Posts Tagged ‘gmail’

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.

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Posted in E-mail | 1 Comment »

The little things count too; Nozbe adds automatic scrolling when switching projects

Friday, September 4th, 2009

I’ve written before about how small things can make a big difference: Getting rid of your email folders in Outlook, Using “Send & Archive” in Gmail, and things like that.  This is another example of that — it’ll only save you a couple of seconds, but it’ll save you those few seconds often, and it adds up to decent savings.

The project list in Nozbe can get a bit long for some of us, especially in Nozbe 2.0.  I’m waiting for them to compress the size of it a little bit more.  In the meantime, this will help.  I often have to scroll down pretty far to find a specific project.  When I click on it, the project data would load in the center panel, but then I’d have to scroll all the way back up to the top to see it.  Now, when you choose a project on the left, the view automatically scrolls back up to the top.  Like I said, it’s a very small change, but very useful.

If you’re still confused about what I mean, check out the video below or read the full post on the Nozbe blog.

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Posted in Efficiency, Software/Services | No Comments »

Get rid of your email folders

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

This tip might not work for everyone, but it has been great for me.  I use gmail for most of my e-mail, but I need to use Outlook at work.  For years, I had a complex series of nested folders in Outlook, along the lines of this:

  • Staff
    • Bill
    • Jane
    • Steve
  • Website
    • GoDaddy
    • Hosting
    • Problems
  • Programs
    • Adults
    • Children
    • Mission
  • …

And on, and on, and on.  Probably about 150 folders in all.  I was very proud of myself.

The problem was trying to keep myself at inbox zero.  Gmail makes it easy with their “archive” feature (and with cool things like “Send & Archive” in the labs section), but Outlook doesn’t do that.  Instead of quickly archiving an e-mail and moving on, I had to think about where it goes.  Does the one from Steve about the Missions part of the website go in “Steve”, “website” or “missions”?  I’d probably spend 10-15 seconds deciding where to file an e-mail, then drilling down to file it.  I get maybe 25 emails/day on this account, so that’s 25 emails x 15 seconds/each x 260 workdays in a year = 27 hours/year I spend just filing e-mails.  Brutal!

If you handle your inbox properly, you don’t need to fish for past e-mails very often — you just deal with them and move on.  I have Xobni installed, which makes the search process much faster when I need it, so that solves the search issue.

My solution? Treat it like gmail.  I now have a single folder called “archive” under my inbox.  When I’m done with an e-mail, I “archive” it.  Much faster and much easier.

How do you handle your folders in Outlook?

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Posted in E-mail, Efficiency, Processing | 3 Comments »

The little things can add up: Gmails “Send & Archive” is great!

Friday, January 16th, 2009

I’ve been a huge fan of Gmail for a few years now.  I can run a variety of addresses through my single Gmail account, then access it all from anywhere.  One especially neat thing about Gmail is the “archive” feature.  When you’re done with an e-mail, you can just tell it to “go away”, whether you label it or not.  If you need it later, just search for it.  It’s great!

In trying to keep my inbox at zero, archive is gold. As a general rule, whenever I send an e-mail to someone and require action back on it, I archive it.  When they reply, it’ll pull the entire conversation back into the inbox.  Perfect!

Now Google has saved me a step.  My old method of sending and archiving was:

  • Send the e-mail.
  • I’m returned to the inbox.
  • Select that conversation.
  • Archive it.
  • Move on to the next one.

Thanks to Google Labs (go to [Settings] –> [Labs] in Gmail), you can enable a button called “Send & Archive”.

send-and-archive

Now my method looks like this:

  • “Send & Archive” the e-mail.
  • I’m returned to the inbox.
  • Move on to the next one.

It’s just a small thing, but those small things add up.  I send maybe 50 e-mails per day.  Suppose this new button saves me 5 seconds each.  That’s about 4 minutes per day, or nearly 24 hours per year.  I can save an entire day just because of this little button.

I’m a big believer in streamlining my most frequent tasks to shave precious seconds that can add up.

What tips do you have to help people shave off a little more time?

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Posted in E-mail, Efficiency, Software/Services | 2 Comments »

Don’t let your computer slow you down

Monday, January 5th, 2009

If you’re reading this, I can immediately guess two things about you:

  • You’re interested in or practicing GTD.
  • You use your computer more than the average bear.

If that’s the case, then don’t let the computer be your bottleneck.  If you are on your computer for four hours a day and you can speed it up by just 1%, that’s 14 hours you’d save every year!

With that in mind, here are some tips to make the most of your moments on the computer:

  • Leave it on and leave it open. When you are done with your PC, don’t shut down your programs and certainly don’t turn it off — just turn off the monitor.  That way when you sit back down, you’re back in the swing of things in about 15 seconds instead of a few minutes to boot up and/or open your programs.
  • Reboot once or twice a week. With a Windows machine you can’t go forever without rebooting.  It’ll slow down and start having problems after a few days.  If so, then take the time to reboot.  For me, a reboot costs me 10-15 minutes, because I need to get all of my applications and tabs running again.
  • Use a fast browser. If you’re on a PC, you should be using Firefox or Chrome.  If you’re using Internet Explorer, you’re wasting a lot of time waiting on that dinosaur to load pages for you.
  • Leave commonly used websites open in separate tabs. Learn how to use tabs in Firefox or Chrome and use them often.  If there is a site you visit a few times/day, leave it open in a tab for quick access.  Other tabs can come and go throughout the day.  In my case, I leave open (24/7, until I reboot):
  • Clean it up for maximum performance. Follow the tips on speeding up XP (or Vista) and save valuable seconds with every click.
  • Get a second monitor. If you can afford it, buy a second monitor.  Studies show productivity increases of up to 70%, and I believe it!  I’ve forced a few co-workers to do it against their will, and now they’ll never go back.  It’s amazing how helpful it is to be able to reference items on one screen while you’re working on the other, or to cut and paste from one to the other.  Again, a 1% increase can mean 14 hours/year.  Suppose this helps you work 5% faster.  That’s 70 hours.  Even at minimum wage, that’s over $450/year.  It’s a no-brainer.  Keep in mind that you will probably need a second video card as well, but your total cost is still way under $450.
  • Get some extra RAM. RAM is cheap, easy to install and can make a huge difference.  If you’ve got less than a gig, go get more right now.  There are no drivers to install — just shut down your computer, snap it in and start it back up.
  • Lose the virus scanner — maybe. If you know what you’re doing, you have no need for a virus scanner to be running 24/7.  Those things are huge performance drains.  Contrary to popular belief, you can’t just “catch” a computer virus; it needs a way in.   Gmail scans all of my mail before it gets here, and I don’t open things that I’m not expecting.  My browsers are always up to date and I check for new Windows updates every week or so.  Plus, my router has a built-in firewall (almost all of them do).  I don’t download random programs from the internet.

    So where is a virus going to sneak in?  It won’t.  I still run the free version of AVG every month or so just to make sure I’m clean, but I do NOT leave a scanner running all the time.  I’ve done this for about 8 years now, on the internet for 5-10 hours/day, and I’ve not had a single problem. I wouldn’t suggest this idea to my mom, but you know if you’re smart enough to handle it.

So there you have it.  My tips for saving as much time as possible on your PCs.

Any tips to add?

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Posted in Productivity, Software/Services | 3 Comments »

A good calendar is an assumed GTD prerequisite, isn’t it?

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

When you first start digging into GTD, most models assume that you already have a working, reliable calendar.  You have one, don’t you?

In a talk that David Allen gave a Google a while back, he told the audience that in their time together, none of them were thinking “Where am I going to be a week from Friday at 3:15?”.  The reason is because they trust that system.  They know that their calendar is updated and referenced frequently, so they’ll be aware of any items on their agenda for that day.  That’s what GTD tries to do with the rest of your life.

If you can get all of your tasks into a system, and your mind can trust that you’ll access the system often enough to avoid letting things slip through the cracks, then you can free your mind from worrying about those things.  It’s a beautiful thing.

I don’t think it’s worth getting deep into calendar specifics, but make sure yours is solid.  Most of you have a system that you use and trust, and that’s great.  However, if you’re looking for some ideas to improve your system, I’ll lay mine out and maybe you can get something from it.

  • Google Calendar.  Solid system, accessible from anywhere, easy to share data with co-workers, friends, etc.
  • SaiSuke for iPhone.  It’s $10 (though there is a free test version as well) and it does a great job of syncing itself to your Google Calendar.  Very handy when you’re on the go.
  • Nozbe and Toodledo.  I’m going back and forth between these two programs (more about that in a later post), but both can push your time-sensitive tasks directly to your Google Calendar, or a variety of other calendars such as iCal.
  • Jott.  You can Jott items directly to your calendar.  It’s slick, though I really don’t use it for that very often.
  • You can also SMS items directly to your calendar.  Send a message to 48368 (“GVENT”) with something like “meeting with sue tuesday at 3″ and it’ll put it on there for you.

The other key is to reference it often.  When I’m at home, I leave a browser open with tabs for Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Reader always open so they’re available for quick access.  Other tabs alongside them come and go, but those always remain.

Any other tips for making the best use of your calendar?

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Posted in Calendar | No Comments »