Organize your life - Gmail & Google Drive!
If you were anything like me, you have 999,999 emails in your inbox. At first, you try to reason that there is a method to the madness. You reason that it is only disorganized to others who don’t know your system. I was guilty of those beliefs for a long time. Luckily I married someone who thrived on organization and living a minimalist lifestyle. I use the example of an email inbox because it’s so simple yet so profound. If something that you use everyday (for myself anyway) is in chaos, how can you expect the rest of your life to be organized? I would envy my wife when I looked at her inbox and saw 2 unopened emails. The reality was that even though I thought I was organized I really was not. I made a decision to organize my inbox and my life. Here are 4 actionable steps to organize your Gmail account:
Archive your emailsWhen you archive your emails you are simply removing them from your inbox. Don’t worry, you are not deleting them. You can find archived emails by looking under the All Mail tab. Archiving emails allows you to keep your inbox empty should you desire.
Filters are your friendA filter is basically when you tell Gmail that any email from @whatever should get a specific label and be placed in a specific folder. Adding labels are a great way to prioritize emails. I add a red label to high priority things so I don’t miss them when they come into my inbox. You can choose whether your filtered emails show up in your inbox or are sent directly to specific folders without even hitting your inbox. Aside from spam, I like all of my emails to show up in the inbox first. Once filters are set up you can just archive that email and it will go to the correct folder automatically.
Google Calendar I like to use Google Calendar because you can also put it on your phone. For those who use email to set up different meetings, you will like this a lot. You are able to set up a meeting via email and once the meeting is confirmed, it will sync directly to your Calendars. I always double-check to make sure the event was saved, but this saves you a lot of time. It also helps to prevent/minimize double booking your time.
Google Drive - More than storageGoogle Drive is LEGIT! It’s a GAME CHANGER. Not only do you get a certain amount of cloud storage for simply signing up, but it has so many features that will allow you to stay organized. You can set folders up which allow you to send files from emails directly to them. These folders can be accessed from your phone or any computer. You can also give certain people access to certain folders. This really helped during our Start-Up journey because we were able to grant lenders access to certain folders which minimized the amount of emailing of sometimes sensitive information.
Google Drive also has built-in productivity software like Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides and more. This basically replaces your need for Microsoft Office. You can also grant people access to these documents which makes collaboration a breeze.
These are some of the features of Gmail and Google Drive that I use on a DAILY basis. Without them, I would not be as organized as I am today. In addition, I would not be as confident in keeping track of all of the documents needed to set our dental practice up.