Learn to Use Keyboard Shortcuts

You've heard the expression that you need to learn to crawl before you can walk, and when it comes to Gmail, you'll be ahead of the game if you learn how to use keyboard shortcuts before diving into more advanced options. To enable keyboard shortcuts, click on Settings and mark the 'Keyboard shortcuts on' radial button.

Now that you have this feature turned on, here's a sampling of what you can do with it:

• c: Compose a new message. Hold Shift +c to compose a message in a new window
• Tab+Enter: Send a message
• k: Move cursor to a more recent conversation
• j: Move cursor to the next oldest conversation
• n: Move cursor to the next message
• o or Enter: Opens your conversation
• x: Selects the current conversation
• e: Archives selected conversation
• !: Marks current conversation as spam
• r: Reply
• a: Reply to all
• g then i: Go to the Inbox
• g then a: Go to "All mail"
• g then k: Opens Tasks and switches the focus to it

There's a lot more shortcuts to learn, all of which you can reference here.

One shortcut that's not on the list, however, is a keyboard combo that opens up a simple version of Snake. But you'll first need to enable this one under Gmail Labs. Click on Settings>Labs. Scroll down until you see Old Snakey and mark the Enable radio button. Press the Saved Settings button all the way at the bottom, and then just mash the &key (Shift+7) to fire up this classic time waster!