INTEGRATION EVERNOTE: extending the power of Unified Inbox

The UIB team were regular users of Evernote, as our way of keeping our notes handy, searchable and shareable. We saw the potential to bring these qualities into our key working application - unifiedinbox.com

With the Evernote integration, our users can login once to UIB and see their Evernote folders along with their message folders. 

The work flow improvements we've seen so far from this integration:

• policies, procedures and instructions.  We save them in our Evernote notebooks and then any member of our team (whom we have given access to) can also view these notes.
• getting paper documents around the world.  Being a globally distributed team, on occasion, one office receives a paper document that needs to be commented on by a team member in another country.  The receiver scans the document into Evernote and then in UIB, assigns that note, along with comments to the recipient. The recipient finds this message in their inbox.
• making it easy to comment and ask questions about documents.  One of our team members has a notebook that they scan all their travel receipts into.  In UIB, the accountants have access to this notebook.  Whenever they have a question about an expense, they ask this question via the comments functionality, keeping the integrity of the original record intact.

We're sure there are more workflow improvements that the Evernote integration can offer and we look forward to finding them.  

 

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 20)

As well as building the Unified Inbox  software product , we are currently curating a Twitter series that focuses on information useful to people working with information.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter :

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

• Want to be more productive? Don’t file your email more
• 11 Tips: Dealing with Information Overload more
• Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now more
• E-Hoarding Is Unhealthy more
• Managing Digital Information Overload – Is Technology The Cause & The Cure? more
• BlackBerry crumble reveals the depth of our email addiction more
• Top 10 Tricks for Dealing With Email Overload more
• Lightening the load on your email inbox: Five tips more
• The Secret to Avoiding Email Overload: Canned Responses more

Statistics

• 40% of Tablet and Smartphone Owners Use Them While Watching TV more
• Sheer overload” is reported as the biggest problem with email as a business tool, followed closely by “Finding and recovering past emails” and “Keeping track of actions. more
• 25% of all time spent online is devoted to social media more

Wisdom

• What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending - Maria Robinson

 

 

October 20th is Information Overload Awareness Day

 

 - what steps will you take to reduce overload?

We would definitely recommend catching up with the advice given by the founders of Information Overload Awareness Day - this can be found here. Their challenge is to send 10% fewer emails on this day. 

For those still undecided on how to complete this challenge you may want to sign up for our Twitter series that has daily tips on how to manage in our information rich world.

You can find the collected series of tips, statistics and wisdom here in our regular blog.

And of course, there is always the option to sign-up for a month-long free trial of Unified Inbox - the product designed to keep information overload under control.

 

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 19)

As well as building the Unified Inbox  software product , we are currently curating a Twitter series that focuses on information useful to people working with information.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter :

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

• How to stop e-mail overload? Think before you hit send... more
• 5 Tips to Beat Email Overload... more
• Dealing with e-mail is NOT a task... more
• In Praise Of Print Versions... more
• Adaptation and Loss... more
• A list of what not to do can be handy... more

Statistics

• 70% of respondents admitted to disrupting virtual meetings and webcasts to answer their mobile phone... more

Wisdom

• Life begins at the end of your comfort zone - Neale Donald Walsch
• Information is the seed for an idea, and only grows when it's watered. - Heinz V. Bergen 

Moments of stillness

Are your days spent rushing from one urgent ("the world will explode if you don't answer this email!") task to another? Are you finding that the urgent, not important, parts of your day are starting to take over from the important, not urgent?

If so, then your body is being subjected to constant adrenaline rushes.

You may be aware of adrenaline and its role in our survival - it's the "flight or fight" hormone.  A sabre tooth tiger appears and we either need to run fast and fight hard with that big stick. This activity then burns through the adrenaline.

The problem with our modern lives is that we're putting ourselves in situations where we flood with adrenaline but it is not socially acceptable to run or fight, allowing the adrenaline to build up in our bodies.

What solutions are there for handling the demands of modern worklife?

The most basic defence is to look after yourself, to ensure that your diet and exercise are sufficient to ensure a strong and resilient body.

The second level of defence is to train yourself to be active, rather than reactive. One of the training strategies for this is to take moments of stillness during your day.  

“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future; live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

In Unified Inbox we built in our Wise Quotes to run on start-up. They are a reminder for us, that as we login to prepare for another day of running a software startup, to be still for a moment.  The ideal start to our days is when we approach our mail (generally considered a stressor task in modern overloaded lives) with a sense of calm, rather than a sence of trepidation.

Our quotes can also be accessed via our Twitter feed - we hope they make a difference to your day as well.

 

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 18)

As well as building the Unified Inbox software product , we are currently curating a Twitter series that focuses on information useful to people working with information.  If you would like to receive these daily - please follow us on Twitter:

• Tips for dealing with information and email overload
• Stats - all the numbers you ever wanted to see about email, internet and information
• Wisdom - because sometimes in amongst the information overload, we all need to take a step back and reflect.

Tips

• Letter From Paris: 28 Days (Without the Internet) more
• 6 Ways to Stress Less About Your Email Inbox at Work more
• How to Fight Email Overload more
• From information overload and anxiety to peace and BEING ENOUGH more
• Work without E-mail: Is it Possible? more
• Dealing with the email overload more

Statistics

• Some 55 per cent of enterprises will have adopted cloud email and collaboration services (CECS) by 2020, more

Wisdom

• Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern recognition. -Marshall McLuhan

 

 

Standard work hours - do they still exist?

We blogged recently on the subject of work location and how the nature of work is changing - insofar as many people are no longer going to work each day in an office.

Now that technology changes have allowed "work" to take place at cafes, in cars and at home, we find that the definition of work time has also changed.

You may find that you or your co-workers work any of the following schedules

• nine to five - you are still required onsite in a certain location at certain hours
• job-share - a person is still required on-site at certain hours but you share that with someone else
• flexitime - the work can done at times that suit you, rather than fitting to the organisations schedule
• freelance - you decide what work needs to be done and when it needs to be done.

As long ago as 2005 - it was estimated that one third of workers participated in some way in the freelance economy.  And that figure is going up.

In the same way that our independence from location is fuelled by the rise of mobile devices and cloud based services, so is our independence from notion of office hours.  

There are different viewpoints on whether this change is for the better with some saying the productivity goes up when people choose their own work hours and some saying that stress levels increase without the structure of nine-to-five.

What is your opinion on changes in work hours - are they for the better?