As a solopreneur, knowing how to schedule an email to send at a future time in your Gmail account can be a major boost in your productivity.
Practical Examples of When to Schedule an Email
Appointment Reminders
A major time waster are appointment no-shows. You’ve set aside time on your schedule and you show up on time only to be frustrated that the person you were going to meet with forgot about your appointment. That’s valuable time that could have been used in a more productive manner.
To reduce the number of no-show appointments, create a system of always emailing reminders. As soon as you’ve agreed on an appointment day and time, hop over to your Gmail account and compose your reminder message. For super-star productivity status, use one of your pre-written templates.
Then, schedule your reminder email for the day before your appointment. This will give your colleague plenty of time to make sure their schedule is in sync with yours or reschedule if needed.
“Office Hour” Communication Policy
Let’s face it, as a solopreneur, you work at all weird hours of the day (and night). If you’re not careful, you’ll experience burn-out. Therefore, you should establish some boundaries and structure in your business operations.
Perhaps you make a vow with yourself that your “office hours” are from 10am – 3pm M-F. To keep in line with your self-imposed office hours, creating boundaries of only sending emails during that timeframe can be established.
Ideally, on your schedule you’ll set aside time during your office hours to check and respond to email. But for all practical purposes, we all know what happens. You find yourself meandering over to your email at odd hours hoping to get caught up.
It serves us well to craft an email when the ideas are fresh in our minds, but you probably should think twice in sending an email at 11PM at night. Your boundaries that you’re trying to establish for yourself will be shot in no time. The recipient of the email may think they can contact you at any time of the day or night and expect you to respond.
So go ahead and compose an email message when the message is fresh in your mind, but instead of hitting the SEND button, consider scheduling your email.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Follow these steps to schedule an email using your Gmail account.
- Open your Gmail account in your web browser.
- Compose your email.
- Click the triangle next to the send button for more options.
- Click on Schedule Send.
- In the pop-up window, choose a time suggested, or click Pick date & time.
- Choose your desired date and time you’d like to send your email.
- Click the Schedule Send button.
Your email will now be stored in the Scheduled folder in your Gmail account. Your email will be delivered at the time and date you selected and moved to your Sent folder.