Gmail has become one of the defacto free email services used for both personal and business email. But are you using it to its fullest potential? Here are 10 quick and easy efficiency-boosting customizations to turn you into a Gmail master who can save a ton of time.

1) Gmail Labs Optional Features

Gmail Labs is hard at work on developing optional features for Gmail. You can see their latest work by logging into Gmail and going to Settings (upper right) and clicking on the Labs tab (far right tab). Here you can enable and disable any of the features. Since it is a laboratory some things might break Gmail or make it act strangely, be sure you note how to fix it. Here's one of the best of the best from Gmail Labs:

Mark as Read Button – If you get a lot of newsletters and other things that you want to keep but not necessarily read right away, this is a great feature from Gmail Labs. It adds a ‘Mark as Read’ button to the top of the Gmail interface. Now you can highlight the loads of email you get and click the button. There’s no “Mark as Unread� button yet but requests have been put in to make this button a two-way button.