When thinking of Summer, productivity doesn’t always come to mind. Like most workplaces and freelancers, Google Workspace is extremely popular and crucial for managing work, but many of the features that help make it a breeze aren’t widely known. Below are five tips that will help you better organize your Google Drive and make the most out of your account so that less time is being spent on work and more time enjoying the sun.

We have a lot of files on our computers. All those documents, photos, and the like, probably aren’t needed anymore and should be removed. Ideally, you should be performing regular backups on your computer. If you aren’t, be sure to make one complete backup of everything on your Mac or PC before deleting a single file.

Once that’s done, go through the folders on your computer where you usually save content, then sort the files inside by date. Delete the ones you no longer need, especially those more than a year old. If you’re short on storage space, sort the files by size and remove the larger ones, assuming they’re no longer needed.

Email is a valuable tool but can be an aggravating one if it’s not organized correctly. Gmail has long offered a labeling system that allows users to sort emails for various reasons using a color-coded system. It makes filtering much easier and ideally suited for tasks when it comes time to delete unnecessary messages.

Moving forward, consider Kiwi for Gmail, which takes filtering to the extreme with a Focused Inbox. With the feature, you can whittle down messages by day or week, and separate those with attachments, etc. Deleting no longer necessary emails with attachments is especially important since they gobble up online or physical store space, depending on your provider.

There are a lot of time-saving apps on the market, and spring cleaning is a great time to get on board. Services like Clockwise, by contrast, make it possible to create more innovative daily schedules for individuals and companies alike. Free to try, Clockwise optimizes your calendar by rescheduling conflicting meetings and freeing up blocks of uninterrupted time. In doing so, you can focus on what matters the most.

For example, our app, Kiwi for Gmail, makes removing email spam easier and is better for organizing your newsletters and other bulk emails that tend to pile up after visiting an online store and other sites. This app makes it easier to unsubscribe to email lists you no longer want.

If you find it difficult to bring an order to your email or everyday calendar, Kiwi for Gmail and Clockwise are great places to start. Use the Summer as an excuse to shift how things are done as you move into the rest of the year.

Google isn’t the only one to offer color coding. You can find similar files and folder organization tools for Windows 11 and macOS Monterey. Both operating systems provide built-in color-coding features, with the latter including broader offerings. Regardless, third-party software tools on both systems add depth to the color-coding of files and folders. Start with the native options and move on to other solutions as needed.

One way to separate content using colors is by its priority, perhaps using red to denote your most essential files. You might also want to consider using one color (or different shades of the same color) to separate business and personal files. The best choice for you will vary based on your needs.

Remember going through those files and folders on your computer to find ones to delete? That process is much more straightforward if you can tell by the name what they entail. In other words, using “document-1” and “book-1” as file names isn’t exactly ideal. So instead, begin a new habit of naming files and folders in a way that will make them easier for you to find later. Create a system from all the available ideas, systems, and AI out there.

Use Summer as an opportunity to rename your files and folders to make them more descriptive. It makes it that much easier to find files going forward. For example, you could rename files by adding the department or project name, tags, dates, and more. The choices are endless.

Whatever you do, be consistent and continue following the renaming process. Then, you’ll be happy you did.

You can do much at spring cleaning time to better organize your space and digital life. Following the five tips above, you can bring order to your inbox, files, and folders. Best of all, none of these recommendations take that long to finish, giving you more time to do something far more entertaining. Happy Summer!

Feature Image Credit: Photo by Caio; Pexels; Thank you!

Source: ReadWrite

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