Posts Tagged ‘email’

Another small Gmail bonus: Hide Read Labels

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Gmail Labs has some of the coolest stuff.  I try to keep it as clean as possible (Inbox Zero!) and I’ve shown you other small time-savers from Gmail Labs, like “Send & Archive“.  This is along those lines.

Recently, Google made it where you could hide labels (if you’re not familiar with Gmail, labels are similar to folders) from the sidebar on an individual basis.  I took that opportunity to hide most of mine and keep them out of the way.  Now they’ve added a tool in Labs to let you hide any that don’t have unread items in them.  This keeps them all out of the way for me, unless something drops in to one of them.  Most of the time, those e-mails would go in my inbox too, but I have a few mailing lists and such that I have go straight to a label.  This will alert me when those arrive.

This is certainly not as cool as “Send & Archive” (which I still love), but it’s a nice tweak nonetheless.

A real cost saver due to GTD — fewer administrative needs

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

Late last year, I was considering getting an administrative assistant for myself.  I simply had too much to do — to many e-mails, too many tasks.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hire a local person to help, or just use a virtual assistant.  During that internal debate, I was also trying to get more organized.  As you can see in my initial post on this blog, I dove into GTD and started using Nozbe to manage it.

The result? I have no need for an administrative person of any kind.  By keeping my email inbox at zero and my task list up to date, I can easily find the information I need and get to work.  Having another person in the mix would only serve to complicate things.

I’m sure there are many jobs that require an assistant of some kind.  Anyone that deals with a large volume of incoming calls and meetings would do well to have someone sift that information for them and keep their schedule up to date.  However, I’m finding that simply dealing with email and tasks is best managed by myself.

It’s hard to calculate the exact savings, but let’s go with this: $10/hour, 20 hours/week = $200/week or about $800/month. That’s some nice savings!  Factor in the small costs to get GTD in place (buy the book, get a filing cabinet, perhaps pay a little bit for some software), and you’re still saving a ton of money.  Not bad.

Come join our new Facebook Page

Friday, August 21st, 2009

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Mickey