Google Apps Tips: Priority Inbox
Increase your Productivity with Priority Inbox
Are you overwhelmed with the number of emails in your Inbox and the length of time it takes you to wade through them all? Where do you start? Which messages are important and which can you defer to until later? It’s estimated that in 2009, over 247 billion emails were sent every day – that’s billions with a ‘b’! It’s also estimated that the average corporate user can expect to receive over 228 messages daily. Whew! – we think that’s a lot of email to deal with!
The good news is that Google understands your pain and frustration. The great news is they’ve released a feature in Gmail to help you prioritize the messages in your Inbox. It’s called – Priority Inbox. Priority Inbox is simply a different view of your current Inbox and is designed to automatically separate your ‘important’ messages from those, well, ‘not-so-important’ messages. It’s also completely customizable, and you can get back to your regular inbox with a simple click!
To try out the new feature, just click the New! Priority InboxBeta link in the upper-right corner of Gmail. Then, on the pop-out window, click Try it now! Optionally, you can click Settings > Priority Inbox, and select Show Priority Inbox. You can also click on the image to watch a short video on Priority Inbox.
When you first start Priority Inbox, the box seen below will pop onto your screen. Priority Inbox just wants to know what’s important to you and what’s not so important. It’s designed to learn how you work. And you can adjust the settings as you work to give it even more intelligence. It’s not designed to take over your job, just make you more productive and efficient.
If you see something in the Important section that’s not really all that important, click the minus marker (A), which moves it to the ‘Not Important’ section. If you see something in the Not Important section that IS important, click the plus marker (B) to move it to the ‘Important’ section. When you’re finished making changes and everything looks fine, click That looks right. Go to Priority Inbox!
With Priority Inbox now enabled, the view of your Inbox will change. A new Priority Inbox link displays to the left of your Inbox. To get back to your regular inbox, simply click Inbox.
You will also notice that your Priority Inbox is divided into three sections:
- Important and unread: All messages Gmail deemed important
- Starred: Any starred messages
- Everything else: Messages that Gmail believes may not be that important to you
Training Priority Inbox
If you discover a message in the Important section that you don’t consider important, (1) click the message’s checkbox, and (2) click the minus sign. Likewise, if you discover a message in the Everything else section that IS important, click the message’s checkbox, and click the plus sign. Gmail will start learning what’s important and not so important to you. As you work through your messages in the ‘Important’ section, and if you haven’t archived, deleted or moved them to a different label, they move to the ‘Everything else’ section. That’s just Priority Inbox attempting to help by uncluttering your ‘Important’ section.
Customizing Priority Inbox
You can customize the different sections of your Priority Inbox by selecting the drop-down arrow to the left of the section’s name. Here you can change:
- Which messages display in the section
- How many items to display in the section
- Whether or not to hide the section if and when there are no messages in the section
- Whether or not to remove the section
- If you would like to view all the Priority Inbox settings
Viewing all the Priority Inbox settings enables you to:
- Define the default Inbox you want to view when you open Gmail.
- Modify the different sections. You can even add a fourth section if you prefer and, by clicking More options, define if you’d like to display the contents of a specific label in the section.
- Define whether or not to override any current filters you use.
- Define whether or not to view the markers in your Inbox.
- Define whether or not to use Priority Inbox.
Becoming more productive and efficient using Priority Inbox
To become more productive and efficient in Gmail, read or deal with all the messages in the ‘Important’ section first. This way, you’ll know that you’re handling your pressing messages first. Then, when you have time, move through the messages in the ‘Everything else’ section.
The average user spends about 13 hours every week dealing with the email in their Inbox. Based on initial testing, Priority Inbox can reduce the amount of time you deal with your email by 6%. Now, that might not sound like much, but, once you’ve properly trained your Priority Inbox, that daily 6% could save you approximately 40 hours over the course of one year. Imagine how much more you could accomplish if you had an extra week!
So – what are you waiting for? Why not try Priority Inbox? You’ve got nothing to lose – and an entire week to gain!
