- this is the secret sauce
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/label%3Ainbox+label%3Aunread
this is the link i use to enter gmail shows only unread messages you could. make it show no messages so when you go into gmail to do work your not distracted by all of them
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any email i can't answer RIGHT now I star with a yellow start so it doesn't show up there so you have to add the star extension https://www.emailoverloadsolutions.com/blog/gmail-stars-feature#:~:text=The%20default%20Gmail%20settings%20for,or%20that%20are%20highly%20important.
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use different colour stars so I use yellow for all of them up front then on my one email work a day time like you i work on only the yellow stars no junk mail and any quick replies were already done before
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If I can't do it that night, then I change the colour of the star to sort it red for students work blue for reimbrsements etc.
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I use multiple inboxes extension, so that when I do go to by inbox I see my yellow starred messages above and all other messages below, those yellow ones are ones I cannot forget so I leave them yellow so you see it hides all my other colour stars
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when I feel really productive and want to grind hard I then open up starred messages and try to knock off as many as I can, some are just saved for later use (reimbursements)
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Filters- I filter out all messages that distract me. I constantly unsubscribe and report as spam, everything
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Filters, when I find myself getting stupid boring work emails from a certain domain, I make a whole filter for those and filter them so they don't appear in my inbox
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I don't have email notifications on my phone, so I rarely open up the email app there, but when I do its just to swipe right to delete as many unread messages as I can before even sitting down at th ecomputer