Keeping Your Inbox Empty

Inbox Zero is a con­cept by Mer­lin Mann that I embrace fully (he is writ­ing a book on it due to be out soon), and most email hogs have a love hate rela­tion­ship with Inbox Zero. The thing is, most peo­ple have Inbox Zero wrong. Not being the inven­tor of the con­cept, I should say that most peo­ple approach keep­ing noth­ing in their inbox the wrong way. Keep­ing your inbox empty is not about react­ing to email quickly and effi­ciently – keep­ing your inbox... Read More

∞ Lab Rat: Does a Balanced Email Diet = More Focus & Productivity?

Brit­tany Ancell: The only way to gain true peace of mind is to close your email com­pletely. It requires an obscene amount of dis­ci­pline to not dip into your inbox on a whim. At the very least, turn off mobile alerts and keep your client minimized. This is a great arti­cle; if you use email you need to read this. via The 99 Per­cent.  Read More

Use OutLook? Liaise Intelligent Assistant Available Now

Mar­shall Kirkpatrick: Out­look users can now use email plug-in Liaise to auto­mat­i­cally extract action items, del­e­ga­tion and pri­or­ity lev­els from the free text of email conversations. I don’t use Win­dows so I have yet to try this, but it looks use­ful. How­ever I don’t agree with the sen­ti­ment that this tool makes Mac users jeal­ous of Win­dows users. via Use Out­Look? Liaise Intel­li­gent Assis­tant Avail­able Now.  Read More

Cure Your E-Mail Addiction

Unclut­terer: via Cure your e-mail addiction  Read More

Your Email Inbox Is Not a to-Do List

We have all done it and many of us still do it: leave Emails in the inbox because there is an action asso­ci­ated with it. Inboxes for many have become a catchall to-do list area and it is sim­ply wrong. I have waited many hours now (in aggre­gate) as I watched peo­ple scroll through hun­dreds of mes­sages being stored in their inbox so that they can tell me a 2 sec­ond piece of information. If you are a per­son who uses your inbox as a to-do list it is time to stop,... Read More

Great Gmail Tip: Mute

I had no clue this existed so thanks to Evan Williams for this one. This is so neat that I might try out Gmail again (instead of using Apple Mail).  Read More

7 Google Labs Features That Help Us Avoid Email Mistakes

If you are a Gmail user then you should check out these 7 Google labs fea­tures, there are some pretty com­pelling ones here. .  Read More

The Two Sentence Email

Enter the two sen­tence email. This is a web­site I found a while back, and it is phenomenal. two.sentenc.es And in its sim­plic­ity lies its power. Now I thought — how do I whit­tle down an email to only two sen­tences? Some­times writ­ing only two sen­tences is hard, but once I got the hang of, it then it was no problem. Here are some pointers. Out With: Small Talk Salu­ta­tions Thank­ing people In With: The Point The Answer Devel­op­ing the Habit To... Read More

No After Hours Work Email — Stop the Stress

I started to think about how I spend my free time, and email kept pop­ping into my head, as some­thing that takes a lot of time. So I decided that ‚while hav­ing a home computer,and an iPhone is great / nec­es­sary, hav­ing work email 24/7 is not great. So I decided to put a stop to it: 9–5 work email only. I changed the set­tings on my iPhone so that my work email is not checked, and all other accounts for­ward to my MobileMe account (which is push). So now... Read More

Email — You Used to Be Useful

Eight years ago, as I entered into col­lege, it was email that was my pre­ferred means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It was fast, easy, unob­tru­sive. This was the wave of the future and I was on it. Now fast for­ward eight years, and over twenty email addresses later — I am now of the thought that email is evil. This feel­ing has been build­ing for a while now, and reached a tip­ping point when I read on how he is ditch­ing email. I was inspired, and jeal­ous. I know... Read More