Is Mailbox the Best Email App for iPhone Yet? The first thing I did after becoming a smartphone owner in late 2009 was check my email. There were no new messages when I checked that morning, but that didn't matter: After years of using feature phones, nothing seemed more exciting to me than just having the option to check my email on the go. Over time, though, this proved to be more of a curse than a blessing to my email inbox. I've never considered myself the most digitally organized person, but even I noticed my inbox spiral out of control after getting a smartphone as my friends and I started sending each other more messages and I forwarded myself more articles, tweets and reminders for work.
Within a few months, I went from having hundreds of unread messages at any given time to thousands. Even the best email apps on the market only made it easier to check and send messages, not to organize them. Prior to this, the only real options for email were to respond immediately or let it sit in your inbox; Mailbox offered a third way. Unsubscribe.com review. I recently wrote about the explosion of business spam. One of my blog commenters introduced me to Unsubscribe.com which provides a free, timesaving, easy to use unsubscribe utility. Numerous times a day, I click on an email scroll to the unsubscribe area, have to figure out the proprietary unsubscribe functionality of the business spammer, retype my email address, and hope it works since unsubscribe sites are generally slow and unreliable.
With Unsubscribe.com, I just download a plug in for my email client (apple mail), and simply click on the unsubscribe icon whenever unwanted email appears in my inbox. The unsubscribe servers use natural language processing to figure out the unsubscribe methodology and send the unsubscribe request. It has easily saved me 15 minutes a day. Of course the ultimate answer would be for advertisers to act more ethically. 1. 2. 3. My wife uses Constant Contact for her NKG Art Gallery Newsletter, so I'm not opting out of all communications just yet. Give your Inbox a Detox this Week! So maybe email isn’t going to disappear any time soon, and my post about email being dead was slightly premature. For those of you who are overwhelmed with email on a daily basis, you might want to take advantage of this week because January 23 – 27 marks the fifth annual international Clean Out Your Inbox Week.
All over the web this week, you’ll find excellent tips on how to organize and clean out your email inbox. As more and more individuals work remotely, we place a greater strain on collaboration tools as a means to stay in sync. Now I’m sure you’re just like me and get at least 30 emails a day so let’s all try to take advantage of this week. This way we can all be more efficient and better collaborators. Instead of being that guy – you know, the one who always asks for your email to be resent because they can’t find it amongst the sea of others in their inbox. Want To Get Started Right Away? Create Action Folders -Egan recommends creating folders labeled “Action A” or Action B”. Reigning in the Information Deluge [Infographic] In the first season of the IFC comedy “Portlandia,” lead character Fred Armisen gets stuck in a “technology loop,” unable to do anything because he is compulsively checking his Facebook, his Twitter, his cell phone, the latest pictures of cute puppies on the Internet, his Netflix queue … (More) Click image for full size: You’re welcome to embed this image on your blog, the code is here: [sourcecode language="html"]<a href=" src=" Of course, information overload is nothing new.
As the writer of Ecclesiastes admonished his readers in the 3rd century BCE, “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” More information does not by itself produce better results This explosion of available information made possible by the Internet is amazing. Related. Only Handle It Once (OHIO) In my recent post Work Induced Attention Deficit Disorder, several commenters asked how I stay focused and productive, speculating that I leverage my limited need for sleep. Although having a 20 hour day helps, the real secret is that I end each day with an empty inbox.
I have no paper in my office. I do not keep files other than those that are required for compliance purposes. The end result is that for every document I'm asked to read, every report I'm ask to write, and every situation I'm asked to management, I only handle the materials once. What does this mean? In a typical week, I'm asked to review 4 or 5 articles for journals. I'm asked to review budgets for various grants, state, and local projects multiple times per week. In my 1000+ emails each day there are 10-20 that require detailed responses. Paperwork does occasionally find its way to my desk. Each day I'm asked to find time for calls, meetings, lectures, travel, and special events.
One last caveat. How Work Email Has Ruined Leisure Time. When you clock out of work, do you leave your email behind as well? If so, you're definitely in the minority. A recent survey of 543 business execs by ad agency Gyro and Forbes Insights found 98% of such workers check email during their "off" time. If that's not bad enough, 63% say they check on their email at least every one or two hours when they're out of the office. The trend holds up when the execs are on vacation — only 3% say they don't check work emails. SEE ALSO: Sheryl Sandberg Leaves Work at 5:30 Every Day — And You Should Too Despite the impingement on their leisure time, most of the workers surveyed say they like being able to check in when they're away. What do you think? (For the full-size version of this infographic, click here.) Image courtesy of iStockphoto, PeskyMonkey.
Give your Inbox a Detox this Week!