Top 6 Gmail Filters for Productivity!

Key Takeaways

in an age of constant distractions having a structure system for your inbox means getting things done faster while making fewer mistakes and whether you're a student entrepreneur or working professional you most likely want a system where you get to decide which important emails get surfaced and which ones get deprioritized so in this video i'm gonna share the six best gmail filters for productivity that will continuously work for you after a one-time setup and if you find any of these gmail filters helpful i have a really nice surprise waiting for you at the end let's get started hi friends welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is jeff and we're all about practical career and productivity tips so if you're a student or working professional consider subscribing for more actionable content diving right into gmail filter number one filter comments from google drive documents in your email inbox if you work with any of the google workspace tools like docs sheets and slides you know that whenever someone comments on a file that you own or comments at you within that file you receive an email notification by default what i like to do is to apply separate labels to comments i receive from google docs google sheets and google slides because i actually sometimes want to refer back to the comment or action item even after it has been resolved and actually within gmail the search bar is actually not great at searching for comments specifically so let's say i want to create a filter for comments from google sheets only i go to the filters and block addresses section within gmail settings create new filter from at docs.google.com has the words sheets create filter apply the label new label sheets and you can even click skip the inbox because after you create this filter you can click the three dots next to the label and choose show if unread and this hides the label unless there's a new comment directed towards you you can repeat this process for google slides and just replace sheets with slides in has the words field but google docs is a little different if you want to filter out google docs only you have to write doesn't have sheets or slides here and then continue with creating the filter advanced gmail rule number two combine filters with gmail templates to send automated responses in gmail settings you have the option to set up a vacation responder uh when you're out of office the issue with this is that you only have one message to send uh for everyone who emails you and while you might want to have a cute or humorous reply to your colleagues you probably want a professional and dignified response when external clients email you so instead of turning on the vacation responder first go to your settings advanced and make sure templates is enabled and click save changes then in a new compose window create two templates one for your colleagues and one for external partners for the internal one something like yo chillin hard right now not going to check emails for two weeks peace and for the external version dear sender your message is of the utmost importance to me i simply cannot wait to get back to work and check my inbox since there's just such a thing as too much fun when i'm working with a client like you most in serious regards jeff save both of these as templates by clicking the three dots here templates save draft as new template save this new template then go back to your settings filters create new filter and in the from field input asterisk at whatever your workdomain is dot com create filter check send template and choose the internal ooo template then create another filter only this time in the from field input minus at yourworkdomain.com and choose the external ooo template don't forget to turn these off after you get back of course this is just one way to combine gmail filters and templates if you're working a role where you receive the same type of question a lot you can filter for a certain keyword and reply with an answer template or pro tip you can have a template with just the word yes in it and have it set up as an auto response to whatever your significant other emails you you can thank me later if you're enjoying these tips so far please smash that like button and if not a gentle tap will also do the number three gmail filter to create is my personal favorite and it is a filter that automatically archives useless calendar notifications if you think about it there's no real benefit to receiving an email whenever someone accepts your calendar invite because there's no additional action for you to take the notification is just a distraction all you have to do is create a new filter has the words filename colon invite.ics and accepted create filter skip the inbox mark is read and if you want you can apply a label calendar or something and create filter now you'll never receive an email after someone accepts your invitation but you're still being notified if someone rejects your invite in that scenario you actually have a follow-up action item you have to follow up and find a new time so that notification is useful the fourth gmail filter for productivity using the plus sign to selectively filter out newsletters and promotions as i've mentioned in previous videos the plus sign is super cool because you can put your username plus literally anything you want at gmail.com and gmail will still recognize is an email meant for you so i would highly recommend creating two filters and their corresponding labels one for newsletters and one for promotions and discounts the next time you sign up for newsletters feel free to put input your email plus newsletters gmail.com and for promotions and discounts feel free to type in your email plus discounts at gmail or at apple.com to create a filter for newsletters simply create a new filter in the to field input your email plus newsletters gmail.com and click create filter and since newsletters should theoretically have higher quality content we don't have to check skip the inbox since you might actually want it to hit your inbox and be notified so just apply the label newsletter create filter for discounts however these should be deprioritized in order to minimize the number of distractions so when you create the filter for this category you want to check skip the inbox apply the label discount create filter and change a discount label to show only if unread by doing so promotional emails will not hit your inbox by default but you still have the choice to see that there's one unread discount email and you can choose to go into it if you want this just adds a little bit of friction to stop you from being distracted or spending money on useless gadgets the plus sign trick is also critical to achieving inbox zero for example you want to use your email plus waiting gmail.com to tag emails where to follow up with someone so make sure to check out my inbox zero video as well the fifth gmail filter for productivity at work color code your inbox so let's say you currently have an urgent label that tags all emails from your manager and you want something that looks simpler instead of the big ugly words urgent what you can do is go to the label you want to edit click on the three dots label color add custom color and make the background color the exact same as text color and click apply now you have a block of solid color that some people may enjoy more than having the word itself last but not least the sixth gmail filter trick that helps you become more productive transfer filters across accounts if after watching this video you create some amazing filters and you want to humble brag or just brag to your colleagues and friends you can easily do so by exporting your filters and sending those to them simply go to the filters and blocked addresses page select all the filters you'd like to share and click export down below then send them the xml file and have them import the filters in the same page now because i'm such an angel i've already exported the relevant filters from today's video and uploaded them to my website which i'll link down below all you have to do is to import those filters into your own gmail accounts and make some slight tweaks and adjustments if you want to achieve the inbox zero setup like i have here make sure to check out that video i also have a playlist with all my other practical productivity tips see you on the next video in the meantime have a great one