This may be somewhat of an obvious tip, but since I just thought of this for my personal use, perhaps there are others out there who are missing this productivity tip. I store some documents online, especially on Google Docs and so far I have always navigated to my docs page and then selected the document there.

However, you can link directly to the document in question, which means you can bookmark it as well. This also means that you can create a keyword which lets you jump there in an instant. I am keeping track of my expenses with a detailed sheet and when I type “exp” into the URL bar and press enter, the sheet loads in a jiffy.

In fact, with the nifty extension called Firefly extension you can use Firefox like a file manager and you can create bookmarks to specific folders on your hard drive just like you do on the web, which means you can also navigate there with keywords.

Oh, I almost forgot, you can also use the same method with emails in Gmail. Clicking on an email yields a URL which is static, so you can bookmark it and get to the email fast. I frequently get emails which I check 30 times before I don’t need them any more and this method helps me a lot and saves me a lot of time, making me more productive. One drawback is that URL’s are stored for conversations, which means that if you have a conversation consisting of 50 emails, you are probably better off with the search bar.

One of the biggest problems I have with Gmail is the way you attach stuff. Gmail outperforms every other app with this exception, the time Outlook can save using drag and drop is totally lost with web based clients. gAttach is a lightweight application designed to change that, although as you will see, only in some cases.

The application allows you to use the “send to email” shortcuts in Windows to attach messages to Gmail messages (or Google Apps Mail). You select the files in Outlook, Windows Photo Gallery and most importantly the exporer interface (the Windows interface). It works much like Outlook, just select the files you need and click the email button, or send to email link via the right click context menu. A message will appear showing the attaching progress, you may need to log in, and the message will be saved as a draft. You can opt to access this draft immediately by launching Gmail, or to just save it as a draft without accessing it at once.

This is a huge, huge help in two cases. One is if you have a load of files to send someone, but you don’t want to zip them up. Even if you have 3-5 it may be more productive to use gAttach. This will save you the browsing and manual attaching you usually need to go through. The other case is when you want to create 5-6 drafts quickly with different attachments, or perhaps just save a backup copy for yourself on your Gmail server. In this case the fact that you do not need to access the interface all the time is a huge time bonus.

The only time I find that the app is of no use if you have 1-2 attachments to add and you want to send the email right away, which is most often the case for me. Since the files need to be attached, you may need to log in and the message is saved as a draft, Gmail is loaded in a new window so will need to load, this may take more time than actually just doing things through the Gmail interface.

Nevertheless, gAttach can save you a boatload of time if you have some serious attaching to do and I can heartily recommend it to anyone, it works like a charm, thanks to Freewaregenius for their great find.

I have noticed that there are three approaches to using tags and labels in emails (and everywhere else actually), and in reality I have problems with all three. People either go all out and use a lot of tags, use no, or very few tags, or try to think of some strategically placed tags.

My problem with going all out is that you get so many tags that it’s no longer really helpful, since you have to search your tags, which is very counter productive, since the essence of tags is to find your emails faster. I’m not saying that it’s slower than actually searching the emails, but there’s got to be a better way.

Using very few or no tags at all might be a good approach if you don’t get too much mail, but even then, at least coming up with one or two might help you in organization, and personally I don’t like just having a landslide of emails in one folder at all.

Strategically placing a few tags or labels has been the tactic I used so far, but the problem is that you will get email that doesn’t fit. I don’t like “Misc” and “Other” tags because they are not useful at all, so where do you place these emails? I’ve stopped tagging and labeling and I tried to come up with a different type of system.

The role of tags and labels

Many people misuse tags and labels. For example, they use a label to mark all messages from “Daniel” for example. This is a flawed approach organization-wise, since all email systems have search functions and typing “from:Daniel”will list all emails from the person. This means that you are just duplicating information, why not use labels for something more meaningful?Important and To do tags may also be redundant, since you can star, or flag a message. I realize that you may use tags to mark importance and stars to mark something else, I’m just talking about general usage here. The point is that tags and labels should be used to add extra information, help you in productivity and organization.

Labeling and tagging for productivity

Right now I use the approach of using as few labels as possible, enabling me to get at-a-glance info, but not letting the number of labels overwhelm me. The first step I take is to decide the state of an email or a conversation. I ask myself the following questions and take the actions beside them.

• Is this conversation important?
• Does it contain information I need?
• Do I need to answer it later?
• Do I need to take action on it?

If the answer is no to all questions I generally delete the message. I know you have a lot of space on your hard drive and on Gmail, but why keep a message if it has no information, I don’t need to take action or answer it and it isn’t important at all. A big step in productivity is when you learn to delete things, it’s harder than it seems.

If I need to answer it later on, I just keep it in my inbox. I hate a cluttered inbox, so I will answer these pretty soon. This helps me keep a clear mind, and makes me much faster in reply time.

If I need to take action I star it (or flag in Outlook) and usually keep it in my inbox. I don’t have items that need to be done, but only next month. In this case, I would star it and create a tag named “Future to do”. You could also use Remember the Milk Gmail integration or the task manager in Outlook to keep a tab on these.

Information content is the only place where I actually use tagging. Therefore my labels and tags are based on information content, like “blog marketing”, “post questions” and so on. The advantage of this system is that I don’t really need a “misc” label. The reason is that if some information content deserves a label I will get many similar emails. If it is unique and I don’t assign a label, it’s not that important. Also, searching is easier, since emails in one content label, say in “blog marketing” may have very different content. So performing a search on “marketing” will probably only show me half the results I need, whereas the tag will contain all emails.

I don’t know how many people use keyboard shortcuts in Gmail, but I think it’s definitely worth the effort to learn a few. One of my favorite shortcuts is the letter “y”. The reason I love it so, is that it’s actually four shortcuts in one and will allow you to productively manage your emails.

Officially it is the shortcut for “remove from current view”, but since there are many available views, it does different things. If you are in your inbox, pressing “y” will archive your message. If you are in the trash, “y” will move your message to the inbox. If you are browsing your starred items, you can unstar them with “y”, and best of all, if you are in a label view, the shortcut will remove that specific label.

I would find it marginally more useful if this shortcut unarchived email, but alas, it does not aid me in this. Nevertheless it is a useful one to know, since you can do so many things with it. Enjoy!

I just noticed this cool video on the Gmail Blog, it’s a review of Gmail in Russian. Why is it cool? Because the review is not shown with a screencast, instead, they built the interface out of duct tape, paint, and so on. Although I couldn’t understand what was being said, it is pretty self explanatory and looks so awesome.

I’m sorry, this has absolutely nothing to do with productivity or organization, but the way they executed this is worth seeing. I just couldn’t get the video to not break my design, so for now here’s a link to building Gmail, but I am not happy at all.

When I use Outlook I really hate the Trash. I have to delete a message, then it goes to the trash, and then I have to delete it from there as well and if I deleted an unread message, an ugly bracketed number will show its face there until I do so! How awful!

There is a keyboard shortcut you can use to skip the Trash altogether. All you need to do is press “Shift + Del” together, and the Trash is out of the way. You do have to tell Outlook you are absolutely positive you want this, but it’s still quicker.

That being said, I think it’s easier to have the right filters set up. I have to delete a message about once every month and I get about 300 e-mails a month.

Tip thanks to My GTD Stuff