Cheat Strategy 3: Use Shortcuts to Work Faster

Working Smarter sometimes means using different tools than the ones you were used to. For me, one of those tools is the keyboard rather than the mouse.

Not only is it way more ergonomically and a great tool to prevent a bad case of RSI, it is also faster than clicking that mouse all over the screen.

Step 1: turn on keyboard shortcuts

In order to have the keyboard shortcuts work properly, you’ll have to turn them on first. Here’s how you do it:

Now that we have done that, we can practice some of the shortcuts that will help you tame that inbox even faster.

Shortcuts

Archiving or categorizing: X-L-E

No, this is not a new sort of clothes sizing. Is the shortcut-combo for superfast labeling and archiving your emails, right from the message list. Let’s do this step by step:

Select email: X

If you want to select multiple emails, just use the ↓↑arrows and the ‘x‘.

Label email: L

This will open the Labels list. Now all you have to do is type the first letter of the label you want to apply, select the label and hit Enter.

The shortcut X-L will only label your emails, it doesn’t remove them from your Inbox. For that, you need one extra key:

Archive: E

Archiving in Gmail actually means removing the ‘Inbox label’.

NB: If you want to use the category tabs, don’t archive. In that case, XL is all you need.

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Reply: R

In most email clients, the R is connecting to the word ‘Reply’. So this one should be easy to remember. It works from the email window, not in the message list.

You can use R and reply in the same window or hit Shift-R and reply in a new pane.

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Delete: #

A word of advice: don’t hold on to all of your emails. Actually, most of them are probably not worth saving. So, hit the # key and put it in the trash.

This key works both in the message list and in the email window.

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Using the ‘more actions’ menu: .

On top of the message list, there is the “more actions” menu.

You can access this by right-clicking an email, but since we are using the keyboard, simply hitting the period (.) will open it as well.

From there, just use the ↓↑ arrows to select the option you want.

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Snooze: B

The final shortcut key I am giving you is the one that will let you snooze an email.

It will open a dialog box where you can choose the duration of the snooze. From here, use the arrows to navigate to the duration of your choice.

Of course, if you want to snooze it from the message list, hit X first.

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