Complete is a Chrome extension for Gmail that has the potential to find you lots of time!
My VA recently came upon this Chrome Extension and, being a fan of anything that speeds up the process of on-line work, brought it to my attention.
What Complete does, when you add it to Chrome, is analyze your Gmail account, looking at the words and phrases that you typically use. Here’s how Wired UK describes this (free) extension:
The extension, simply called Complete, performs a near-instant analysis of your Gmail account during setup in order to build a profile of your typing habits. Once that’s done, Complete will offer to finish the words you’re typing as you type them into the body text of a new email. To accept each suggestion, you just hit enter, tab or ctrl+space before moving on to the next word.
In our experience, the analysis wasn’t quite as “instant” as described above. We had a quick response from the admin team at Complete.li, however, and learned that we had missed a crucial step (signing in to gmail and giving the app access). For some reason, that hadn’t been obvious at the outset. But, at any rate, once we were up and running and the analysis was done, we were surprised and pleased with the accuracy of the suggestions.
It takes some getting used to, though, as using Complete will mean a change in your typing habits. So I’d suggest building in some extra time for Gmail tasks at first, as you get used to this extension. The extra time invested up front will, I think, turn into a time-savings down the road.
Complete: How to Use It:
Here’s how the folks at Complete describe how to use their tool on the download page:
- Compose a new mail just as usual. Complete’s suggestions will appear next to the cursor.
- Press Enter, TAB or Ctrl+Space to add a suggestion to the text.
- Press ESC to ignore a suggestion.
- Continue typing when you see an incorrect suggestion, Complete will try more options on the go.
An added plus is that, according to their description, Complete learns more and more about your “voice” as time goes on. It will be interesting to see how this tool evolves, and how it fits with our on-line work here at The Time Finder.
Many find the auto-correct/auto-complete function frustrating, so Complete may not be your cup of tea. But it sounds like, once you get used to Complete it can potentially save you lots of keystrokes – and therefore lots of time!
And in case you’re worried, investing a bit of time in proofreading your e-mails before sending them easily addresses the danger of embarrassing auto-correct mistakes! (That’s a good habit to get into, even if you’re not using an extension like Complete.)
So, what do you think? Is auto-complete something you use or something you’ve typically shied away from?
And if auto-complete isn’t your cup of tea, you might be interested in a tool like AutoHotKey. It enables you to create your own keyboard shortcuts to save keystrokes and time. (And it gives you full control, so you know exactly what text will appear. For example, when my VA uses AutoHotKey and types “fb”, Facebook is the text that is entered in her document.)
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have no material connection with Complete.li or AutoHotKey and have not received any compensation for writing this content.
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