The Cranking Widgets Blog

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There are times in life when you decide “enough is enough“. This past week was one of those times.
I get a fair amount of email. Not as much as some, but it’s a pretty steady stream. Sometimes, those messages are from well-wishing friends who thought I might enjoy an inspirational message from [...]

So, You’re Not Using Jott?

Written by Brett Kelly

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I spend a good deal of time in the car every day. Not as much as some, but it’s typically somewhere around 90 minutes round trip on a given work day. And being one of those people whose brain is pretty much always going, I tend to have many thoughts and ideas during [...]

Transform Your Cell Phone into a Productivity Juggernaut

Written by Brett Kelly

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All of us productivity nerds have our tools of choice. Some instinctively reach for a stack of index cards, others for a PDA or Pocket PC. I’m here to tell you that your regular, everyday cell phone can probably be just as effective as any other swiss army knife out there.
It’s all about [...]

Merlin Mann Drops some Knowledge at The Google

Written by Brett Kelly

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Everybody’s favorite productivity guru/wordsmith gave a Tech Talk at the Googleplex on getting your inbox to zero. If you’re a 43f reader, this will likely be a rehashing of some older material, but still worth the time. If you’ve never heard of this man(n), you’re in for a treat.
Have a great weekend, everybody!

Positively Gigantic GMail Resource Collection

Written by Brett Kelly

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Let’s face it – GMail is pretty much the coolest webmail application in existence. It’s simple design and slick interface (not to mention it’s unparalleled search capabilities) make it a pure joy with which to work.
Having said that, there’s something to be said for standing on the shoulders of giants, so to speak. [...]

Meet My New Secretary

Written by Brett Kelly

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In my eternal pursuit of the “mind like water”, I’ve noticed certain aspects of my productive life are, how shall I say, somewhat lacking. As much as I like to think I have a handle on my responsibilities and obligations, sometimes things fall through the cracks (and we all know what a no-no that [...]

How to Construct the Perfect Email Subject Line

Written by Brett Kelly

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How many times have you received an email with a subject line that said something like “Question” or “FYI”? Or, worse yet, had no subject at all? For all the millions of email messages that traverse the Internet every day, the ability to effectively formulate an indicative subject message seems to be fairly [...]

8 Habits of Highly Ineffective Emailing

Written by Brett Kelly

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Of all the possible uses for a computer, email is probably the most pervasive (perhaps second only to regular web browsing). From Bill Gates to your Aunt Betsy, everybody’s got an email account these days, possibly multiple accounts. It takes very little effort or know-how to get an email address, and there are [...]

Hacking GMail: Make it Your Digital Junk Drawer

Written by Brett Kelly

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In my eternal pursuit of total organization, I’m often faced with the task of filing/saving truly miscellaneous information that I may not need later, but had a hell of a time coming across to begin with. You discover some oddball fact that you’ve wondered about for years (and are happy to finally know), but [...]

Taming Your Inbox at Work

Written by Brett Kelly

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Let me start off by saying that my job (programmer) requires me to use email fairly regularly. It’s how I’m notified of bugs, feature requests, new projects, etc. So I really can’t ignore my email inbox completely, but I certainly do try. Here’s my approach: