The Best Email Setup for Ultimate Productivity in 2018

Emails are part of our every day lives wether you are employed at Starbucks or a marketing firm you are probably receiving tens if not hundreds of emails every day. Managing all of them can be challenging. I’m always looking for tips on how to improve my email workflow as well as productivity hacks. Some of the most effective hacks are shortcuts and if you spent just a few minutes to get familiar with them, you’ll never look back.

I’ve experimented with most email clients for Mac and iOS from Outlook to Inbox to Spark and others. A year ago, my favorite setup was the native Mail app on my Mac. I had specific workflows in place but I realized there was a limit when it comes to customizations and efficiency. Then, I found Boxy that uses Google’s Inbox mechanism which is pretty neat. But, if you are getting over 500 emails per day like me, it’s laggy and slow even if you have the latest MacBook Pro.

After trying most of the Mac apps I finally settled for a custom setup with Gmail @ Work and Web Catalog. Here’s how it looks:

Gmail Setup using Web Catalog on a Macbook Pro

As you can see it looks like a native app thanks to Web Catalog and Juli framework.

Gmail recently got a redesign and I have to say, it looks great. It’s definitely better than my second favorite service Inbox by Gmail which feels like it’s adbandoned by Google recently given that they still haven’t updated their iOS app to support iPhone X (and it’s been almost a year).

So how do you get to use gmail as a native app on your Mac and what’s the benefit:

1. Download Web Catalog
2. Download Juli
3. Open Web Catalog
4. Search for Gmail
5. Install the App
6. Open the App
7. Go to Preferences
8. Turn off “Show Navigation Bar”
9. Turn off “Show Title Bar”
10. Open the Inject CSS box
11. Copy paste the Code below to polish the UI

.LW-avf.Am {

font: 15px/1.5 sans-serif;

}

.gb_Xa:not(.gb_Za) .gb_Ed {

padding-top: 20px;

}

.aj5.J-KU-Jg {

display: none;

}

.gb_Xa:not(.gb_Za) .gb_Va {

display: none;

}

.a3s, .g6 {font: 15px/1.5 sans-serif !important;

}

12. Click Save

13. Click Relaunch and you are all set!

Enabling Custom Keyboard Shortcuts

1. Go to Settings < Advanced
2. Enable Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
3. Go to Settings < Keyboard Shortcuts to change the shortcuts, here’s what I use.

S= Snooze

A=Archive

R= Reply All

I=Flag Important

M=Spam

Further Optimizations

1. Enable Updates, Promotions and Social Tabs
2. Create Your Own Categories like (Partnerships, Family, Work, Payments, Someday etc) and assign specific colors.

What about Mobile?

Unfortunately, for iOS (iPhone/iPad), I still use Inbox from Google even though it’s not fully compatible with the iPhone X. The workflows Google has created are pretty powerful when it comes to getting to inbox zero while you are on the go.

Mockup from Luke

What’s Next

As a self-taught UI designer, I always get excited for good UI design, especially when it comes to apps that I use daily. But, I’m disappointed with most of the big players in the market like Dropbox and Google. Dropbox acquired Inbox back in 2014 and decided to shut it down and I’m not sure why. Google, on the other hand, redesigned Gmail for iOS. However, they’ve complicated things. Instead of adding a swipe right/left feature to snooze an email they decided to just use swipe left AND right for archiving an email(ugh..).

Who knows — maybe someday I’ll just design an app of my own.

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