending the mail all I do is click on the add canned response, choose my response and it inserts it for me. All that remains is for me, or my VA, is to edit a few details making it personal and walaa… Email is ready to send or schedule using Boomerang.

To active the plug-in, go to Gmail setting, click on the Labs tab. (It’s in the middle of the “Web Clips” and “Offline” tab). Type in “canned” in the “Search for a lab” section. When it shows in the search click the “enable” button and save your settings. You are ready to start adding your canned responses and using them. Sure it takes a little time to write up the initial email… It saves me, so much time in the long run, with my saved responses a click or two. I (or my VA) don’t have to find a word document, or a saved draft to copy and paste my regular responses anymore, which, saves a huge amount of time.

It is amazing how 2 small tools make such a massive difference. I suggest you start archiving important emails and deleting the rest. If it all seems daunting when you sit staring into your inbox full of emails… Rest assured, after you’ve started you’ll find it isn’t that overwhelming…

PLEASE JUST START DOING!!

Now, I am off to check my email… Done and managed… What better opportunity for some quality time, on the couch, with a good movie or series and my Girlfriend? Ahhhh bliss… (Yes. I am absolutely rubbing it in… wink wink).