9 Google Apps Tips: Productivity Boosters
Check out these little-known Google Apps features that can make you more efficient and less irritated.
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The Google apps universe is so big and so full of features that no one could possibly use them all -- or even know they exist. Chances are, even Google employees have trouble keeping track of all the things their apps can do. Add in plug-ins and other third-party features, and you quickly find yourself overwhelmed with possibilities. To help you make the most of your Google experience, we've compiled this list of some of the features you might not be using enough.
Some of these features are obscure and possibly things you've never heard of. Some are just so darn useful they bear repeating. These are apps that will help you improve your work productivity, back up your most important files, balance your work and life, de-clutter your world, and organize your desktop.
One of the areas we concentrated on was email. Stats from 2012 show that the average worker spends 28% of each work day on email, and some workers spend 2.5 hours writing email per day. Granted, mobile is changing those numbers, but email isn't going away, and we're adding texts, social media, and everything else on top of it. So, some of these things will help you use email more efficiently during the day. We especially want to help you ignore the wrong emails at the wrong time so you can be more productive.
Another area we are trying to help is in consuming content more reasonably and comfortably. When you're not on email, chances are you're consuming large amounts of other data from cloud docs and the Web, including an increasing amount of video. Managing and collaborating with all of this information is increasingly complex and draining. Doing it a little easier can make you more productive. And it might also help you be a little less grumpy -- which is nice for your co-workers and your family.
There are so many Google apps tips, this couldn't possibly be the end of the list. In fact, we've given some great tips before. Take a look at the ones on this list, and then check out my InformationWeek colleague Kristin Burnham's 10 Great Google Apps Tips and 6 New Google Apps Tips and Tricks. For more enterprise-oriented tips, see her Google Apps: 5 Ways To Be More Productive, and for email related tips, try Google Inbox: 5 Things to Know.
Click on the arrow below to get this latest round of tips, then please share your favorite tips in the comments section so we call all help each other be more productive.
(Source: jinxmcc)
Pick a card, any card. Google Now cards are an excellent way to simplify your apps and widgets, especially on Android. If you're a sports fan, you probably have an app that gives you scores. And you probably have another one that gives you weather. And you might have note or calendar apps that remind you of appointments or flights. Most of those apps have widgets or otherwise take up home-screen space. Google Now cards allow you to replace all of those with a single widget that can keep track of your scores, weather, and everything else, all in a clean interface. You set up the cards (alerts) you want and a single app enables them to rotate for easy display on your screen. One of my favorites is the "how far am I from home?" card. It tells me how long it will take me to get home with current traffic. I can add cards for work or other locations. This allows me to save time as I always know exactly when I can leave one place for another with the right amount of cushion in case of traffic.
(Source: citymaus)
Sometimes you need to concentrate, but grandma is emailing you about why you haven't settled down with a nice young man or woman. Sometimes your coworkers are organizing an NCAA March Madness pool and you're working on a major deadline. You don't want to shut Gmail down because you've got to use it for the task at hand. But you'd like to slim down what is coming in. Just click on a message and find "mute" under the "more" options. You can find grandma's not-so-subtle prodding, or your chance to lose some money to co-workers, in a special folder later.
(Source: basykes)
Most of the time, emails sent directly to us are more important than the ones that come in on mailing lists. Wouldn't you like to know, without looking too hard, whether an email was sent to a million people or just you? With personal indicators in Gmail you can. Follow Google's directions, and your messages will show one arrow for a personal message, two for a message sent to you and some other folks, and no arrows if it the mail comes from a mailing list. That's a nice time saver when you need to prioritize.
(Source: quadell)
Sometimes you are so busy you just need all the email to stop. All of it. You have to go quiet. You can "snooze" your email so it stops coming. There are a couple of ways to do this. There are multiple plug-ins that will do it, including Boomerang. You can also do it via a script. It is surprising that these features have been around since 2012 but have not become standard Gmail tools, especially since Gmail allows you to snooze alerts and individual threads. Bonus tip: Gmail does allow you to snooze an email thread or alert until you arrive at a specific place. So, if you are commuting and you just can't think of work emails until you arrive, this is a handy feature.
(Source: JimJimFuria)
Speaking of times when you don't want to be distracted, how often have you gone to a web page to read something, and the video player on the site started playing a commercial at a ridiculous volume. Not only can it be distracting, but if the wrong ad plays at the wrong time, you could be embarrassed in your office, at Starbucks, or anywhere else. To prevent this, open settings in Chrome, then click "show advanced settings" at the bottom of the page. Under "privacy" you'll see "content settings." Click on that, and then look under "plug-ins" and select the radio button next to "click to play." You'll never again have to worry about an unwanted ad automatically playing in the middle of your quarterly sales meeting.
(Source: newsbie pix)
Google Docs is a common way for many companies to share documents. The Harmon.ie sidebar allows you to access Google Cloud files directly from Microsoft Outlook so you can manage documents in one of your most common organizational tools. This is a great way to make collaborations more tool agnostic. And combined with Outlook's calendar features, it can simplify managing documents and projects.
(Source: Harmon.ie)
Are you tired of all the clutter, particularly ads around video players on websites? Turn Off The Lights is a simple, yet highly effective, plug-in for the Chrome browser that allows you to dim all the web page clutter around a video player. Is Turn Off The Lights absolutely necessary? Not really. Can it help you enjoy a video and relax your mind a bit while you do it? Yes.
(Source: teddykaitlinllucien)
Mapnificent, another clever Chrome plug-in, tells you how long it will take to get somewhere in a city using public transportation. It will give you a heat map showing the time from specific points in the city to anywhere else in the city. At first, this doesn't sound so special, considering Google Maps will give you stop-by-stop directions on public transportation. But imagine if you were house hunting and you wanted a sense of how easy (or hard) it was to get around town from a potential new home. It should work wonders for job hunting or travel -- for example, if you were trying to select the right hotel for business travel.
(Source: Stefan Wehrmeyer)
If you use any Google App, you have a Google+ account. Since you're stuck with Google+, you might as well use it for something. One of the best uses is taking advantage of the free storage for photos and other important files. You can set your mobile phone to instantly store all pictures to Google+, saving you a backup step and giving you a place to go if you lose all the pics form your child's first birthday party.
(Source: isengardt)
Google apps offer a lot of ways to make us more productive while cutting down on everyday annoyances. We hope these tips help, though we know there are many other ways Google is making your life a little easier. Please share some of your favorites with us in the comments section.
(Source: brian glanz)
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