Save our workforce! There must be a better way.

 

Post written by Maya Pillai.

The latest global report from McKinsey Global Institute: “Unlocking value and productivity through social technology" show that on an average an employee spends 61% of their day writing emails, searching for information and collaborating internally. This leaves only 39% of the time to accomplish their role-specific tasks – or what is more commonly called “work”.  

At this point let’s take a look at how to unclutter our email inbox and also find out whether there are other modes of communication that are more collaborative and productive than email. 

Tips to unclutter your email inbox 

• The first and foremost thing we all need to do is fix a time for checking emails. Let’s say for an hour a day. That is once in the morning as soon as you take your first coffee break and then again after your afternoon tea break. 
• Make your own system. Email programs today have a feature to create folders - here you can label them accordingly. Here you can store the emails that fall under a specified title and you have search option if you want to retrieve them later. Start using good and descriptive subject lines when sending emails. This will help you to search for the communication faster. Also ask those with whom you communicate frequently to do the same. 
• Start using block sender instead of unsubscribe, for newsletters where you don't trust they will carry out your wishes. Many email service providers have included a simple Block Sender button. 
• Once you have read the mail and dealt with it, ensure you file it or delete it. Never hoard emails to save email addresses. If you want to get in touch with someone again, save the information in the email address book.  Respond quickly to emails that require only a crisp and short response. Learn to prioritize the emails you receive. 

There are a few social media tools such as Twitter, micro-blogging and Dropbox that can decrease your dependence on email.  It is a proven fact that if you spend less time on reading and responding to emails, it will increase you productivity. So which tools should we take time to use on the job. We recommend checking out the following for ways to save our workforce:

• Organizations should encourage their employees to use social media technologies such as Chatter and Yammer the products of Salesforce.com and Microsoft respectively. 
• However, the productivity of the workforce will not increase simply because the organization has installed social software. Also ensure that the employees are aware of how to use these social tools. One should assume that just because people tweet socially, they will transfer the same habit to work automatically. 
• Make a simple telephone call instead of sending an email whenever possible. This saves a lot of time. 
• Use software such as Dropbox to upload files and videos instead of send it as attachments to various people. These files and folders can be shared among various users.
• You save a lot of time by having a quick discussion instead of writing lengthy emails.
• Established and start-up companies should introduce good social technologies or get a software such as Unified Inbox installed to increase the productivity of their employees and to reduce the email inbox clutter.

Join the "save our workforce" movement today and let us know what tools and techniques you recommend to regain the time lost to email.

Why it's important for all of us to support the Startup Eco-system

Unified Inbox is sponsoring the Palmerston North Startup Weekend on the 24th of August and here are our reasons why.

We see startup events as a key part in developing a thriving startup ecosystem in New Zealand and beyond. They are the risk-free, well-supported playground that allows our fledging entrepreneurs the chance to flex their wings before they take flight and create benefits that all of us will reap in coming years.

• job creation
• innovation and creativity
• it's fun

Job Creation 
The Kauffman Foundation in the US has looked into the dynamic between job creation and job destruction and has identified startups as a key force in driving job creation in the economy.

“Put simply, this paper shows that without startups, there would be no net job growth in the U.S. Economy.”

For our part, that seems reason enough to do what we can to aid their development.

Innovation and creativity

• “Give me the freedom of a tight brief” - this quote from a creative is one of my earliest business memories and in the startup weekend process – that 6pm Sunday pitch deadline is about as tight as it gets! 
• A focused team to bounce ideas off – check. 
• Support and input from smart advisors – check. 

Is it any wonder that the output of startup weekends can surprise and delight in their originality and innovation.

It's fun
Have you ever been to a Startup Weekend? When we attend, we can't help but have fun. The drive, the energy in the room is infectious and often leads us to some of our most productive work in the weeks following. 

For companies that are considering getting involved and sponsoring these events, we can only say  - “see you at the next one!” 

 

What Unified Inbox offers startup companies attending the Startup Weekend events.
Unified Inbox is the platform on which a small company can seamlessly grow into a big one. By bringing all your Twitter, Facebook and emails into the same inbox, and assigning permissions to your team, as appropriate, you ensure that all communications are answered in a timely manner by the person best equipped. 

 

Flexible Working beyond the Olympics

Flexible working during the Olympics, a choice many UK commuters crave but how many companies actually view this as a realistic option?

Citrix Systems research finds the 24% of respondents intend on implementing flexible working during the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The YouGov survey, which polled more than 500 senior decision-makers at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the London area, also found that only 10% of respondents will adopt new working practices. It also found:

·         58% of respondents are prepared to cope with the expected disruption.

·         64% of respondents believe that some staff will be late into work, with 27% concerned that they will not get in at all.

·         37% of respondents trust their staff to make up any time lost.

·         56% of respondents expect more staff to work from home.

Andrew Millard, senior director, Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) marketing for the online service division at Citrix, said: “Despite the fact that so many anticipate Olympics-related disruptions, it is surprising that almost 60% of SMEs don’t think that any formal change to existing ways of working is either relevant or necessary. With London in the global spotlight over this period, it provides the ideal opportunity for UK employers to show that it is possible to reap the benefits of hosting the games and avoid the fall-out of any pressure on the transport network, by using collaboration technologies to ensure their staff can work effectively wherever they are.”

The UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced earlier this year that the government was considering extending flexible working patterns beyond parents in order to make it “much more common – a cultural norm”.

Currently it is possible for employees to request flexible working patterns and in fact this is something which has been encouraged during the Olympic period due to the expected increased strain on the London transport system. Having visited London many times I am aware that even during the quietest commuting periods it can be hellish, as such I can only imagine what the poor souls who face this regularly are facing for the rest of this summer.

I expect that many, if given the chance opted to work from home during this period, but why not continue this after the games? Some may be restricted to continuing the standard 9 – 5 work pattern during this period but others may have experienced increased flexibility. If only this were to continue, both employees and employers could benefit from this change.

Employees who have the chance to work flexible working patterns feel an increased sense of loyalty and improved morale. Management may view this as a “nice” employee relations exercise that falls under the umbrella of human resources but perhaps now is the perfect time for this to change. Remote working does not mean working from a kitchen table surrounded by noisy children and builders. It means working from anywhere that is not the firm’s physical office. This can be done easily with modern technology such as Skype and Facetime for video conferencing, combined with tools such as, Unified Inbox, Dropbox and Google Docs for collaborative working.

Employers often argue that they cannot be certain that their employees are working hard and an element of trust in every working relationship but unproductive people will finds ways to procrastinate wherever they are. Whether they are working remotely from home or gossiping with colleagues at work.

Remote working gives employees flexibility and can also give employers access to new markets. By allowing them to coach a sports team, help with their children’s homework or give piano recitals it means that they can then work extra hours that evening talking with clients in another time zone. It is the 21^st century so operating in a global scale is the norm, very rarely will you only have clients/colleagues within your country and by offering this flexibility you can build better relationships with those away from the office.

Remote working can also have an enormous benefit in reducing sick days, according to a study of 24,000 IBM staff worldwide, employees who were able to work flexibly provided an additional 19 hours a week before they reached the same levels of stress as those who did not work flexibly. By doing this you will reduce current levels of sickness which is something all employers seek, with flexible working looking more and more like a win – win solution.

Remote working can also manage the high percentage of office space that employers fail to utilise. BT allows their staff to vary their hours for a range of different reasons, with an additional benefit in a reduction of office space which has apparently saved BT £500m. Another benefit is the removal of “dead commuting time”, the time wasted on journeys to and from work which then also helps reduce environmental impact, with 22% of domestic carbon emissions in the UK coming from traffic. The government is considering legislation to reduce parking spaces at work, with Nottingham leading the way with a “workplace parking levy”. Opting for a remote working solution is a solution which will impress not only employees but shareholders also.

Currently the UK government is fighting Europe to prevent legislation which would make employees work less than 48 hours a week. The main debate in Europe relates to Working Time Regulations 1998, which implements the European Working Time Directive and whether the UK can ask its employees to sign a document in which they “opt out” of the 48 hour working week (aggregated over a 17 week reference period). Rather than relying on this companies should think imaginatively and by offering the flexibility to work remotely many of these issues can be avoided. Yes, meeting clients and colleagues face-to-face should be encouraged as it is an effective way to develop relationships, but by also offering flexibility and embracing the fact that we have moved on from the Victorian era the workforce of the future are free to grow. Employees should be judged by their result and not by attendance.

Flexible working can:

• Provide access to new markets
• Reduce sick days
• Free up office space
• Reduce your environment impact
• Meet the European Working Time Directive
• Improve efficiency
• Save money!

Please share your thoughts below.

 

Essential Software Tools for Startup Teams

Startup Weekend Auckland 2nd place getters JumpOnBoard.co hard at work. 
Photo courtesy of the wonderfully talented Janine Barr.

Post written by: Ursula Hoult

It's 6pm Friday night and 54 hours from now you're expected to have worked an idea up to investor pitch quality.

Welcome to Startup Weekend!

Obviously there are many factors that contribute to team success (or otherwise) over the weekend but the software tools you use, can be one of the factors that make or break you. Not only on the weekend but into the future as you build a real live business from what was once just an idea.

I've listed five tools below – all of which were used by the Startup-Platform team as moved we from being: 

• three Startup Weekend participants moved by our team leads pitch to
• a pressure cooker weekend of work to 
• a Highly Commended placing to 
• the hard work of putting together a real live business getting ready for its first trial in the field.

Trello.com
Free and easy to use. You can set up the bulletin board to replicate the headings on the Lean Startup methodology. Then each team member can login and add, edit or move to do items as necessary. We found it a great way to keep the ideas that were bubbling around, recorded and moving along.

Github.com
A private repository costs $7 USD per month but you can add as many team members to that repository as you want. This is a more programming focused tool than Trello and is useful for reporting bugs and creating a code review.

Skype
It's likely you'll find yourself having many a late-night (moonlighting on your day job) conversation. The free version is fine for audio conference calls but at least one team member with a premium account is required for video conferencing or screen sharing.

iwantmyname.com
Once you've decided on a product name, you'll need a URL – this is the simplest and easiest way to buy and host your domain name right then and there. It can even be done without technical skills!  Which is important because you're already got your developer working on code for your product :)

unifiedinbox.com
When you're in a team that won't physically be together after the weekend, a tool to manage the email addresses you set up for your project, as well as your Twitter and Facebook accounts, is a useful tool to for managing these communication streams. Startup Weekend participants are typically offered a deal for free usage. Check with your organiser for details of your weekends deal. 

We set all of these up on the first night of our Startup Weekend to ensure the work we put in was being managed most efficiently. There are many more tools that you may want to consider as essential for your team, you can find a more extensive list here. 

And when thinking of essential tools - don't forget the humble cellphone. Swap cellphone numbers (for when one team member fails to return from lunch!)

 

Ursula Hoult is PR Manager at Unified Inbox in her day job and is about to attend her second Startup Weekend.  Her AKLSW project Startup-Platform received honourable mention. The team use Unified Inbox for managing their incoming communication streams.

 

Work email gossip and its effect on team morale

Post written by Maya Pillai.

It is a fact that people love to talk about other people and they also show a great interest in hearing about the business of other people. It's simply human nature. Recently, I had the opportunity of watching an American movie named 'Gossip' directed by Davis Guggenheim. Though it had nothing to do with work email gossip, it showed how a rumor or gossip that is nurtured and dispersed efficiently can become a mighty weapon. If you are working in an organization, think  for a moment how gossipy emails effect you and the morale of your team members. 

You will never guess that on an average a corporate email user sends and receives 112 emails everyday. This was reported in a study by Georgia Tech. The study also revealed that 15% of the work related emails can be gossip and this is prevalent at all levels of the corporate hierarchy.

Remember, the term 'Gossip' is a negative word and therefore we are likely to give such emails a negative interpretation. Curbing work email gossip will not only decrease the clutter in your internal mailbox but also increases the productivity of yourself and those around you. 

We spend most of our waking hours at our work place. Can you imagine how highly damaging it can be to be in a place where whispers about your personal/professional life are circulated? Gossip emails can lead to a total breakdown of your performance which in turn will affect the team and the project you are working on. 

Your work life is likely to become uncomfortable and you will find it difficult to work in proximity with your team mates. Misunderstanding between the colleagues and team member can then result in workplace conflict. This in turn has a negative impact on the working relationships with your team members. And if the morale of the team is affected, it can lead to increased episodes of absenteeism and stress-induced sickness. 

While the best defence against a culture of negative workplace gossip developing, is simply not to get involved, we've found that our usage of team based email is an active tool in fighting a gossip culture. Get your system administrator to configure internal mailing system such as unifiedinbox.com where all the team mails can be accessed by the team members. When there is this level of transparency where mails can be read by the members of the team, you'll find there will be a drastic reduction in both inbox clutter and work email gossip. 

 

Surviving your first Startup Weekend (and loving it!)

They say startup weekends are intensely addictive and it just takes one to start what could become a lifelong habit but for those about to set out on their first startup weekend, what can they learn from those who have gone before to make the finishing line in the best possible shape?

The organisers will send you their own list. And these are all important - bring them all but what I found was that the veterans brought a bit more than that. And I made a note that next time I'd be one of those savvy veterans bringing the following:

• multi-plug – one office, two power outlets, six laptops – is there any further elaboration needed?

• alternative internet – internet is provided but do you really want to sit through a session of being down, knowing that the key fact/image/code you need is out of reach until it's back up?

• a clean USB drive – for moving files around.

• coffee mug – you will be supplied with more coffee than may be good for you, and a new cup every time. Be a little kind on your world and bring your own (supersized if necessary) mug. But label, if you want it back again, label.

• water bottle – yes, you've got that unlimited supply of coffee on the go but the brain needs a little more than that – a bottle might encourage you to drink a little bit along the way.

• late night food supplies – don't worry about food – it's good and it's plentiful, except possibly at 11pm when you're about to make that last push for the night – an emergency musli bar stash will never go astray. And a bag of lollies for outright bribery of other teams' members helps.

• stationery set – oh yes, it's a high tech world but sometimes you need to put a piece of paper in front of someone, and you'll need scissors to cut it with and you'll need sticky tape to put it on their wall so they don't forget you. You could ask the endlessly helpful organisers or your could save those minutes for the next task in the impossible list of tasks to complete in your allotted 54 hours.

Well, that's my list of what I wish I'd brought with me, I'd love to hear from other participants on the items they most wished they'd had with them. When enough are mentioned, I'll republish the article with them – as the “perfect suitcase for startup weekends”.

Until then, whatever you do – make sure you take the multi-plug.

 

Ursula Hoult is PR Manager at Unified Inbox in her day job and has just returned from attending her first Startup Weekend. All Startup Weekend Auckland June 15-17 2012 attendees are entitled to receive a free years subscription to Unified Inbox – a place for teams to collaborate on the multiple communication accounts required to run a project or business. Her AKLSW project was Startup-Platform and they use Unified Inbox for managing their incoming communication streams.

 

 

Email is dead, long live email.

The headlines have flown in the last year as to whether our forty year love affair with email is coming to an end. Driving the calls for the end to email were those citing the cost to our lives and productivity. French company ATOS famously announced its plans to ban internal emails by 2014 and German company Volkswagen stopped the delivery of work emails after hours.

But the 29 billion (and increasing) number of real emails sent every day are not going away in a hurry. More than anything businesses today are looking at how policy and technology changes can ensure their businesses are not the ones affected by the $900,000,000 productivity losses the American economy deals with each year.  

Recent research by the Grossman Group has found most believe that banning email in the workplace is the wrong approach to combating email overload, but what would you say if you CEO proposed banning email? This is an area in which many have weighed in with their opinions (interesting polarising views by David Grossman and Daniel Mittleman here), but when legislation is starting to be passed and unions start demanding change, then it is clear a solution is needed.

Policy changes and etiquette for businesses include encouraging workers to pick up the phone, walk across the office or switching to instant messaging to speak to colleagues. But what can be overlooked in these discussions is that email is no longer the only form of communication businesses and their customers are using. Many customers are now more comfortable Tweeting their relative un/happiness with your services. For companies still trying to keep on top of the email torrent, these can seem a next to impossible communication stream to keep on top of.

One of the driving factors behind the development of Unified Inbox was to bring all these communication streams together. There is no ability to intelligently manage their processing without realising the full scale of the communication overload that faces us. This step is one which most providers of communication software are missing, ensuring the business are stuck using the same message silos, as they have in previous years.

Take a look at the infographic below to see what damage overload is doing and how much a solution - a Unified solution - could save you.

Created by: OnlineITDegree.net

Zombie Email Health Scare

Picture credit: Kell Bailey

The latest email issue to hit the headlines comes in the form of a health scare. The University of California, Irvine recently released a study on a work without emails which put in its simplest terms highlights the fact that people who frequently check their emails suffer higher levels of stress than those who don’t.

And as Chuck Klosterman of the New York Times wrote, there is also an excellent analogy between emails and zombies, saying that

“Every zombie war is a war of attrition. It’s always a numbers game. And it’s more repetitive than complex. In other words, zombie killing is philosophically similar to reading and deleting 400 work e-mails on a Monday morning”.

The trouble is that not only does it feel like you are fighting a zombie horde when clearing through your inbox, it also feels like you have become a zombie as your productive life ebbs’ away whilst you spend more and more of your time checking emails. With this communication overload it is far too easy to feel overwhelmed, become increasingly stressed and falling ill from the pressures of modern day life.

We live in a world where you are expected to be always contactable and that when someone does contact you, then they will inevitably expect an almost instantaneous response. When people are drawn to work from their inbox, checking it multiple times during the day  - not only does their productivity decreases but  their stress levels will inevitably increase.

Constantly checking your email is a disruptive habit and unfortunately the average person will check their email 50 to 70 times a day. It takes approximately 24 minutes to fully disconnect after reading your emails, so imagine how much time ends up getting wasted during the work day. The founder of TechCrunch, Michael Arrington is one such person to have experienced these stresses and has openly admitted to routinely declaring email bankruptcy.  Peter Bregman is another who has experienced email overload and after taking a week’s technology vacation came back to find the expected overflowing inbox. Peter probably had the same feeling of dread that we all do after a period away from emails (mine included spitting coffee over my laptop), knowing that there will be a mountain of work to go through, but somehow he managed to clear a week’s worth of emails in only 3 hours.

The only issue is not that there is a continuous stream of communication coming your way, but also that it comes at you all of the time and this leads to its own issues. USA Today posted an article on workers suing for unpaid overtime, with the number of lawsuits increasing by 32% since 2008. I am sure you will be able to work out where this increase has came from, yes that is right, it is the evil zombie-esque horde of emails further invading people’s lives. Because of smartphones and other technology work is blending into personal time.

So what is the solution? One of our team has some great advice on How to keep a clean inbox that is well worth a read, but only a fraction of the real solution to the problem of overload. The question really becomes - will the solution be a change in behaviour, a change in technology or a change in the intelligence that surrounds our working lives? Please leave us your thoughts below on the best ways to keep our health (and of course to keep the zombies at bay!).

 Picture Credit: redzombie.com 

How to keep a clean inbox

 

HBR management tip of the day for the 18^th of May was focused on stopping email overload. Given the impact of email on our lives, this story seems one that likely caught the attention of most of their readers. Looking at their 3 tips, to me the one that seemed easier to say than do was “keep a clean inbox”.

"It’s easier to handle incoming messages without clutter staring back at you. Create a new folder called "Old Inbox" and put all your messages in there. Then when new email comes in, sort it right away."

Having implemented their tip on occasion – ie create a folder called old inbox and move everything there - it always seemed to me the hard part was then keeping it clean and I thought I might take a moment to share my methods for mostly doing this.

1. I set aside a time to process my inbox. My choice is first thing in the day. Some experts consider it shouldn't be the driving factor in the day but in the work I do, I'm often responding to other people, so my work is my inbox!

2. With all my accounts coming into one inbox*, it can seem an overwhelming mess, so I filter by the different types of messages I want to process, in my priority order. Then I work through the different filters until my inbox is empty.

3. Many of the messages that arrive in accounts that I am responsible for, need input from my colleagues. These I assign to the right person with questions. The act of assigning, unlike forward, takes the message out of my inbox (nice and clean, you see the appeal now) and puts it into their inbox. These messages invariably come back but when they do, the task they refer to is closer to being finished.

4. Where I can reply straight away, I do – general rule, can this be done in under one minute? If yes, then do so. Then I label and file the message, in a unified folder that colleagues can also access.

5. If I can't give the message away (assign) or answer straight away, I place it in the Reminder folder for a time that I set aside for doing these tasks. The message is then removed from my inbox until the time that I have specified, at which point it reappears with the notes I made for what I want myself to do.

I try to keep working through the messages until none remain, then refresh for those that have arrived (or been answered) during my processing session and work through the messages again. At that point – I turn off my email (no matter how much I want to keep hitting refresh to see what new messages have come in) because by this point, I should have figured out what tasks I need to do for the next few hours.

Then I repeat this process a couple of times during the day.

I wonder sometimes that it's taken me over fifteen years to learn this email best practice but for me it's better late than never! So my question goes out to the readers of this blog - where do you feel you're at with your ability to keep your inbox clean?

*Note: that some of the methods I use, are based around use of Unified Inbox. You may have other products you prefer to use, that may or may not have these functionalities.

 

 

 

That Monday morning feeling

 

Christopher Weir - That Monday morning feeling

Today is Monday, the start of mine and most people’s week. Much like most other people I have my morning routine, and if this is disrupted it will spill over into the rest of the day and I will be a pain to be around, it is not a pleasure to start my day with a hot shot of caffeine, but a necessity.  

This routine isn’t filled with excitement but I need this routine to set me up for the rest of the day. It starts with boiling the kettle for my morning wake up coffee and is followed by a bowl of cereal whilst I load up my laptop to check my emails before moving on to work on my tasks for the day. Recently however, I have found that this routine is taking up more and more of my day. Previously I would work my way through my emails whilst eating my breakfast and be free to start working properly half an hour after waking up (the joys of working from home) however, more and more these days my emails are taking up a disproportionate amount of my time.

This morning I went through my usual routine up until the point where I took that first joyous sip my wake up juice to find that I had 166 new emails that had collected over the weekend. I somehow doubt that my laptop appreciated its nice warm coffee scented shower this morning but that is what it had. This was not just Information Overload, this was more a case of Information Overwhelmed! On top of this I have Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts and LinkedIn to monitor and it was at this point I began to realise what people are referring to when they mention Information Overload.

It is far too easy to send communication through the digital medium, with companies utilising (and sometimes abusing this) to reach as many people as possible. Email and social media are here to stay so what we need to do is better manage our communication, instead of fighting against this tide of information we must all learn to manage it better so as to not become overwhelmed. Thankfully, this is an area which developments are occurring and hopefully information overload will instead become a thing of the past. 

You can help make this happen by giving our  product a trial - Unified Inbox 

To help make this dream a reality then please support us on AngelList

chris@unifiedinbox.com

 

PRESS RELEASE: Email is not broken. But better clients are needed.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 

Contact Person: Toby Ruckert (@tobyruckert) or Ursula Hoult (@ursulahoult)
Company Name: Unified Inbox
Telephone Number: +1 408 490 3430 ext. 700
Email Address: ceo@unifiedinbox.com
Web site address: http://unifiedinbox.com
Twitter: @unifiedinbox
Press information: http://unifiedinbox.com/press.html

 

______________________________

 

Email is not broken. But better clients are needed. Is this a dream combination?

18 April 2012 — With today's launch of the PowerInbox integration, users of Unified Inbox now have the ability to get new levels of interactivity in their emails.

With the PowerInbox integration, if a Unified Inbox user gets an update about a new Twitter follower, they don't just get the bare bones information and a link that leads them on the Twitter homepage, now they get a much richer set of information right there in the email and the ability to tweet or message that user - all without leaving their email in Unified Inbox. 

A driving force behind the development of Unified Inbox was the desire to help users collaboratively manage and integrate social media with email in their companies. The collaboration that users are looking for means that if someone tweets about their company, the tweet can be easily handled (within Unified Inbox) by the people most qualified to do so. This use case often applies in the e-commerce sector, especially where internal and external communication meet.

"We're a company dedicated to making communication simpler and more meaningful. So when PowerInbox approached us about empowering our users emails with an in-message app, we asked only one question - when can we start?“ says Toby Ruckert, Founder and CEO of Unified Inbox.

The integration offers added functionality that makes Unified Inbox users even more effective at handling their social media reaching them via their email inbox. The initial PowerInbox functionality covers Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Flickr and other services to be announced shortly.

"Getting the most out of your email is a huge problem we all face and Unified Inbox has a really novel approach to solving this by bringing all your inboxes together. This was in complete alignment with our vision at PowerInbox and it was great to be involved with the launch of this exciting product. Unified Inbox users are going to get to experience all PowerInbox functionality right in their email without any downloads, and this wouldn't have been possible without the vision of the fantastic team at Unified Inbox - our entire integration took less than an hour to complete, a win for everybody involved." says Matt Thazhmon, Founder & CEO of PowerInbox about the integration experience with Unified Inbox.

Any time one company integrates their product with another there is the possibility for disaster but when the Unified Inbox Chief Technology Officer, Emy Carlan, was asked about this he said "It was by far one of the smoothest integrations we've done to date. This integration has had the biggest immediate impact on our software's value proposition and the volume of positive user feedback associated with it.“

When asked why interactive emails made sense for his users, Toby responded: “Unified Inbox users have made the choice to proactively manage the email overload in their personal and professional lives. One of the biggest causes contributing to overload are email notifications. By allowing greater interaction with key sites from within their emails, the PowerInbox integration within Unified Inbox reduces the time the users spend in different applications and reduces the number of clicks to a minimum and so increases the users productivity to a maximum."

 

 

Summary: Unified Inbox and PowerInbox integration brings new levels of interactivity into emails as a standard feature.

About Unified Inbox: Unified Inbox is the creator of the world's first true mobile unified communications app in the form of a unified inbox. With Unified Inbox you can stop overload and start living. Get all your messages in one place: anywhere, anytime. 

About PowerInbox: PowerInbox is a provider of email technology that enables live content to operate directly within the body of your email (for instance, one click shopping within email, viewing Facebook pictures and comments in email and tweeting directly from email),

 

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

Captions for images:

• UIB Twitter 1: What a non-Unified Inbox customer sees when they open a Twitter notification email.
• UIB Twitter 2: What a Unified Inbox customer sees when they open a Twitter notification email. Note the ability to respond and tweet the other person, from within your email. 

 

 

Email etiquette for better team interpersonal relations – a founders view

 

Toby Ruckert. The nature of written and spoken words are quite different:

The spoken word carries the most potent power at the given present moment, allowing for prompt reaction, leading to conversation and thus less room for speculation.

The written word instead lives and breathes with interpretation, based on circumstances and different individual perceptions in which there is plenty of room for misunderstandings.

Therefore when working in a global team, possibly with very different cultures involved, it is best to agree on some basic ground rules not just for email but for all your written communication. From own experience I know that the following things definitely helped productivity and team spirit:

• in our teams as a general rule we avoid the use of superlatives, as they often indicate strong emotions which may heighten the existing emotional response of the reader so that they interpret the message content in an overly emotional way.
• we encourage each other to pro-actively start a message with the information that we are having a bad day or similar, so the (emotional) context of the subsequent writing is brought into perspective.
• I think every existing team member now knows that we don’t write in CAPITAL letters unless it’s absolutely necessary to explain a problem, but even then – they would first consider opting for bold, italics or underline font styles instead, as they are normally sufficient to get the message across, right?
• absolutely no swearing: it never does or did anybody or anything any good. Do you really believe that “more better” stuff “got done” because you (as CEO or investor) swore at something or somebody? Chances are that with every time you publicly swear at something or at somebody, you – on a personal level – just lose a little bit of the respect of that team member. This may not impact ones professional standing immediately, but I am sure that it does long term, even though it seems to be a fun hobby for some leaders in the worlds startup community;
• stopping the usage of unnecessary repetitions or irregular use of punctuation marks such as .. or ……. or ???? or ?!??? or !!!!! – what use do they have any way? Everybody interprets them differently! Using exclamation marks, full stops etc. is the historic way to communicate and nothing is wrong with them, but what exactly do overly done repetitions mean? Use a “?” for a question, the question does not become stronger if there are “??????” behind it. Use “…” and not “..” as it conveys a laissez-fair (don’t care) attitude. Using “…….” conveys “this issue is a never never ending story, I could go on and on about it -> ‘you keep failing’”

So as early as possible in the start-ups life make your team aware of these points and discuss it with them. Personal bad habits need not be easily welcomed in professional relations, it’s easy enough to at least once discuss this together → particularly when you’re still a young and dynamic company with few staff. It’s far easier to do at this time than trying to build that into corporate company culture later.

To an extent I can understand that as the CEO of a big corporate you may not want to go into these reviews of communication styles personally. But as the Founder of a company, there is no way around this kind of thing and it is better to be prepared rather than to be taken by surprise.

This simple matter can affect productivity and progress of your company significantly, it can build good team morale, respect for each other, loyalty and can become part of your companies culture early on.

Needless to say that I’m trying hard to live up to my just posted standards!

 

Originally posted: Toby’s Posterous

 

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping - learn new skills

In our original blog on New Year’s Resolutions and how to keep them, we noted that amongst the most popular category of resolution were the “be better somehow” resolutions. 

So in this category we find the “learn new stuff” resolution. It sounds good, most “be better somehow” resolutions do but let’s get specific on why you would want to make this your resolution for 2012.

Living in competitive and constantly changing times most of us are aware that that the skills we learnt yesterday aren’t the ones that are valuable today. We could wait until this is patently obvious (ie redundancy) or make 2012 the year we are proactive in updating our skills.

The other reason to focus on learning new skills, and one that current research is increasingly supporting, is that we have choices about how we age. The good news is that our brains can stay agile and responsive into our later years – the hard-work news is that we have to push our boundaries and continuing forcing our brains to learn new skills in order for this development to take place.

Additional benefits for those who decide to learn new skills in 2012 include:

• Breadth in our learning gives us a range of perspectives to call upon when faced with new problems in our own areas of specialisation.
• The more unfamiliar situations we deal with, the more we practise our innovative and creative thinking. 
• Can we add, that learning deepens our character and makes us more inspiring to those around us?

So is 2012 the year you want to make that positive step? If so, take a moment to think about what skills you could learn. 

Firstly - what do you enjoy – really this is the most important criteria, all the others are secondary because if you decide to take up the most worthwhile new skill in the world but don’t enjoy it, you are highly unlikely ever to complete the learning.

Secondly:

• what learning is available? Your workplace may sponsor learning of new skills they see as valuable.
• what local opportunities are there to learn in the company of others – eg community colleges, night school. Many of us are motivated by our social nature. If you take a class with others and enjoy their company, you’re likely to keep going to class.
• other learning opportunities – the internet can deliver on nearly any learning need you have – a quick search will generally bring up a choice of resources – from free HowTo to Hack a Day to subscription only courses.

Whatever skill you decide to focus on this year, you’re going to have to allocate time.  Think carefully about the commitment you’re prepared to make and is that realistic to the lifestyle you lead. A little bit every day, is more valuable than big blocks of time every now and then.

We’d love to catch up with you this time next year and find out what new skill you took on board and how that made a positive difference to your life!

 

INTEGRATION GOOGLE CALENDAR: set reminders from within your inbox

The latest in the Unified Inbox series of updates to make your life easier and less burdensome is the Google Calendar integration.

Adding a Google Calendar connection to your account is as simple as adding any other connection.

Whether you have added a Google Calendar connection or not, you will still be able to schedule reminders for yourself in Unified Inbox. The latest update allows you to drag any message into the Reminder folder and be asked when you would like to be reminded of it. You have here the option to keep the message out of sight until that time.

And then if you have added a connection to your Google calendar you can choose to add it to your calendar with just the click of a button.

Sign up for Unified Inbox today to experience the tools that make life easier and get a one month free trial.

 

A bright start to 2012!

Read the story of the Unified Inbox team member who discovered the benefits of location-independant work the hard way.....

"I'm sure it's not just me that has those anxiety dreams about being late for a flight or running all over the airport trying to get to the gate before the plane leaves. But for me at least, until now they have only been dreams.   I had the experience last week of actually missing my flight"....read more

 

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping - keep a balance

We published a blog last year that reported data from a “use of time” study that showed we are increasingly experiencing feelings of hurriedness and time famine.

If it is your resolution this year that you will create a more equitable balance between work and personal life, then we've got ways to go about it.

• Just because you have the technology doesn't mean you have to use. Set aside some time each week (or day) to be technology free - this means phones too! It's amazing the things you can learn about those nearest and dearest to you when you're actually talking to each other. In addition, you can start to think about some physical spaces as technology-free - the bedroom and bathroom are good places to start. You may choose ultimately to return to a “work only in an office” mode, as a way of ensuring that your work/life balance is good.

• Bring all your incoming messages into one inbox and keep all your appointments in one calendar. That need to check all those different places in order to keep on top of your life will go away. Then set aside times to work through your inbox, rather than reacting the minute a new message arrives. Given the time taken to process a message and then get back to what you were originally doing, means that doing this will add significant chunks of time back into your day.

• Be smart in your use of technology – if you really have to send that email out of office hours, how about you take the recipient into consideration and schedule it to arrive during their work day.

• Get a hobby,  or a class or one definite appointment you have to keep each week that is not work-related. Over time you might increase the frequency but let's start out with an achievable goal. It's a great idea if this activity is fun to do with friends or family.

• Take breaks. No-ones productivity improves when they work non-stop. So take a break (leave your desk) and increase your productivity for the rest of the day. If you get more done during your “work-hours” you can in good conscience "not work" for the rest of the day. Sometimes, to work faster, you just gotta work slower.

As with all the resolutions we're considering this week, make sure you start with something that is achievable in bite-sized pieces and then, all going well, increase the frequency or intensity. In this way, you may well get to the end of 2012, with that rare gift of a balanced work/personal life!

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping – improve your etiquette

The etiquette written about by Miss Manners may be more concerned with the correct knife and fork to use or the suitable time to send a thank-you card but its goal of allowing social interactions to run more smoothly is just as applicable to the electronic workplace.

Email overload is a well-defined problem in workplaces today, with some organisations going so far as to ban the use of email altogether. We however believe that there are better solutions to the problem. One such solution is that each of us can take some responsibility for the burden we place on others with each email we send, and that we take the time to consider our email etiquette.

What then is good email etiquette? Here are our top seven etiquette guidelines to consider:

1. Be concise and to the point – remember that someone else has to take the time to read this email that you have sent in the middle of what is likely to be a busy day for them.

2. Check your spelling and grammar. The reason we have such rules is to ensure that our messages are easily understood. By being correct in your messages you will make your email that little bit easier to read.

3. Don't use capitals. It's the written equivalent of shouting. Mixed case sentences will be easier to read and comprehend.

4. Take the time to read back over your message (in fact, even read it out loud to yourself) and check the tone. An email dashed off in a hurry can come across as brusque or angry and lead to a pointless emotional exchange of messages. Even making sure you add a hello and goodbye will make a difference here, as well, of course, as “please” and “thank-you”.

5. A clear subject line. This enables the recipient to start processing the email before they open the message. In fact, for very short messages such as “see you at 5pm” - the text can be entirely in the subject line with “(eom)” at the end signifying “end of message” so your recipient knows they don't need to open the message.

6. If you've got a long email with a lot of action points – consider breaking it into multiple emails that can be acted on separately.

7. Who are you sending this message to? This could well be the guideline that makes the biggest difference to the email burden you give the world. Check that recipient list carefully. Do the people on there really need to receive this message? Every person you send to will have their day interrupted by this message – think again, do they really need to receive it?

Great email etiquette takes time and training. In terms of introducing it into your workday, take the first email you send and check it against all seven etiquette guidelines listed above. Feeling good? - then do it again for the second. That may be enough for the first day. Day 2 – make sure your first two emails out are perfect in terms of your etiquette, then do another two perfectly (just because it feels good). Each day use the list above consciously for a few more messages.

Before you know it you'll be using this list without conscious thought. By doing so, you are taking a little bit of that email burden off others. And who knows, they may start asking you how you do it, so making their outward messages that little less burdensome as well!

 

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping – practice focus

Over 2011, we wrote several times about the myth of multi-tasking. While it seems that every job description will specify strong multi-tasking amongst the list of essential qualities for that job, research shows that we do not perform at our best while performing multiple tasks.

In fact, experiments on how multi-tasking effects our IQ shows that we drop 10 IQ points when forced to handle multiple tasks at once – which is the same level as if we had missed an entire nights sleep and is higher than the loss associated with smoking marijuana.

So, if you've taken this on board and made the decision that this year you're going to practice focus, we got some advice for how to go about it.

One of the specialist techniques available for free is Pomodoro which states that you choose a task to be accomplished, set your timer for 25 minutes, work on that task until the timer rings and then take a short (5 minute) break. At the end of every four Pomodoro units take a longer break.

Keeping with our earlier article on how to keep New Year's resolutions – there's little point deciding to switch your entire work day over to Pomodoro blocks tomorrow. Instead we recommend starting small and starting to train yourself and those around you (because it can be more difficult to train those around you than it is yourself!) to respect one (or two) focus sessions.

Another important process change that you can implement to improve your focus is the way you handle email. If you are in a job that allows for a hour or so to respond, we recommend turning off your notification sounds (and even your whole mail package) except for the three (say) times per day that you will be processing email. By not having your email on for the main part of the day, you can remove these seemingly small, yet in actuality time-consuming, interruptions and regain focus on the actual task in hand.

The final area you can implement if focus is your thing this year – put your phone down when talking to people or listening to them, and yes, this includes meetings. Make sure you catch the full message of the people you're talking to and, by modelling the behaviour you value, maybe (just maybe) they'll start listening to you without interruption too.

As with all the resolutions you plan to work on this year, it's best to have a goal in mind. A general - “I'm going to focus more” is unlikely to get a result, whereas “I'm going to practise one Pomodoro session per day and check my email no more than five times per day” may.  

 

New Year's Resolutions worth keeping - fight the clutter

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” -Leonardo da Vinci 

Followers of feng shui believe that clutter is low, stagnant, and confusing energy that constantly drains energy from you. Even if you're not on board for the full belief system you'd see that most of us work better in an organised rather than a messy environment.

Removing clutter from our lives is about freeing ourselves from “stuff” that takes mental energy to keep track of and care about. By removing it from our lives we are able to spend more of our time and energy on creating.

And in the tight business world of today, the ability to create is one we all need to be thinking about.

There are many articles written about ways to get rid of physical clutter and these articles contain methods such as:

• the four boxes – take four boxes with you as you approach a cluttered area. These boxes are labelled “put away”, “sell/donate”, “storage” and “rubbish”. As you pick up each item, don't let it leave your hand until you place it one of the four boxes. When you have finished the area – deal with each box appropriately.
• circuits – get a large carry container (such as a laundry basket) and make a circuit of the room. As you pass each out-of-place item, put it in the basket. Then do a circuit of the room, putting items away. You may need to do several circuits.
• penicillian – target a small area – eg a table – and clear that. That area has been innoculated and you know not to put anything in that area. Select another small area and repeat.
• box and banish – pick up everything in an area and put it in a box. Over time remove items that are needed and put them away in their proper place. At the end of a defined time period – throw away the rest of the items.

But if all these articles are written about physical clutter, there is an increasing need to consider our digital clutter. Digital clutter can be just as damaging as physical clutter. Just because it doesn’t take up any physical space, doesn’t mean digital clutter doesn’t carry the same emotional baggage and have the same impact.

So it's time to take a breath and acknowledge that our digital clutter is distracting us, causing our computers to slow down, and preventing us from getting things done that really matter. By emptying our inboxes, desktop, and other places of digital clutter, we free our resources up to write new messages, create new documents, and find new music. 

So how do we go about the process of digital decluttering. The most comprehensive article we found on this topic was 25 Areas of Digital Clutter to Minimalize  which covered areas from inboxes and emails (a subject we are most interested in) to documents to programmes to desktop icons. There are 25 ideas here to get you started.

One of the most common methods for each of these areas of clutter seems to be a variation on the physical box and banish method – eg: take all your email messages and put them in a temp folder and take them out as you work on them. After a week (say) any left can be permanently deleted or archived.

In keeping with the spirit of our last article on how to keep New Year's resolutions – if you decide that fighting clutter is your resolution for 2012 then make sure your goal is realistic and achievable – say one tip per day - and look forward to reaping the benefits of reduced digital clutter in your life.

 

Curated Series - Tips, Stats and Wisdom (issue 28)

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.

 

 

To paraphrase Sir Winston, e-mail is the worst form of messaging
except for all the others that have been tried.  
Jonathan Spira

Brain Health, Stress and Overload
Information Fatigue Syndrome, is a new ‘Syndrome’ which many people are experiencing. Some symptoms include increased anxiety, sleeplessness, less leisure time and less enjoyment when we do take leisure due to multi-tasking, and our brain always working.

 Ban email, fly pigeons!  
Will Breton’s announcement set off a new trend, given that it is quite fashionable to groan about email overloads? Tech journalist Mike Arrington wrote sometime ago that he routinely declares ‘email bankruptcy’. That is, unable to cope with the thousands of emails landing in his inbox, he often closes his eyes and deletes them in one go, only to make space for the next deluge 

Company ban on email gives employees a break, and maybe a different type of headache  
In case you were too busy catching up on email last week and missed the media interest in the news, the French company Atos has banned internal email. Or will, over the next 18 months, as it phases out the tool for its employees. The company’s CEO, Thierry Breton, said that because only about 10 percent of the messages his employees receive is worth their time, and because too many of his people spend hours every night sifting through the internal e-mail they get every day, he’s getting rid of the stuff. Completely. 

Should we send work email to the trash?  
Email has moved from being the internet’s first killer app to being a productivity killer. You can make news by claiming to hate it, ban it or kill it.

London taxi drivers offer window into human brain's flexibility  
Talk about information overload: becoming a taxi driver in London means memorizing all of the sightseeing destinations the city has to offer, plus the names and locations of 25,000 streets within a six-mile (9.6 kilometer) radius. 

How To Reduce Information Overload
Yet another report has come out telling us what we pretty much already know. Many workers feel overwhelmed by the deluge of emails and information they are confronted with on a daily basis. 

What would Socrates think of Google?
I was discussing with a college student I’ve been advising whether it was a good or a bad thing that Google makes access to answers so easy. To my surprise, she opined that it’s a bad thing.

• 2 out of 5 companies in Australia and New Zealand are suffering from information overload...more 
• Growing infoglut is costing New Zealand economy $400 million per year...more 
• The average employee spends 21 minutes per day looking for lost information...more 

 

So you want to keep your New Year's resolutions this year?

With the Gregorian calendar clicking over to a new year, many of us are thinking about our New Year's resolutions – those vaguely worded intentions to be a better person in some fashion or other.

For others the top resolutions are losing weight (interesting enough the least achieved resolution), exercise more, quit smoking, save more and to just be better somehow (volunteer, be less grumpy, keep a journal – you know how these go).

What is interesting about the New Year's resolution phenomenon is that a massive majority of people fail to keep their resolution – we're talking here about 88% of people making a promise to themselves that they don't keep.

So why do only 12% of people fulfill on their promises to themselves?

It seems it comes down to some pretty basic brain/body chemistry. The part of our body that regulates will-power is not that strong. When asked to resist temptation it burns up energy, and that energy has to be replaced if we are not to give in .

But there are strategies that are considered successful for dealing with temptation (in terms of resolutions you're trying to keep). The most successful strategy is distraction – whatever you do, don't think about the thing you're trying not to do. Thinking about what you can't do or have just tires you out and leaves you vulnerable to giving in. Instead make sure that whenever the subject of the thing you're trying not to do comes up, that you have an alternative to do or to think about.

If you're dead set on keeping your resolutions this year – and we've got 7 that we think are a good idea coming up this week – then you need to make sure that you include a plan for the following with the resolution itself:

 

1. Make sure that you have definite goals.

2. Acknowledge that you can only make resolutions for yourself – don't include others in them – because ultimately the only person in this universe you have any control over is yourself.

3. Make sure that the goal you set is realistic.

4. Don't try to change the world – moderation is the key.

5. Take the time to know yourself, so that the goal you set is one that you are capable of achieving.

 

Over the new few days we've going to publish the seven New Year's resolutions that we're actively working on. Like our Facebook page to get updates as we publish these over the next few days.