Cleaning the Slate: Apps and Email

Happy Nerd Year!

(Photo courtesy of wayne’s eye view)

As many of us were struggling through hangovers and indulging in one last hurrah on the couch with sweatpants, others were slowly stowing their holiday decorations and cleaning up in preparation for the new year.

Today, I did much the same (sweatpants included!), but instead of cleaning house, I cleaned up my apps and email.

First, I attacked my iPhone, and deleted any app I hadn’t used in the past 3 months. Some of the ones I kept were for training purposes for Century 21 Redwood, but I put those into folders on different pages for access only during training. My “home page” now has my most frequently used apps, and my “tool bar” at the bottom has my most favorites: Phone, Camera, my Social folder (with all the apps associated with that) and the Cue app (my personal assistant). I also took a hard look at my Calendar and Productivity apps, and have downloaded the CalenMob app to see how that compares to the current WeekCal app I use to keep me on track. Productivity didn’t change much, since I rely on Evernote for pretty much everything, but I have added iA Writer for a simple text editor app that links via iCloud and allows for quick and easy writing – one of my goals this year! (The first version of this blog post was typed on iA Writer on my Mac.)

Next, I tackled my GMail accounts. I have 22 (I KNOW!) in total, but about 4 that I deal with on a daily basis. Most people get overwhelmed with too many emails in their inbox. One of the the reasons I love GMail is you can truly be Inbox 0 in 3 easy steps:

Step 1: Create a “2012 Email” label (or an “Archive” email if you have years of old email hanging around). Go to Settings (that gear widget thingy in the right-hand corner), click on the Labels tab, and scroll half-way down to click on Create New Label.

Step 2: Name label “2012 Email” or “Archive”

Step 3: Select all email in your inbox and Move to 2012 Label.

TaDA! Inbox Zero.

(Photo courtesy of Jose C Silva)

Don’t worry. All your old email is still there, still searchable, still available. One of the reasons I moved to Google Apps from regular GMail is so I never have to delete an email if I don’t have to.

I actually hover around 10 emails in my inbox at any given time, but don’t like getting above that, so for me it was less about organizing my inbox, and more about preparing my labels for 2013. I “nested” several older labels under a general “2012″ label, and created new labels in anticipation of 2013, including: 2013 Business Expenses (self-explanatory), 2013 Inspiration (inspirational blog posts and emails), and 2013 Signups (to help keep track of what I sign up for throughout the year).

As an aside, one of the things I’ve been researching lately have been different GMail add-ons, including the YesWare add-on for GMail. Anybody using that consistently? Thoughts? I’ll be adding it on soon myself to see what it can do for me. I currently use/am testing: Rapportive, Boomerang, Boomerang Calendar and Streak.

Finally, I went after the “big boy”…my MacBook Air. I created new folders on my desktop to keep it nice and clean, put some things into Dropbox that needed filing and cleared out my Downloads and Documents folders. I also downloaded a few Apps: Calendar Plus (because it plays nicely with Google Calendar and GQueues [my favorite to-do list right now!]), iA Writer for Mac, OmmWriter (I told you I’m focusing on writing more!), Pocket and Mint QuickView (New Year, new budget). I’m excited to see how everything works in tandem with each other as the weeks progress, but think these are some app resolutions I’m going to keep.

So while you’re moseying around the house, dusting things off, perhaps engaging in some new year or spring-cleaning, don’t forget those apps and email!