Why ditching Gmail for Outlook was the best decision I ever made

Key Takeaways

• Choosing the right email client is important for productivity and planning.
• Outlook’s Focused mode filters out distractions, improving productivity.
• Keeping email signatures consistent across platforms creates a seamless communication experience.

Communication is essential to the way we work and play, so email has become one of the major forms of communication in the digital age. Which means choosing your email client is very important. Especially if you are bombarded with email messages almost every minute. One of the biggest features email client needs is the ability to organize waste from splash. And luckily, Outlook does that way better than Gmail. Here’s how this app helps keep me focused and my inbox organized:

Trial and error

Good Outlook

I have been an Android user for many years and have never come across any version of Gmail for several reasons. First, it always felt very different from a web app. I know that Google got rid of some of the hopeless features and became much simpler. It didn’t feel like a polished product. Second, adding more email accounts to the Gmail app was a headache, and creating filters to filter email in the app was also not.

Ironically, I didn’t buy a Surface Duo (and Surface Duo 2) and started using Outlook where I realized I had started sending email again and I felt more productive. Away from the cluttered mess of Gmail I had email previews, and a focused mode that filtered out the bulk and regular junk email that filled my inbox.

Because of less noise and less chaos, I was born a calm person.

Stay focused

Taking care of business

Focused mode is a killer feature of Outlook, it does a great job of sorting your email. Almost like a spam folder but for emails you might want to see but not right away. A quick tap of Focused mode to Other (I wish it had a better name) and you can see newsletters and other subscriptions. It’s bright.

Having this feature definitely makes me less distracted, which is a big deal since my phone is connected to the biggest distraction of all, the internet.

Many times a newsletter or promotional email arrives, I jump on it like its Seabiscuit and right after my productivity hits the hay.

Outlook for Android has really helped me to be able to deal with the issue of distraction or working on a phone or tablet, where it is very effective (see what I did there).

Valid signatures

Sign your name

Email signatures need to match the desktop client. Personally, I don’t want people to know I’m answering emails on my phone or desktop. Think of it as a seamless experience when talking to another person.

Outlook gives me the opportunity to do that. I simply add the HTML from something like an email signature generator (Hubspot has a great free one) and paste it into my desktop client, save the same HTML to Google Keep, then on your handset copy the HTML from Google Keep in your Outlook. .

Both signatures are now identical and very easy to make.

Calendar and News

The calendar feature supports Google Mail or Gmail and other providers’ calendars. Very useful.

The channels feature gives you the opportunity to create your own curated news feed for specific outlets or by topic. I like this feature quite a bit as it helps you filter out the news you don’t want to see. All of this within the Outlook app.

Outlook ticks all the biggest boxes, it’s easy to find, use and filter e-mail easily with the chosen news feed.