Gmail tips for journalists

Huh? Gmail for journalists? How different could email use be for journalists and, you know, normal people?

Well, not that different, in truth, but here are some productivity tips that I find especially helpful while I’m working. Let’s see how you can improve your workflow with filters (beginner), Labs (intermediate) and keyboard shortcuts (advanced).

Filters

There just isn’t a catchy name like “manscaping” for inbox maintenance, but if there was, this’d be the first step in inboxscaping.

You get a lot of email and a lot of it can go into certain categories — press releases from the city, weekly submissions from freelancers, invoices and everything else. So why not have Google sort it for you for easy access later?

I’m honestly not going to write a better basic tutorial on Gmail filters than Google did, so read that and set yourself up.

What I will do is tell you to set up your filters primarily to “skip the inbox” — the content will be saved and easily accessible, but it won’t be cluttering up your inbox anymore. That way, you can cruise through the inbox a little faster when you’re on one of your email binges/purges.

Labs

Gmail has a swell set of optional features that you can access through your settings menu. Just click the little gear in the top right corner of your email screen, then select “Labs.”

Here’s what I’ve got enabled and why:

Auto-advance

When you send an email, you’re sent back to the inbox. When you archive an email, you’re sent back to the inbox. Great if you only deal with one email at a time, I guess, but you don’t do that, do you? You deal with email in great, big batches because the folks in presentation keep putting your email address in the newspaper.

When you’ve dealt with one email, auto-advance immediately opens the next one in your queue.

Small time-saver, but every second counts!

Canned Responses (aka best Lab ever)

I don’t care what kind of reporter or editor you are, you get the same question over and over again. I don’t know what that question is, but I know that there’s at least one that you keep answering time and time again — and that doesn’t have to be personal.

In my case as a features editor, there were several: How can I submit an engagement announcement? How can I submit events for the calendar? Will you review my book? And on and on.

Sure, you can save answers to these in a separate document and copy and paste, but Canned Responses gives you a dropdown menu right in the compose field so you’re just a couple of clicks away from telling that local author exactly how to submit his or her book for the local author spotlight. Big time-saver.

This is one of two Labs features (the other is Superstars, but I think this one is cooler) that I show people regularly to find them gobsmacked that they didn’t know about it before.

“I’ve wasted my youth!”

I know.

I know.

Google Calendar gadget

I live in my email, so it’s great to see which meetings I’m late for without having to switch tabs!

Google Docs gadget

My team uses the heck out of Google Docs, whether it’s for long-range planning or for keeping track of what’s done and what needs to be done for tomorrow’s paper.

Google Docs previews in mail

Convenient if your team sends a bunch of Google Docs around. If not, skip it.

Mark As Read Button

Another simple time saver — if I’m trying to reach Inbox Zero (a mythical state of being toward which many productivity gurus strive), I can select a bunch of emails that I know aren’t worth reading and mark them as read all at once, rather than having to, you know, open and read them.

Multiple Inboxes

You really need a large monitor for this to be useful, but if that’s your situation, use it. (If you don’t, see Quick Links below for a substitute.)

I get a lot of email and while I want to make sure I don’t miss anything, it’s a little bit crazy to look at all of it and be able to immediately catch pressing stuff. Yes, Google has developed the “Priority Inbox,” but that’s just not my thing.

Multiple Inboxes allows you to set up additional inboxes visually — so I use one to display specifically stuff from people at my own domain (all of my reporters’ emails and bosses’ emails and announcements that there are bagels in the conference room) and I use one to display just items that I have starred, so I always have a heads-up display of my to-do list right there (pairs great with Superstars — see below).

Navbar Drag and Drop

This just makes it easier for you to rearrange the various components of your Gmail screen. Say you want your calendar higher than your calendar higher than your chat interface — sure, just drag it there.

Quick Links

With this, you can create links to any other part of Gmail and stash them on the left navbar of Gmail. This is a decent substitute for Multiple Inboxes (see above) if you have a small monitor. Let’s say you want a quick link to emails from a specific domain. You’d do a search for from:*@daveburdick.com and hit “Search.”

Then, while you’re viewing the search results, you can click “Add Quick Links” on your Quick Links bar and it’ll save that search. Voila — instant inbox for just company stuff. Or just to do list stuff. Or just stuff from the finance manager. Whatever. Make it yours.

Signature Tweaks

Google description is all you need here: “Places your signature before the quoted text in a reply, and removes the ‘–’ line that appears before signatures.”

Superstars

If you’ve used Gmail for any length of time, you know that you can “star” an item by clicking the little star. This is great for drawing your attention to important items that you’re leaving in your crowded inbox.

But it’s a little clumsy. Maybe you want to highlight urgent items, maybe you want to mark some items in a certain label as “done,” maybe you want to mark items as delegated to certain members of your team… it seems a little silly to make up labels for all of those things — at least to me.

That’s where Superstars comes in handy. Enabling this Lab gives you a bunch more types of stars. Coooool. Now you can use a red exclamation point icon for “urgent,” a star for “don’t forget,” “a green checkmark for “done.” Do whatever you want with it.

This one pairs great with Multiple Inboxes (see above) because you can set up a search for all items to which you have applied a specific type of star by using these handy Gmail Superstar text search codes.

I use the red exclamation point to indicate items in my email that are to be used in tomorrow’s newspaper.

So to set up the ultimate to do list for tomorrow’s paper, I go into my settings, click “Multiple Inboxes” (because I’ve already enabled that, too) and I tell it that I want the first extra inbox to search for ”l:^ss_cr” — which tells Gmail I want to find all of the items with a red exclamation point (again, see the Gmail Superstar text search codes link above).

Here’s what that looks like:

Now look back up at my Multiple Inboxes image — you’ll see what these settings produce.

Title Tweaks

Again a case where Gmail’s description is plenty: “Changes order of elements in the browser title bar from ‘Gmail – Inbox (20) – yourname@yourdomain.com’ to ‘Inbox (20) – yourname@yourdomain.com – Gmail.’ This way you are able (most of the time) to see if a new mail has arrived even if Prairie Mountain Publishing Mail window is minimized.”

Keyboard shortcuts

OK, we’re doing great. You’ve learned to filter your email and you’ve learned to make it do tricks for you. Nice work. Now, there’s just one thing holding you back from processing your email with blazing speed — your inefficient, fleshy appendages.

Silly human.

If only you were a robot, you’d be a perfect employee. But you’re not. (Don’t get too down in the dumps about it; most robots are lousy drinking buddies, perfectly awful dinner hosts and horrifying kissers.)

Here’s the basic idea: You type with two hands and you mouse with one. If you do the math on that, it’s one, two and, yes, three arms. But because you only have two, you’re losing valuable seconds moving your hand over to your mouse, moving it about and clicking. Why do that when you have a perfectly fine input device (the keyboard) literally at your fingertips?

A simple example: Wouldn’t it be cool if, instead of lifting up your hand to reach over to the mouse and move it to archive the email you’re looking at and then move it to the next email you want to read and clicking on that, you could just hit the “[” key to accomplish all of that in one keystroke?

If so, prepare to become a power nerd.

Open your Gmail account. Hold shift and press “?”

Is your mind blown yet?

(OK, if that didn’t work, here are more instructions.)

Click the little gear in the top-right corner of Gmail.

Make sure you are looking at the “General” settings. Look for “Keyboard shortcuts.” Enable them.

Now you can navigate your email with these great Gmail keyboard shortcuts. Works great with “Auto-advance” (see above in the Labs section) enabled. You’ll be stunned at how much faster it all is and how much more email you can process in one sitting without getting exhausted of it.

It sounds absurd at first, but if you want to get your black belt in internet, do me a favor and try it for a week. If you go back to mousing around, you know that you’re meant to live a life of reading email while I sit in a hammock at Inbox Zero drinking rum out of a coconut shell. I could grip it by the husk.