My top 7 productivity settings for GMail (Google Workspace)

Sometimes it is time for change and you personally have to adapt to your well known workflows you were so used to. But every change comes with an opportunity to make yourself even more productive. In this case it is switching from Outlook (Fat Client) to GMail Web Application. I am using Gmail now for years on a private base but know it’s time to use it also professionally – as I said: time for change.

In the following I will outline MY 7 settings I use in Gmail to best fit my needs. If you have suggestions or any other tips, write it in the comments!

Of course there are many personal preferences like inbox type (for me default) reading pane yes/no (for me no), density (for me comfortable), priority inbox (for me off) and theme. I leave the default theme.

 

What I find very useful: just hitting send and the email is also immediately archived:

 

Also I like the personal level indicators. This tells me if an email was directly sent to me or if I was ‘just CC’ or it was received because of a mailing list. Quite helpful when you have to decide what email is important. I personally do not use any category tabs and no priority inbox – I handle priority on my own.

 

As I do not use Google Chat and Google Meet, I just disabled that. That gives me a clean look with no unnecessary add-ons.

 

I also enjoy features like Auto-advance (for me jumping to previous (older) conversation), I use templates quite regularly and I also have the unread message icon active (for now). Keyboard shortcuts is something I still explore – sending emails with a keyboard combo still works as known from Outlook.

 

 

Sometimes also offline mail can be necessary and helpful. Note that this will increase the load times (as I experienced) – so I am currently not using it. As we are anyways operating out of the remote office at home with constant internet access – say hi to the year 2020.

 

As already mentioned above, I decide about priority that’s why I have disabled the importance markers:

 

And last but not least maybe a very important feature: Undo send.
Sometimes you just fat-fingered or your cat hit the send button. This buys you some time to rethink; or make changes. Just decide on the wait time on your own – but note: every email will wait the configured time until it is send! So sending something quickly comes with a charge here. I left it at 5 seconds: