Productivity

5 Gmail Hacks That Will Keep Your Head from Exploding

July 18, 2012

Ever feel like your email is TAKING OVER YOUR LIFE?! Yeah, me too. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to organize and manage it, especially now that I’m overseeing Brazen Careerist’s blog. (Guest post submissions add significantly to my email pile.) When you work remotely, your main vehicle of communication is often email. That’s […]

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Q&A: Blogger Srinivas Rao on Juggling Online Projects

April 30, 2012

Before we get started, check out Only72’s semi-annual sale (affiliate link). This is that mega-offer where you pay $100 for $1,000 worth of products on entrepreneurship. And this round includes a hard-cover copy of Chris Guillebeau’s soon-to-launch book, The $100 Startup, delivered to your door. Doesn’t get much better than that! Oh, except it DOES. […]

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The Magic Formula for Prolific Writing

April 23, 2012

When I meet blog readers and Twitter followers in person, they often remark that I put a lot of content into the world. Editors have said I’m prolific. And Problogger called me a “publishing powerhouse.” Whenever these compliments come my way, they’re often followed with a question: How do I do it? How will I […]

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A Gmail Lab That Makes Life Easier: Canned Responses

February 15, 2012

I’m always on the lookout for tools and strategies to deal more efficiently with the overwhelming number of emails I get each day. Here’s something that’s helped out lately: Gmail’s Canned Responses. Canned Responses lets you create a template for an email response that you write often, then import that response into your email with […]

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The Art of Unsubcribing

December 14, 2011

Does anyone else wake up in the morning to a flood of emails? They’re not spam exactly; Gmail isolates those for me. But many of my early-morning emails are unwanted, “updates” from groups or social media networks or retailers. For a while, I simply deleted them. I wanted them out of my inbox, so I […]

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99Designs: A Fun Way to Get Your Stuff Designed

August 26, 2011

I tried 99Designs for the first time this week, and it’s going straight onto my hack list of awesome digital tools. If you haven’t heard of 99Designs, it’s a site where you can launch a contest to design whatever you need — a website, banner for your site, logo, book cover, etc. You explain what […]

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Strategies for dealing with forever-overwhelming email

July 6, 2011

Does anyone else constantly feel stressed by an always-overflowing inbox? I can deal with my bedroom looking like a bomb went off, with clothes strewn across the floor. I can deal with dirty dishes and papers cluttering my desk. But if my digital life is not in complete and perfect order, I can’t think straight. […]

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Game-Changing Digital Tool: Scrivener

June 20, 2011

Whenever I discover what I call a game-changer, I tell you about it. Hootsuite was a game-changer for my Twitter strategy. Google Reader was a game-changer for keeping up with the more than 200 blogs I read regularly. Your Life as Story was a game-changer for how to tell my tale of backpacking solo through […]

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My one thing

June 13, 2011

Some weeks I have so much going on that it’s overwhelming. Each of you probably feel this way sometimes, too. The job, the book, family obligations, the blog…. When I start to feel overwhelmed, like there’s just not enough time for my projects, I ask myself: What is the one thing I want to get […]

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6 Digital Tools That Keep Me Sane

June 1, 2011

Because I have my hands in so many buckets, a few of you have asked how I manage it all. The truth is, I’m trying to cut back, working to choose priorities and stick with them. I also make conscious lifestyle choices, like living mostly TV-free; that goes a long way. But like all of […]

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