Odds are, if you’re reading this blog, you lead a double life. That’s great! It makes things more exciting. I’ve found that the only drawback to having multiple, distinct personalities is managing your communications–or rather, the only drawback *was* managing your communications. Thanks to the forward-thinking people at Google, there is still hope for keeping your online correspondence straight, provided you use Gmail exclusively. There’s a convenient way to be logged into multiple Gmail accounts at once and switch between them at leisure.

Start by logging into your first Gmail account. Locate your email address or name in the top-right corner of the window. Click on it to find a menu with a link to “Account Settings”, and follow that link.

In this page, find the “Multiple sign-in” option in the middle, under “Personal Settings”. It’s probably set to “Off” currently–click “Edit” to enable multiple sign-ins.

Google recognizes that there’s a lot of responsibility involved in having an alter ego. Therefore, you have to acknowledge the severity of what you’re about to do and sign in triplicate before you go any further. Change the radio button to “On” and check all of the check boxes (you should read them, too), then hit “Save”.

There you go! Multiple sign-in has been turned on. Go back to your Gmail (you might have to log out and log back in) and click your email address as before. You’ll notice something new: a “Switch account” link. Click it–you know you want to.

You’ll see a list of all the accounts into which you are currently signed. Right now this should be exactly 1.

Fix that! Click “Sign into another account…”. Having logged into your account probably twice so far, you should know what to do here.

Now, go back to your Gmail (you might have to refresh) and click your email address one final time. You should see both of your email accounts listed, and you will be able to switch between them freely. Repeat the process for every identity you have, and enjoy!

Once caveat: Google really only maintains this for Gmail, so switching between accounts in all of your lovely other Google products–Calendar, Docs, etc.–won’t necessarily work. But email is the most important to be able to switch around in anyways, so that hopefully isn’t too much of an issue.