If there is one thing that holds people back from success more than anything else, it's low productivity. Now, with Augment for Chrome, you can transform your Gmail inbox into a productivity powerhouse.

We've offered a lot of Gmail productivity tips through the years - things like add-ons that improve email forwarding, timing, or tagging, or Chrome extensions that let you add cloud attachments and send batch emails.

While all of those things enhance the functionality of your inbox, the Augment for Chrome add-on actually integrates all of your favorite productivity tools and services directly into your Gmail inbox. You will not believe how insanely more productive this will make you.

Connecting Augment to Your Services

There are two parts to enabling Augment in your Gmail inbox. The first is to install the Chrome add-on. Once you do this, you'll see a Connect to augment button appear at the top of your Gmail inbox.

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When you first click on this, you'll see a list of all of the cloud services that you can integrate into your Gmail inbox using Augment. In my case, I have accounts with all but one of them - which means Augment will be wonderfully useful to me. If you typically use services like Trello, Todoist, Dropbox or any of the others listed here, you will find the same benefit.

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Add the services and provide required permissions one-by-one. Once you're finished, you'll see those services appear under the Augment dropdown list in your Gmail inbox, labeled with the number of "Apps Augmented".

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Once you've "augmented" all of your favorite web services into your inbox through Augment, you're ready to start applying a jet pack to your productivity.

Email Management with Augment

Does Augment really save time? Well, if you use most of the services that can be "augmented", then it sure does.

Every time you open an email you've received from anyone, you'll see a list of the augmented apps at the top of the email. It can take a few moments for this list to load, so if you're the kind of person not willing to wait 2-3 seconds to see the list populate, this may not be for you.

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However, most emails take longer to read than that, so it's not a major annoyance.

Augmented Trello

If you have Trello, you can tap the Trello icon and quickly create a new card under any existing Trello board.

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This is really useful for those times when you're collaborating on a project with your team, and you've been managing the details of that project inside Trello.

Trello includes its own commenting feature, but you'll always have people who don't use Trello, and they'll send you project updates via email. Now, with Trello "augmented" into your Gmail, updating the project with those email details doesn't require opening up a new tab and logging into Trello. It takes seconds.

The moment you send your update to Trello, it appears as a new card under the board and list that you've specified.

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Note: You cannot create a new board or list from this tool - only add to an existing one.

Augmented Calendar

If you tap the Calendar icon, then from right inside of your Gmail Inbox, you can toss together an event. Maybe it's a quick meeting with that person. You can even include their email address in the "Invite Guests" field, which will fire off an automated email request.

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One small bug found during testing - the slide-out calendar on the right side of your Gmail inbox never updates, it just keeps refreshing. I assume this is a small issue likely to be resolved by the team at some point. It is a minor issue, since accessing the slide-out calendar isn't really necessary most of the time (although it would be convenient).

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The nice thing is that there's no delay. The moment you click 'Okay', the event is added to your calendar within seconds.

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This feature alone will save me a great deal of time. There are many cases where someone suggests we meet to discuss something via email, and I'll make a mental note, close the email, and immediately forget about it.

This integration allows you to "set it and forget it". Relying on your memory is hardly ever a good thing. Setting things up the very moment you're reading that email is clearly the way to go - and Augment gives you the tools you need to do that.

Augmented Evernote

There are over 100 million Evernote users out there, so it's no surprise it would be featured as an Augmented choice. This is a great thing, because Evernote is an ideal place to save those critical pieces of information you receive via email.

Whether someone sent you a list of project ideas, or a plan for moving the company forward - you don't want to let that information get buried inside your Inbox. Capture it immediately by clicking the Augmented Evernote icon.

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What's nice is you can even attach the email itself to the Evernote note. This takes the entire email and pastes it into Evernote, into the Notebook and Note title that you specify.

Next time you check Evernote, you'll see it in your notebook.

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One of the main reasons my own email inbox grows into the thousands of emails over the years is because I have a hard time getting rid of anything - I'm afraid of losing information.

Sending important emails to Evernote can give you the peace of mind to press that delete button, and finally clean out your bulging inbox.

Augmented ToDoist

Some of us here at MakeUseOf love ToDoist for many reasons. We introduced our readers to ToDoist in 2008. We've done things like set up filters with ToDoist, and combined it with IFTTT to automate our lives.

Thankfully, you can also augment ToDoist with your Gmail account, so that you can add tasks to any ToDoist project right on-the-fly while reading an email.

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For people like me who may forget about an email five minutes after it's closed, this is a lifesaver.

Toss the task into ToDoist using the Augmented icon for it, and the next time you check your to-do list, you'll see it added exactly where you wanted it to go - due date and all.

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Using Augment for just a week will make it apparent very quickly just how much more productive you'll be having that convenient little toolbar at the top of your emails.

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Augment may be fairly new, and it may have a few little quirks in these early stages, but as a very busy person constantly looking for easy ways to streamline my workflow and save time - this one takes the cake.

Try out Augment for yourself and let us know what you think. Does it make you more productive? Do you use all of the services that are available to augment? Share your experiences in the comments section below!