Using Gmail to Accomplish your Goals

I read and listened to Colleen’s a.k.a The Communicatrix’s post about seeing your goals daily. I came away inspired, but I didn’t have the time to do what she suggested. I admit that I am sometimes lazy, but I would still like to be reminded of my goals daily.

The first thing to have a Gmail account. If you don’t have one, you can easily sign up for one.

The next step is to create labels. Labels are the way that people organize their emails in Gmail.  If you don’t want to create labels, you  can use the starred items system  which Lifehacker has a how-to on.

For the purposes of this post. I created the labels S/Goals and S/Tasks. For more on how I came up with these labels, read the post from Web Worker Daily.

Next go to the Labs feature. You can get there one of two ways. Either click on the beaker icon on the upper right hand side of the gmail account, or  click on “Settings“, then “Labs“.  Find and enable the  Gmail Labs Plugin for Multiple Inboxes. With Multiple Inboxes you can see up to 5 groups of emails based on labels or other email addresses.

After Multiple Inboxes Plugin is enabled, you can go designate what folders you would like to see visible when you open up your gmail account.  Click on “Settings” again and then “Multiple Inboxes“. Here you can see which labels are visible. There’s room for 5.

Now, you can go ahead and go through your emails  and label them S/Goals and/or S/Tasks, but what happens if you think of a goal or task and you are away from your desk?

Enter filters.

To create a filter, you go to “Settings” and “Filters“, and click on “Create a new filter.”

We are going to create a filter so that all emails coming from the goals email will be labeled with the S/Goals tag.

1. In the To: field type username+goals@gmail.com where “username” is you current gmail account.

2. Click on the “Next Step >>” button.

3.  Click on the checkbox next to Apply the label and select “S/Goals”

4. If you have emails already labeled,  they should appear below the settings. You have the option to apply the setting to the existing emails.

5. Click “Update Filter”.

6. Repeat  steps 1-5 for the “S/Tasks” label.

The result:

My goals and tasks are now visible whenever I open up my gmail account.

How do you use your Gmail account to accomplish your goals?