August 21, 2012 4 Comments

Unsolicited Review: Mailstrom

If there’s one addiction I have in the productivity space, it’s constantly looking for better, more effective, faster email productivity apps. Baltimore startup Mailstrom made it onto my radar scope recently via Greg Cangialosi, and it’s pretty darned awesome.

What does it do? In short, it lets you take a very fast first pass at your inbox in a way that doesn’t suck you into it. This is more important than it sounds. Many times, you and I will go into our inboxes, intending to achieve inbox zero, and get sucked into reading an update, a digest, a pile of email, or a social network notification, and fall into the trap we were hoping to eliminate. Mailstrom helps with that.

Here’s what you see when you log in:

Mailstrom: Analyze your Inbox

You get a very nice graph of what’s taking up space in your inbox, and then with a few simple keyboard shortcuts or clicks, you can trash or archive stuff without reading it, thus freeing up space and not mentally distracting you. Once done with that, you can click through to the other menus up top for things like social network notifications, lists you subscribed to, etc. and knock off those items.

This is what I woke up to: an inbox with 88 items. In literally 60 seconds, I wiped out 77 of them without ever setting eyes on any of the content, and the remaining 11 are things I legitimately need to address. That’s awesome.

That’s all Mailstrom does, and that’s all it needs to do. It doesn’t need to be a replacement email client, it doesn’t need to be fancy – it just needs to let me punch the graymail in the face swiftly, which it does beautifully.

Right now it’s free and in closed beta, but you can apply and usually get access in a couple of days.

Here’s hoping this product stays around. It’s a keeper.

Disclosure: Mailstrom hasn’t paid for this review in any way, though if they would like to send piles of unmarked $20 bills in non-sequential order, they are welcome to do so and this disclosure will update accordingly.

If you enjoyed this, please share it with your network!

Want to read more like this from ? Subscribe now:

Marketing White Belt

Basics for Digital Marketers
is now on Amazon & B&N

I recommend & use:
SEOMoz SEO Software
SEOMoz SEO software. 		I recommend:

for small business incorporation.
Filed Under: Productivity
August 10, 2012 12 Comments

The simplest productivity feature in Evernote I didn’t know

If you’re an avid fan of the Evernote application, then you’ll appreciate this little-publicized feature that Chel Wolverton pointed out to me.

Take any text list on either your mobile Evernote or your desktop Evernote and hit the checkbox button, once at the beginning of each line, and voila! Instant checklist that you can tap or click to check items off as you’ve done them.

Desktop version:

All Notebooks - 575 notes

Mobile Version (iPad):

skitchwCEODs

Mobile Version (iPhone):

skitch2K9cAM

If you already use Evernote anyway, this is a great, simple, and easy tip to make it even more powerful for managing to-do lists and more.

What are your favorite simple Evernote productivity tips?

If you enjoyed this, please share it with your network!

Want to read more like this from ? Subscribe now:

Marketing White Belt

Basics for Digital Marketers
is now on Amazon & B&N

I recommend & use:
SEOMoz SEO Software
SEOMoz SEO software. 		I recommend:

for small business incorporation.
Filed Under: Productivity
June 25, 2012 7 Comments

Mailbag: organizing the workday

Justin Levy asked on Facebook:

Also, as a follow up to your daily reading workflow post, I’m always interested in seeing how people organize their days and knowing you, it’s organized for optimal productivity.

Great question.

First and foremost, I make religious use of my calendar. I use Google Calendar as my central taskmaster hub, and stuff it full of items. It syncs down to my Mac, to iCal, to the iPad, to my devices, to iCloud, etc. and it is the “authoritative” schedule of my day. Take a look at a sample week:

Google Calendar

Note a few important things. I use the Tungle.me service to invite others to schedule meetings with me. As a result, it’s important that I’m very clear what times are and are not available. Each day, I have lunch scheduled. I need that break in the middle of the day in order to achieve maximum productivity, and so I block it off. Yes, in my head it’s flexible as circumstances dictate, but no one is allowed to schedule that time except me. Likewise, you see blocks for morning workouts on there for the same reason.

Here’s the cardinal rule of calendaring and scheduling: if you don’t schedule yourself, someone else will. Set times aside for important stuff, personal and professional.

There’s a second oddity of note on there: from 6:30 AM to 10 AM each day, there are two blocks. One block is labeled research time, the other is labeled burn time. Neither of those blocks can be scheduled. What happens during those times? During research time, I hit my reading list for the day. Before I sit down to create, I fill my head with news and items so that the information has time to percolate and slosh around.

The second block, burn time, is content creation. It’s when I pump out blog posts, respond to emails, write eBooks, and make things. You see the results of that every day on the WhatCounts blog, on my blog, on Twitter, etc.

Why do those two blocks exist? Simple: I know that the first 3-4 hours of the workday are the most productive for me. The coffee is strong and the phones/inboxes are quiet. It’s the period of the day when I can burn things down (hence its name on the calendar, burn time) with little interruption.

What happens in all of the unscheduled spaces? Life. There are always projects that need work, from adjusting PPC ads to working on the latest eBook, things that will gladly absorb any amount of time that you throw at them. That’s what goes on in between the meetings and other voids in the schedule.

The best way I can summarize my schedule is with the parable of big rocks from Stephen Covey (click here to read it). I use Google Calendar to place all the big rocks, and then let the rest of the workday happen in the spaces that are left.

Filed Under: Business, Productivity
«Older Posts
Newer Posts»