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How to Hack GMail to Increase Testosterone

Written by Christopher Kelly

Oct. 22, 2014

Sounds like a bit of stretch doesn’t it? Bear with me, this really works, and I know it works because I’ve seen the results on saliva hormone panels. The literature is consistent with this finding: Chronic exposure to stressors increases HPA axis activity and concomitantly reduces HPG axis activity, or put simply, chronic stress lowers sex hormones.

How stressful do you find email? 75,000 unread message waiting for you?

And what the heck do those tabs do? And why are they right there occupying a good chunk of the screen’s most valuable real estate?

The idea for this neat hack is not my own, I stole it from Ari Meisel of getleverage.com. From this moment on you have two places for email, your inbox (the essential) and everything else, which is optional. Follow these instructions to get rid of the tabs and create your Optional label. Anything including words related to managing an email subscription will appear in Optional. Go there if you have time, but remember that everything you really need is in your inbox.

Now we’ve made GMail a less stressful place to be we’re winning. But wait, there’s more. No doubt you’re busy and probably don’t have time for my favourite stress reduction technique, guided meditation. Use the 10 minutes you just saved for the Headspace take 10 challenge and voilà! Reduced stress for increased testosterone. Enjoy.

1. In GMail, click the cog in the top right hand corner and select Settings
2. Click the Inbox tab and deselect everything except Primary
3. Click Save changes
4. Go to the Filters tab
5. Right at the bottom of the page there’s a button that allows you to import filters
6. Choose this file, click Open file
7. Click Create filters
8. Go back to your Inbox. No stupid tabs. Instead you have a label on the left hand side called Optional