This is a simple how-to post, showing you how to setup and use the Multiple Stars feature in Gmail or G Suite to get you a little closer to Inbox Zero
Steps to activate the various stars & icons in Gmail, follow these steps:
Open your Gmail inbox in your computer’s browser
Click on the gear icon in the top right corner
Click on “See all settings.”
Click on the “General” tab
Scroll down until you see the “Stars” section
Click and drag the stars & icons that you want to use from “Not in use” ➡️ “In use” section
Click “Save Changes” on the bottom of the page.
Now, when you star an email in Gmail, you’ll be able to choose from the different stars & icons simply by clicking on the star repeatedly. They will cycle through as you click on them. By using the different stars & icons for different types of emails, there’s a whole new world of organization possible.
You can use the following search queries Below in your various filters and automations to make it even easier.
has:yellow-star
has:red-star
has:orange-star
has:green-star
has:blue-star
has:purple-star
has:red-bang
has:orange-guillemet
has:yellow-bang
has:green-check
has:blue-info
has:purple-question
It’s worth noting that the Multiple Stars functionality is only available in the web version of Gmail, not in the mobile app.
Now you can use Gmail or G Suite filters to apply different stars to various emails, and keep non-urgent stuff out of your inbox.
Stop trying to reach inbox zero. Let’s be real, inbox zero is an unrealistic goal to reach and maintain. While it helps you feel all nice and organized it may not be making you any money. I mean there are a lot of entrepreneurs who are very successful, yet have 10,000 plus unread emails and constantly losing emails.
Stop trying to be a perfectionist, and instead master your inbox. Here are the steps to achieve inbox mastery.
1) Clear out your inbox. – There are two ways to go about that.
Quick Way to clear your inbox: If you are brave enough, just clean house and go directly to inbox zero. Select all messages and archive them, so you can always find them later if needed. Don’t delete all of them them unless you are sure you never want to see them again, or just don’t care.
Calculated way to clear your inbox: This method is a little more Systematic, and requires you to group emails together with various filters, and then sort from there. The basic idea is to go through your inbox and after your click on an email, choose “filter messages like this” and mass delete, mass archive, create a filter, unsubscribe, or leave in inbox to process later. You should only leave in the inbox items that you need to do something with. NEED to do something with, not SHOULD do something with. Seriously… its been in there three months, just let it go. This calculated way is better because you are able to really get your head around the different types of emails that fill your inbox. This method could take an hour or more, but will make the future Inbox Mastery much easier.
2) Integrate a to-do management software.
Now that you have completed step one, everything left in your inbox is basically a to-do list. If you just archived everything and you are at inbox zero, congrats.. you don’t have anything you need to do 😊. Soon items will start coming in, and you need to have a method to process them.
Who is going to handle the action required from the email? If it’s not you, how are you going to get it to the person on your team who will handle it? How are you going to follow up on how it was handled? If it is you, how are you going to prioritize your work? This is where to-do management software come into play.
Here we need to recommend ToDoist. The free version is enough for most applications, and has great integrations. There are to great ToDoist extensions from Chrome, and here we are going to focus on ToDoist for Gmail. This adds an icon to your Gmail that allows you to convert any email to a Todo on your list, Prioritize it, Link to it, get it out of your inbox, and even assign it to a team member if you are not the person who is going to be handling it.
3) Get your settings right
Send & Archive: Most importantly you need to activate your Send & Archive Function. To activate this feature, go to Settings ➡️ See all settings ➡️ General and turn on the “Send and Archive” setting. Using this when you reply to emails gets them out of your inbox when you reply, which is kinda what we are going for here.
Multiple Stars: Another great way to organize your emails is using multiple stars. To do this, go to Settings ➡️ See all settings ➡️ General ➡️ Stars. You’ll see a range of stars and icons that you can use to differentiate emails when you click on the star icon. Too choose the ones that you like, simply drag the ones you want from “Not in use” to “In use.” Once you’ve enabled multiple stars, you can apply them by clicking on the star icon in Gmail. Clicking on the icon repeatedly will cycle through the different stars you’ve added. Check out our article: Using Multiple Stars to reach Inbox Zero.
Chose your Inbox: Depending on how you check your email (Computer vs Smartphone) you may want to activate something other than the default inbox. To do this, go to Setting ➡️ See all Settings ➡️ Inbox ➡️ Inbox Type. If working mostly from a computer we recommend the Multiple Inbox setting with the Multiple Inboxes set to the right on the regular inbox. You can create up to five secondary inboxes with different search parameters. Remember those stars we set-up in the last step? You can now use a search-query ok “has:green-star” for example… and all your emails with a green star will show up in that secondary inbox.
Here is the real magic when you use multiple inboxes…. You can now use the filters (explained below) and have emails SKIP your inbox, and head directly into your secondary inboxes. Get it? You are mastering your inbox to get closer to inbox zero… AUTOMATICALLY. NOTE: If you set the secondary inboxes to LABEL:UNREAD in the search query, once you look at them, the become READ and disappear from your secondary inbox. Again automatically helping you keep in clean.
3) Make use of the built in filters and automation within Gmail / Gsuite
You inbox is all cleared out. You have a way to Follow up on To-dos, All your settings are set. Now for the hard part, at least for the next week or so. Everytime you get a new email you need to decide where it goes. These are your choices:
Send to todoist or other to do list manager. (For you OR a team member to handle)
Reply and use the Send and Archive setting to never see it again.
Reply and use the snooze feature to follow up, if it is important.
Create a filter to send it to on of the multiple inboxes we created earlier
Click the three dots on the upper right hand side of the email
Click filter messages like these
Add any other info to fine tune the filter
Click “Create Filter”
Click on the actions to take, apply to other conversations if needed then click “Create Filter
Unsubscribe. If there is an Unsubscribe link… click it.
The hard part is creating the filters. But remember every time you create a filter, you will have one less type of email in your inbox forever. And that my friends, is a very long time!
