Category: Technology

When DVRs Go Bad

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Folks, I have an interesting little piece of advice today. {Well, at least I find it worth talking about… whether you find it interesting may be another story.}

Those who know me, know I’m all about automating my life wherever possible. In fact, just this past week, I set my Mac up to automatically open and close my “work” apps when I’m at work. {It’s the little things…}

Naturally, a DVR was a lifesaver for me. My main reason for getting one was so that I could concentrate on more important things like schoolwork instead of whether or not I’d miss a show. {Pretty good excuse to tell my parent back in the day. Don’t you think?} What really happened is that I got lazy. I stopped keeping track of what shows I watched. I had no idea when they came on. I didn’t have to worry about recording them. It got to the point where I’d just come home, turn my TV on and watch a show or two that was recorded and go on with life. {On the bright side, I did stop watching TV as much.}

That all changed this weekend when I heard a strange noise coming from my TV area. Turns out, my DirecTV receiver decided to up and die. The noise was the fan trying to kick on over and over. Even better, thanks to the wonders of DirecTV tying DVR content to the receiver, I quickly realized, the 30% of space holding movies and TV shows from the past 3 years was gone. Thankfully, I am fairly good at staying up to date on the shows I watch, but I did face a few realities:

  1. I had started to rely on my DVR so much that I didn’t even know which shows I watched anymore.
  2. I certainly didn’t know when shows came on.
  3. I had no idea what shows I was going to be missing or had already missed.

My first plan of action was to start rattling off shows and recording them as a list in Evernote. {DirecTV only lets you record 50 series, so how hard could it be to remember the ones I scheduled, right? – WRONG} Thankfully, the internet came to the rescue and a quick Google search brought me to The Futon Critic where I spent an hour or so browsing the A-Z section of TV shows filling in the list. I’m pretty confident I haven’t missed anything at this point. {If I did, oh well.}

The replacement receiver was supposed to arrive by this Friday (the 14th) {It came yesterday :)} so I wanted to know which episodes I had missed or would be missing. My Evernote list therefore evolved into a Google Spreadsheet where I started noting whether each show was currently running and if so, when it came on, what channel it aired on, whether I’d actually watched the most recent episode, etc. This sort of worked, but it was too much work keeping it up to date.

Eventually, I decided this fiasco couldn’t happen again {and it inevitably would whether the receiver failed or I got a new one}.

In the end, I revisted a site I had used a few years ago, Episode Calendar. I signed in to my account I had made already and added the shows I watched. Now I have a list of what I watch, when it comes on, and I can also note which episodes I’ve watched updated by all the fine folks that keep the lists up to date. It even has a calendar feed so I can add my TV shows to my Google Calendar! {Bonus feature: it keeps track of when shows are cancelled so should I ever hit that 50 show cap on my receiver I can know which ones to delete.}

Lessons learned:
– DVRs cannot be backed up.
– They will fail or need to be replaced.
– More importantly you cannot rely on them to remember which shows you like, when they come on, and what you’ve watched.

From now on, I’ll be tracking my shows with Episode Calendar. As for the movies, thankfully I’ve been making a task in my to-do app any time something’s set to record so I could make sure it actually recorded {smart thinking, Andrea!}, so I had a record of all the movies I had recorded. All I had to do was figure out if I had actually watched them or not based on whether I rated it in Netflix. The ones I didn’t watch got added back to Netflix.

Signature Update

An Updated Look at Digital Planning

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Today, I thought I’d share an update about how my planning system has evolved. To my surprise it’s working out great, and yes, I’m still all digital. I’ve made some tweaks and changes here and there, but the main set up of my system has stayed fairly consistent.

  1. Calendar – Google Calendar
  2. Task List – Omnifocus
  3. Daily Habits – Habit List
  4. Information – Evernote, Box, Google Drive

My calendar set up hasn’t really changed much since my last post. I’m still using my many Google calendars, but I’ve gotten rid of some and added some new ones. As of now this is my list:

  • Personal
  • Finance
  • School
  • Work
  • Home (a calendar shared with my mom so that I know when she will be home)
  • Student Employee Schedule

The next part of my system is my task list. I wrote a few posts about how I used Things. For now, Things is no longer part of my system, and I’ve moved over to Omnifocus. I’ve had to sacrifice Things’ pretty UI, but Omnifocus has made up for it with features like due dates with TIMES and perspectives. I’ll save the full Omnifocus write up for another day, but for now, let’s just say, perspectives are life changing.

I keep my habits separate from Omnifocus. There are some things like going to work, working out when I wake up, or flossing where seeing the chain of consecutive days I’ve done the task serves as major motivation {Thank you Jerry Seinfeld}. For tasks like these, I’m using Habit List which seems to offer the best mix of customization and looks that I’ve seen.

All my information (files, reference materials, etc.) are stored in 1 of 3 places. Evernote is my place for general notes (e.g. reading notes, project ideas, random recipes, and other miscellaneous information I want to refer back to.) My university Box account holds all of my school and work files. Google Drive holds the rest of my files that aren’t work or school related. All of these sync to my computer and mobile devices so everything is with me at all times.

Bonus (Journaling and Health/Fitness Tracking):

I’ve been trying to do better at recording things that happen in my life. For those I use a few apps.

Momento serves as my “journal”. It pulls my various social media feeds in automatically, and I try to log 3 things I’m grateful for each night before bed here as well. I’ve found that it’s a nice way to wrap up the night in a positive way, and scrolling back through the days to see the little things that made me happy is also pretty cool.

I track my health using a combination of apps. With the Fitbit Force being recalled, I’ve switched to the Jawbone Up 24 as my primary fitness band. The UP app is pretty awesome, and it records my steps, sleep, and a plethora of other things. I still use my Fitbit Aria scale so I do still use Fitbit, but the scale syncs to MyFitnessPal which syncs with the Up band. I also use MyFitnessPal which seems to offer more options for logging workouts and food. Together these apps work great together. Just this past week, I had been waking up in the middle of the night, and without these apps, I probably wouldn’t have ever noticed that I was waking up at exactly the same time each night presumably due to something happening in my room at that time.

So I hope you’ve found this little overview of how I stay semi-organized. Let me know if you have any questions or if you’d like to hear more about anything.

Signature Update

Going Paperless in 2014

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As part of my goal to simplify in 2014, I decided to clean up my paper storage. Granted, at 23, I don’t really have that much, but I grew up in a house where as soon as you got a car, gadget, or pet, you started a binder or at least a file and that’s where everything and anything about that item went. With 3 cats, a car, and being the gadget lover I am, that’s a lot of binders and binders take up a LOT of space. More importantly, I have a bad habit of throwing things inside the binder/file with no regard to having to find it easily later, and that’s if they even get to the binders in the first place.

This of course, led me to my first simplifying project of 2014 – going paperless.

Note: Links on this page may contain affiliate links. I’ve not been paid to mention any links on this page. All recommendations are my own. 

First step – Go through the paper.

I went through everything quickly. Product manuals can usually be found online these days so no sense in keeping them. I set them aside and went online later to find PDF copies. Once I found them online, I tossed the originals. As I was going through papers, I found I kept a lot of things that I didn’t really need like packing receipts for Apple products when I had the actual receipt saved already. I even found an old newspaper clipping of the ad for the people we got Abu from. {He’s nearly 10 now, so I doubt that’s necessary.}

Second step – Decide how I want to store them.

I highly recommend doing this BEFORE you start messing with scanning everything. I started with Evernote, and later realized I didn’t care for how difficult Evernote made it to export multiple PDFs at once. Moreover, I never bothered to name my scans anything useful, so after spending an hour and a half moving things back out of Evernote, I had to rename them as well. Lesson learned.

I read David Spark’s Paperless Field Guide, and I highly recommend it for anyone who’s thinking about going paperless. He discusses a lot of things like file naming conventions, tools, storage options, and workflows that I never would have even thought of. Plus it’s loaded with screencasts.

In the end, I decided to adopt a folder based system rather than using some sort of software. David Spark’s file naming conventions were also really helpful, e.g. if I were to save an invoice for a vet appointment Chase had today, I’d name the file 2014–01–07 vet invoice chase. {Note: I’m not normally one to not use title case, but it really is nice to not have to worry about what should or shouldn’t be capitalized, and the goal of this really is to make things simple.} End result: I can quickly see files sorted by date AND name at once. Using the pets as an example, this was really helpful in seeing when they switched vets or had visits to the emergency animal hospital because they stood out. I can also see which animal(s) the receipt is for.

Third step – Get a scanner.

We’ve always had a scanner in our house whether it be part of a multi-function printer or a standalone printer. Either way, they were always a flat bed scanner {Great for pictures; not so great for scanning buttloads of documents.} I originally had my eye on a Doxie Go {which I may still get one day for quick scanning}, but when it comes to going paperless, you really do need a scanner with a document feeder. I know Fujitsu’s ScanSnap line is what everyone raves about and in a perfect world with unlimited resources I’d have gone with a ScanSnap iX500, but I actually got fantastic deal on a Canon P–215 for under $180. {I’m a Canon fan anyway so this was a no-brainer.} Even better, it’s small, so I can pop it in my bag or throw it in a drawer. If I’m honest, it’ll probably live on my desk though.

Fourth step – Start scanning.

My scanner is scheduled to arrive today. {Hopefully… It was originally supposed to be here yesterday.} Once it arrives, you can bet I’ll be scanning things left and right.

Fifth step – Develop a workflow.

In order for this whole “going paperless” thing to work, it really needs to become part of my daily routine. When I get home, mail needs to be sorted; junk needs to be trashed; things need to get shredded, and important things need to get scanned – immediately, no questions asked. Piles tend to turn into overflowing mounds quickly in my house.

Another thing I plan on leveraging is Hazel. Hazel’s been one of those things I’ve had on my Mac, but honestly never really found a use for. As part of simplifying, I’ve really been trying to be more mindful of the things I do on a regular basis. If I’m consistently renaming a file and moving it to another place, why not let Hazel do it for me. It’ll be like having my own personal secretary to file away papers for me. How cool is that?

So that’s project #1 for simplifying 2014. I’ll be back with updates on how this is working for me, things I’ve learned along the way, and any tips and tricks I discover.

Signature Update

A Month Without a Paper Planner

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Hello everyone! Happy Monday!

It’s been about a month since I decided to move from a paper planner to a cloud based system, so I thought I’d give a little update about how it’s working.

It surprisingly wasn’t as easy as I had thought. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I actually went through a bit of paper planner withdrawal which is a bit scary to be honest. There were definitely days where I wanted to have a planner with me {for what reason, I don’t know. I didn’t have anything to write in it, and I wasn’t going to use it. I just wanted to have nearby.} There were also days {or weeks…} where I scanned Flickr, Pinterest, and Youtube for planners, and Philofaxy’s Webfinds are still a staple in my blog reading. I’ve just kept reminding myself that it’s all in my head.

I guess the most shocking thing, after I got the whole withdrawal thing out of the way, is that it actually worked! I did have to tweak Things a bit, but I’ve probably gotten more done this past month than I have in a while. I think a big part of the issue was that before I got rid of the paper planner, I had things scattered everywhere. Some tasks were in Things and others were in my planner, so I was never really using one system fully. Now everything is in Things and Google Calendar. I only have one place to check, and I only have it put it there once.

I’m not sure what the future has in store for my planning situation. Clearly going all digital works for me right now, but I still have some weird attachment to paper planners even if I don’t seem to use them.

Should I decide to go back to paper planners, my next experiment will likely be a Filofax Flex sort of set up with a monthly notebook and either a weekly or daily book that I’d use to implement my Bullet Journal + Life Mapping combo. Size and colors and books are all still up in the air.

Thankfully, for now, I have a system that works. I’ll be sticking with it at least until the end of the year {mainly for my wallet’s sake}.

Signature Update

Rethinking Things

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Over 6 months ago I first posted about using Things for Mac/iOS to manage my tasks. For those of you who don’t know, Things, is a beautifully designed task manager loosely based of the GTD system available on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. For me, it’s been one of the few constants in my planning set up, but it took a really long time for it to get there. {I actually hated it at first. True story.}

The Things app for Mac is set up with 4 main areas {The iOS apps don’t actually label these.}:

  • Collect – for your Inbox
  • Focus – for Today, Next, Scheduled, Someday, or Projects
  • Active Projects
  • Areas – Contexts in GTD

Now Things is designed with GTD in mind, but I never actually used it that way.  I set up my areas based on “areas of my life”, like my Google Calendars are set up, not based on actual physical areas. These were the areas I was using: Blog, Work, Personal, Cleaning, Pets, Media, and Shopping.

ThingsOld

The more I started using Things, the more I realized that these “areas” really didn’t work that well. When I opened Things to the Today view, my first thought was “I am at this location. What can I do right now?” I wasn’t concerned with what kind of task it was. I just wanted to see what I could do based on where I was quickly, so I changed my areas to reflect actual physical areas:

ThingsNew

  • Home – Personal things, pet things, cleaning, and anything else I need to be at home to do all go here.
  • Work – Work-related tasks go here. {A lot of these tasks are technically computer related tasks, but I really prefer to keep my work tasks at work, so computer-related or not, they go into work.}
  • Computer – These are things I need a computer to do like watching a video, buying something online, filling out a form, etc.
  • Errands – And this list is for things I need to leave the house to do like pick up something from the store.

Things also has tags. Using the 4 areasalong with tags gives me a really great set up. Cleaning tasks in the Home area have a cleaning tag, so I know I have to be at home to do them, but if I want to see all my cleaning tasks, I can view just that tag. Tags really shine in terms of shopping. Whether I want to buy something online {in the Computer area} or in a store {Errands}, I can filter by the shopping tag and see everything on my shopping list. Even better, I can add a tag for a specific store, so the next time I decide to go to Target or Walmart, I can filter by the store name and see everything I need to get while I’m there.

When I first installed Things and started playing around with it, I never imagined it’d be such a huge part of my daily routine. I also never imagined, my set up would evolve to where it is now, but through a lot of trial and error, I’ve been able to get Things set up in a way that really works wonders for me. {I’m talking my daily to do list is now 2-3 things vs. 20 things I put off doing for the past week.}

By the way, please check out the wonderful campaign going on for the BlueFit bottle over at Indiegogo. This awesome bottle reminds you to drink water throughout the day and links to your smart phone to track your drinking habits over time. They have 14 days left to raise another $84,000, so please consider contributing if you can.  They’ve been running quite a few referral promotions over the past couple weeks with great prizes so pass along the campaign and you might just be able to score some free prizes as well.

Signature Update

Paper vs. Digital Planners

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It’s no secret that I love planners. It only takes a quick glimpse at the blogs I read, the pictures I’ve favorited on Flickr, or even this blog to notice.  It’s also no secret that I love technology. I work for an IT department, and have even been referred to as iAndrea for having so many Apple products. {I’m not even joking.}

In high school, I practically lived out of my monthly/weekly planners the school provided. Ever since then though, I’ve been buying planner after planner hoping one would magically solve all my planning needs. Clearly I haven’t come across one yet, because I’m still struggling in the paper planner world, but if I do find one, I’ll be sure to let everyone know.

Before I continue, I want to clear up one thing. I write about planners a lot, and I have a LOT of calendars and a LOT in my calendars for that matter. I have had some people in my life claim they need to book an appointment with me just to hang out after hearing about it. {Think 27 Dresses, where the guy penciled himself in throughout her Filofax.} That’s not me. My Filofax/planner/whatever does NOT rule my life. In fact, I’d say 90% of what I write down with the exception of work related meetings doesn’t even get done. I just like to {pretend to} have a plan about where I’m supposed to be or supposed to be doing. It’s my way of dealing with anxiety, and I also like going back seeing what I’ve done or written down. It is by no means some minute-by-minute guide for my life.

Anyway, with that rant out of the way, I’ve been carrying my Filofax with me everywhere for months even though I rarely even use it anymore. Don’t get me wrong. It makes me feel incredibly fancy when I grab my Osterley out of my bag, and it makes me look crazy organized even though nothing’s written in it, but looking pretty isn’t what an organizer is actually for. Lately, I’ve actually started thinking that maybe I’m not in planner fail at all. {Crazy idea right?!} Maybe I just don’t have a use for a paper planner anymore. Maybe I’m just trying to use it because I’m used to carrying it around. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. I mean, before I got to college, phones weren’t allowed in school, and laptops were almost taboo until senior year. Tablets weren’t even a thing yet. I HAD to use a paper planner. Ever since then, there’s been nothing stopping me from using my phone/iPad/laptop instead.

With that in mind, I started to think about what I gravitate towards when I do need a planner.

  • When I’m at work and have to schedule a meeting with someone, I open up Google Calendar on my computer.
  • When someone wants to schedule a meeting with me, they do it through Google Calendar, and I get an email invitation.
  • When a friend asks me to meet for dinner, I add it to Google Calendar from my phone.
  • All of my recurring tasks are in Things.
  • Anything I think of spur of the moment usually gets put into the inbox in Things.
  • Outside of that, my other to-dos are either in my email or in Pocket/Readkit.
  • And meeting agendas are in Google Drive.

Nothing is on paper. Everything is digital, so it makes sense that I wouldn’t check my Filofax. My Filofax ends up being just another place I have to write things down, and being the efficient person I like to be, why waste time doing that if I’m not getting anything out of it. Even the other things people track like health, books to read, or wishlists are online for me using my Fitbit, Goodreads, and Pinterest.

So here’s what I came up with about why I prefer using a digital calendar instead of a paper planner.

  • One device is all you need. At the very least, I have my iPhone with me, and that’s all I need. My events aren’t in a planner while my contacts are in another.
  • I can color code without toting around multi-color pens and highlighters.
  • I don’t need to rewrite things. Whether I check it at home, at work, on my phone, iPad, or computer, it’s the same everywhere.
  • I can switch between daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly views whenever I want without adding any bulk, having to rewrite things, or spending any money on inserts.
  • When plans change or I make a mistake, I don’t need to worry about whether I wrote it in erasable pen or how I can cover up the wrong information if I didn’t. I just have to edit the event. For a perfectionist, this is a huge win for me.
  • When I need to schedule an event well in the future, I never have to worry about where to write it down until I get next year’s inserts.
  • If I want to remember when something happened, I can search for it immediately rather than worrying about whether I removed inserts and if so where to look for them when I get home.
  • On a similar note, there’s no need to worry about where or how to store inserts or planners that you aren’t using. {I usually end up putting them in an old empty Birchbox and then losing the box in the pile of other boxes I did the same thing for the months before that.}
  • I don’t have to keep writing recurring events. When 90% of your life is routine, recurring events, it’s nice to not have to waste time rewriting them every day/week/month. It also keeps me on a regular schedule for appointments with doctors or when I need to get my hair done. {I will forget and it’ll be years before I go otherwise.}
  • Google calendar reminds me of events I might forget. If I have a meeting after lunch, you can bet I’ll forget about it if I don’t have a reminder, even if I wrote it down in my planner that morning and saw it on my calendar about 20 times. With Google Calendar, I get a reminder 15 minutes before my event which is enough time for me to get nearly anywhere on campus in time for the meeting.
  • It allows other people to tell me when they are available or unavailable. My coworkers share when they are leaving early or when they’ll be out. Similarly, my mom shows me when she’ll be away, and I need to watch her dogs. Simple.
  • I can choose which calendars I want to see. Some days I want to see when the Ravens are playing more than my Workout calendar. Some days I may want to check the dates on my university’s academic calendar, and other days I may want to see how my appointments line up with my daily routine. With Google calendar, I can choose to look at one calendar, a few of them, or all of them. I don’t always need or want to see everything, but it’s there if I ever need it. You can’t say that with a Filofax. It’s either there or it isn’t.

I’m sure some of you planner people are cringing at the idea digital could be better than paper, but for me it works. One of the most common things people mention in the digital vs. paper debate is battery life, but for someone who carries a battery pack and a car charger nearly everywhere, I’ve only once or twice been in a dead phone situation, but that was my own fault for not bringing the battery. Even so, I’m never going in a situation when my phone is dying {usually around 10pm} and I have somewhere to go to on foot. Moreover, phone numbers aren’t an issue for me either, because I rarely use the phone, and for those people I do call, I have memorized their numbers.

So for now, I’m actually thinking of leaving my Filofax home, and the thought of it makes me uncomfortable. Even though I’m not using it, I’ve carried a planner for so many years {since I was in elementary school really}, not having one to carry makes me feel like I’m forgetting something.

However, the point that proved I don’t need to be carrying it was that my first concerns were where would I keep my pen and store reward cards – two things I wasn’t carrying it around for. The pen is now going to live in the pen loop of my purse organizer, and I am relocating my cards back into my Vera Bradley wristlet. Problem solved.

I don’t plan on abandoning the planner world. I still very much enjoy reading about and seeing everyone’s lovely planners, but right now, it’s just not for me.

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What’s on my iPhone?

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I’ve got a bit of a tech theme going on here lately, so why not continue it with a post about what’s on my iPhone?  And why not on the day Apple announced the newest iPhone models?

It takes about 5 seconds of knowing me to know I’m an Apple girl. I’ve been using Macs since I was 2, and while there were a couple years that I used PCs, in high school, I went back to Mac and never looked back.

I’m now on my 3rd iPhone, so I’ve tried my fair share of apps over the years. I had originally planned to go over all the apps on my phone, but despite being pretty strict about what apps stay on my phone, I still have over 90 apps – much too many to review each and every one, so I figure I’ll give you an overview of how I organize the apps on my phone, and then I’ll go over some of my most used apps.

Let’s start with the home screen. These are apps I like to have quick access to or be able to glance at quickly.


 iPhoneHome

  • Across the top row you’ll find Calendar, Weather, Things, and Fitbit. These are all apps I like to check in the morning when I’m getting ready.
  • Next is Clock, Calculator, Phone, and 1Password. These are all tool/utility type apps I like to have quick access to.
  • The next two rows don’t exactly have a specific category. They are just apps I use frequently or like to have on my home screen. So here, you have Pocket and Reeder. Camera+, Light, and Waze.
  • And of course you’ll find the App Store and Settings.
  • In my dock, I try to keep apps I use most frequently or need quick access to in the car like Spotify.

Now onto the rest of the apps. I only have one page of apps aside from my home screen. Any more than one page, and I start freaking out. I also like to keep them all in folders mostly organized by activity.

iPhoneFolders

  • First up we have the Apple folder for all those apps Apple insists on putting on the phone and won’t let you remove.
  • The next folder is Files. This is where I keep all my cloud storage apps.
  • I’m not really into playing games on my phone much any more, but I do have a folder where I keep a few should I for some reason actually have nothing to do.
  • I keep any fitness apps in the Health folder.
  • Misc. is my folder for anything that doesn’t really fit in the other folders. When this folder starts getting full, it’s usually time to consider adding a folder or getting rid of some apps.
  • Any apps related to books or audiobooks are stored in my Read folder.
  • The $ folder has any shopping, bank, or credit card related apps.
  • Social is of course for social networking apps.
  • And last but not least Watch holds my video related apps like Netflix.

So which apps are my favorites? {By the way, I’m limiting this to non-Apple apps. If you use an iPhone you already know Apple’s apps.}

  • Spotify without a doubt gets used the most. I use it to listen to music in the car. I also use it stream music to my stereo when I’m at home.
  • Mailbox has revolutionized the way I deal with email. It’s also finally given me a way to take a break from work emails when I’m out of the office.
  • I’ve bragged about Things in the past. I’ve used this app for years on my phone, iPad, and Mac, and I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon. It’s my favorite task management app, and I’ve tried quite a bunch.
  • 1Password is by far the best password management app I’ve ever used. In fact, I love it soo much, it was first piece of software I ever paid for on my Mac. When the latest iPhone version was released, I even stayed up late to get it when it came out. {Not even embarrassed about it…}
  • I’ve posted about how Pocket has changed the way I read content on the internet. Spotify
  • Reeder is by far my favorite RSS reader for iOS, and I’ve tried quite a few.
  • My go-to navigation app is Waze. In fact, my car has a nav system built in and I still use this one. I also love trying to figure out who around me is using Waze when one of the little Wazer icons pass mine.
  • Health-wise, my favorite app is the recently released Blogilates app. It’s well worth the $.99/month to get the calendar. Every day you get a list of video workouts and you can check them off as you go. Super simple.
  • and last but not least, I’m a big reader, so I use GoodReads to update my reading progress and keep track of what I’m reading.

Well that’s it. I hope you’ve enjoyed my quick tour of my iPhone.

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Inbox Zero… It Does Exist!

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InboxZero copy

About a year ago, I ran across a term, inbox zero. After a bit of Googling, I discovered that the term Inbox Zero is the term people use to describe having no emails in their inbox. Apparently, some people really struggle with obtaining this “Inbox Zero” which was a surprise to me because I usually had only a few emails in my inbox at most, but then again I’ve also seen coworkers with 1,000+ emails in their inbox.

So how do I achieve Inbox Zero?

Let’s start with some background. I’m not one of those people who doesn’t use email. I have 5 Gmail accounts that I use daily. I get on average around 400 emails a week+ spam not even including work/school-related emails, but at the end of the day I rarely have more than 10 in my inbox.

Maybe you’re thinking, “5 accounts?! You’re crazy.” {Maybe just a little… 😉 } But they each serve their own purpose.

  • Main account – I sign up for accounts using this address.
  • Personal account – If I know you personally outside of work, you get to use this address.
  • School/Work account – Anything school or work related goes to this account.
  • Survey account – This is the account I use to sign up for offers and such. It was originally just for paid survey sites.
  • Blog account – Lastly, this one’s pretty self explanatory. If it’s blog-related, I try to use this account.

The great part to having multiple email addresses is that each address can serve a particular purpose, but that also means you have to check them all. If you use a mail client like I do, you also run the risk of sending messages from the wrong address. {Sending an important work email to a client from my personal address is something I prefer not to do.}

I’ve tried consolidating these addresses in one way or another more times than I can count, and I’ve failed each time up until recently.

So what did I do differently?

Rather than forwarding ALL of my emails to one account. I only forwarded some of the accounts. All emails from my personal, survey, and blog accounts get forwarded to my main account. Since I work at the same university I study at, those two are already consolidated. I then have two email accounts to check: my main account for personal things and my school/work account for professional things.

Why I didn’t think of this before is beyond me, but it’s so simple that it just works.

Now onto what I use…

Right now, on my Mac, I use Sparrow as my mail client. Sadly, Google bought up this app and development for it stopped, so I’m still looking for a better alternative should Sparrow ever die completely. Everything I’ve tried so far is too cluttered.

For my iPhone and iPad, I’ve fallen in love with Mailbox which I mentioned in my February Favorites post. For anyone who has coworkers that like to do all their work at 10pm on a Friday evening, you’ll love this app. Given that my boss has told me I’m under no obligation to respond to messages outside of work, I take full advantage of Mailbox’s snooze feature. When a work-related email comes in, it gets deferred until I’m back in the office. Similiarly, I can also defer personal emails until I get home.

The last service/app I use is something I stumbled upon recently. It’s called Sanebox. I purchased the 2-year “Snack” package which works out to be around $.06/day with a promo code I used. Right now, I’m only using this on my “Main” email account, so this only affects my personal emails. I prefer to get my work emails as they get sent. With Sanebox, non-important, newsletter-type emails get moved from my inbox to a “SaneLater” folder. Then, once a day, I get an email summary of anything that’s been moved to SaneLater. From that email, I can choose whether to move a particular email back to my inbox, choose to always send emails from a particular sender directly to my inbox instead, delete the messages, or archive them. Once a week I get a summary email with fun graphs and numbers like how much time I saved. Now, I’m not even close to using Sanebox to it’s full potential. It can do other things like save attachments to Dropbox or Box, or integrate with social networks. You can set up other folders too, but the real beauty of it all, is that this does’t require special apps or anything. It’s just folders! If something should have ended up in SaneLater, I just move the message to that folder in whatever I’m using to check my mail (Gmail, Sparrow, Mailbox, etc.) and Sanebox learns.

So to summarize my recipe for Inbox Zero…

Gmail Accounts + Mailbox app + Sanebox = Inbox Zero

Now obviously it’s not that simple, if it were, everyone would have empty inboxes, but for those of you who are inbox-zero challenged, here are some tips that will help even if you don’t use the apps mentioned above:

  • Have one account that you use to sign up for things. Even if you don’t have 5 accounts like I do, just this one will keep your junk mail in one place. {Be sure to use different passwords… nothing worse than someone like an ex getting access to one password and having access to ALL of your accounts!}
  • Delete, Do, Defer. This is my one rule for keeping my inbox count low.
    • Delete what you don’t need immediately.
    • Do anything you can take care of within 2 minutes immediately.
    • Defer any emails you can’t address immediately until later. {Gmail’s star function works great for this, so do folders. Just get it out of your inbox into a place you can check later.}

Is your inbox out of control? Do you use any of the apps/services mentioned above or something similar? Do you have tips of your own? Let me know in the comments below!

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An Update to My ReadKit Setup

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If you’ve read some of my more recent posts, you know I consume an insane amount of content from the internet. I’ve written a couple posts now about how I avoid information overload using web services like Pocket and Feedly and apps like ReadKit and Reeder. If you’ve missed them, you can check them out here:

Today, I’m back with a bit of an update of both how ReadKit is working out for me, and how I’ve tweaked things since writing about a month ago.

Since writing my post on how I was using ReadKit on July 24th, I’ve knocked my number of videos to watch later down from 204 to 61.  {For all you math people, that’s nearly 70%.} My list of blog posts to read later is at zero and has been there for a while.

Now I have been doing other things besides watching YouTube and reading. Okay, maybe sometimes I was binging on YouTube, but for the most part, I’m just watching videos in my spare time. I have picked up a new habit of watching a video or two as I get ready in the morning which has helped a bit though.

So the ReadKit set up is here to stay though, at least until Reeder is re-released. Then I’ll really have to do some soul searching as to which app to use.

Now onto the tweaks and changes…

When I wrote my first ReadKit post, I was just starting to use smart folders. I started out with these 5:

  • Incoming – RSS feeds from Feedly fed into this folder.
  • Read Later – If I wanted to read something, I saved it to Pocket, and it ended up here.
  • Follow Up – As I was going through the Read Later folder, if I found an article that either required a computer, included a video, or required more than just reading (e.g. a picture I wanted to look at on something larger than a phone), I’d star it which would put it here.
  • Pin It – Periodically, I read things that I want to save. By adding the tag “pin” to the item, it’d show up in this folder and I could easily find it and pin it when I got to my computer.
  • Videos – I feel like this is self explanatory, but anything tagged “video” ended up here.

The beauty of this was that it essentially filtered my content into contexts {a lot like GTD for all you planner people}. I’d skim the incoming folder, save things to read later, star the ones that required a computer or additional time, and pull out the videos and things I wanted to pin. The result was essentially folders for “on the go,” “at the computer,” “pinterest”, and “outside of work” {because we aren’t supposed to watch videos at work, right?}.

Now I’ve been using this system for several weeks, and the beauty of it is that it can evolve, and it has.

I had a lot of videos when I started, and since I like to watch shorter videos first, I started tagging videos by length to help me find the shortest ones. At first, I started with generalized times like “less than 5”, “less than 10”, etc. Eventually I ended up breaking the generalized times down into minutes like “14”, “15”, etc. for only the current chunk of time I was working with. For instance right now I’m in the  “less than 20” block, so I have tags for “16”, “17”, “18”, and “19”. Once I’m finished watching the 16 minute videos, I’ll delete the tag for “16”.

So I’ve rethought tagging, but my smart folders were a mess. They accomplished what I wanted, but in roundabout ways, so I tidied them up a bit and renamed them to reflect how I use them.

  • Incoming – No change here. This folder is the same as before.
  • Read Now – Anything I’ve saved to Pocket from Feedly. This was my old “Read Later” folder renamed to reflect that these are the items I can read at anytime.
  • Read Later – This is the same as the Follow Up folder just renamed. Read later signifies that I’ll need to come back to these when I have time.
  • Watch Later – Videos end up here. This folder now filters by content type rather than a video tag which means one less tag to add to each item.
  • Save It –  Anything I tag with “fav” or “pin” will end up here. The tag indicates whether I need to mark it as a favorite on YouTube or Flickr or pin it on Pinterest.

Do you use ReadKit or another app to read blogs or manage videos? If so, I’d love to hear about them. Also, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

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How I’m using ReadKit to Keep Track of Blogs and Videos

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ReadKitOne of my more recent posts was about how I keep up with all the things I follow on the internet. My system has evolved little by little over the years, but the general concept has stayed pretty consistent. I subscribe to RSS feeds using an RSS reader and save the articles I want to read for later. Of course I’ve also managed to find some great little apps over the years to help me with this like Reeder, Feedly, and Pocket. If you missed how I’m using them, check out the article I linked above.

Today I’m going to introduce you to the newest app I’ve learned to love.

It’s no secret, I’m a diehard Reeder app user. It was one of the first apps I got for my iPhone. It was the first app I downloaded to my iPad, and I was part of the Mac version’s beta program. Reeder’s earned coveted spots in my dock on my MacBook Pro and my iPad, and if the 4 spots on my iPhone weren’t already claimed, it’d be there too. I really can’t say enough about this app. It’s simple. It looks great, and it has a ton of features. It just works, and I love it.

BUT….

The day Google Reader died, I think Reeder died a bit too. I moved to Feedly well in advance of the day Google Reader was going away, but Reeder wasn’t updated to support Feedly. Reeder got removed from my dock and put away to make room for Feedly’s iOS app and their web version on my Mac.

Reeder for iPhone was eventually updated to support Feedly, and it’s happily made it’s way back onto my home screen, but the iPad and Mac OS X apps were put on hold. The developer said that those apps weren’t as easy to update and that he’d focus on creating new versions instead. The iPad and Mac OS X versions have since been removed from the App Store, and I was left without Reeder.

As it stands now, I don’t do anything RSS related on my iPad. I haven’t found an app I like enough to replace Reeder for the time being, but I don’t use my iPad to manage incoming content anyway.

On my Mac, I was semi-happily using Feedly’s cloud interface {read:patiently waiting for Reeder}. Then, in came an article about ReadKit. It integrated both Pocket and Feedly into one app, and I’m all for having fewer windows open on my computer, so I bought it for $4.99. It does also support other RSS services and things like Instapaper by the way if you don’t happen to use Feedly or Pocket.

Now for my first impressions. I wasn’t too sure what to do with it at first. I liked the idea of one app for Pocket and Feedly, but I struggled with the interface a bit. I’m still not a huge fan of Feedly’s interface, but I do enjoy Pocket’s apps so that one was a bit harder to give up. I also have to comment that the icon is not the best. In fact, I hate it sitting in my dock, and I’m going to find a new one after I’m done with this post. As simple and clean as the app itself looks, I think it deserves a better looking icon. The biggest draw to ReadKit is having all of my content in one place. My only complaint is that there isn’t any way to save my items from Feedly to Pocket without dragging the article to the Unread section in Pocket. You can’t right click and select “Save to Pocket.” There’s not button or hotkey. You can only drag and drop. I believe they are working on adding some new features so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that will be one of them.

I bought ReadKit on a whim, as I do with most things. I honestly just hoped it would keep me content until Reeder’s updated, but now I’m not sure I’ll want to go back. ReadKit has really changed how I collect, manage, read, and watch content from various sites on the internet.

The one feature that keeps me using it is the smart folders which I completely blew off at first, but they have changed everything. So here’s how I use ReadKit.

My RSS subscriptions from Feedly get pulled into a smart folder called “Incoming.” That’s where I make my first sweep. If I wanna read something, I drag it to Pocket’s Unread list in the sidebar and wait for the number to go up to make sure it worked because I’m paranoid like that. {ReadKit developers…. I’m anxiously waiting for that button/hotkey…}

Anything I save to Pocket gets added to a smart folder called “Read Later.” I skim the “Read Later” folder and  favorite anything that I need to view on the computer, includes a video, or I might want to pin.

Anything that gets favorited in Pocket, or starred, whatever you want to call it, gets added to a smart folder called “Follow Up.” Most articles don’t make it to “Follow Up” so this is usually a pretty small folder, but I’ve broken it down a bit further based on type of content.

If it’s something I’m going to want to add to Pinterest, I add the tag, “pin”, to the article which moves it out of “Follow Up” and into a “Pin It” folder. Similarly, I can add the tag “video”, which will move the article to a Video folder. I can easily batch all my “pin-worthy” finds at once, and if I’m in the mood to binge on YouTube videos, I can do that too.

Now, I do the majority of my processing and reading on my Mac using ReadKit so that’s where this system really shines, but I can also mark articles as favorites and add tags from the mobile Pocket apps, so I can really use this system anywhere, it’s just more efficient using ReadKit.

After combining all my reading into ReadKit, it became really apparent that I had ironed out all the kinks in my system for everything except for YouTube. I could read all in one place, but videos were another story. I had some blog articles that contained non-YouTube videos saved in Pocket. I also had my Watch Later playlist and my overflow “Watch Later 2” list in YouTube. I started thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice if everything was in one place?”

Now I’ve tried using an ifttt recipe in the past that added any video I marked as “Watch Later” on YouTube to Pocket. Sounds great right? WRONG. If I watched a video in Pocket, it still stayed in my Watch Later playlist. Eventually my Watch Later list was going to fill up making that recipe useless unless I also went to YouTube and removed it. That meant I had to remove it from 2 places… No good.

In the end I just saved all the videos from my YouTube playlists to Pocket. They of course got favorited with a video tag so they now appear in my Video smart folder in ReadKit, and since they aren’t in YouTube playlists that have a 200 video limit, they can all go in ONE list not two or three.

I actually really liked this set up. In fact, I loved it so much, I recently decided to add my YouTube subscriptions directly to Feedly. Now, when someone I subscribe to uploads a new video, it shows up in my Incoming folder, and I don’t have to log into YouTube and scan my subscriptions page for new videos I missed.

I’m really loving how I have settled into this system. It’s really helping me manage the information overload. In fact, I have less than 10 things to read later, and I’ve whittled my videos down to 204.

If you like to follow blogs, videos, or really anything on the internet, check out Feedly, Pocket, Reeder, and ReadKit. They are all fantastic apps. I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into my OCD mind, and how I sort of keep track of everything.

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