Greetings All!
Following is this week’s issue of Tools of Tech. Thank you for reading! Please feel free to forward this along to friends.
Welcome 👋
A hearty welcome to the new people joining this week.
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Now let’s get on with the show. 📰
Past, Present, and Future Email 📧
Beginning in the 1960s electronic mail (or e-mail or email) was initially available on closed computer platforms. In 1971 (excellent year!) the “@” symbol made its first appearance on ARPANET. By 1995 new protocols were established and a restriction(!) on commercial traffic over the Internet ended. (Source) For better or worse, the email we experience today is very much like it was in the mid-90s, when I was assigned my first (of many) rcobb@ accounts.
Today email remains central to individual and business communications. For you email likely remains at least part of a daily communication rainbow that also includes voice and video calls, social DMs, and texts. Love it or leave it, email will not and cannot go away. The number of non-spam messages sent per day is in the tens of billions, from delivery notifications to birthday greetings to calendar reminders to receipts to weekly newsletters 💯.
What does the future hold for this open (and often abused) method of communication? Here are a couple references if you want to dig in.
Email remains the top communication tool for businesses – here’s why
The Future Of Email: Four Predictions Developing Faster Than You Think
Writing Email ✍️
If you are like me (and millions of others) you spend a ridiculous amount of your day on email - writing, responding, reading, deleting, organizing. Following are a few tips to help with writing. If we can all write better emails, we can all spend less time on email. Win!! (I know, this is ironic since you are likely reading this in an email. Very meta.)
Avoid burying the lead (or lede): Get to the point quickly. Ask questions early, not only at the end.
Use bullets or bold words to highlight what needs action and to simplify reading (see what I did there?)
Attempt to cut out filler words like “I think” and “just”. They only serve to soften your writing.
Go back to English class. Try to include Who, What, When, Why, and How.
A few more resources
If Gmail is your jam then try writing effective emails, the Google way
Consider joining the 5 sentence email club
Add Grammarly as your personal writing assistant (work on social too)
Organizing & Optimizing Email 🗃️
We turn now to organizing and perhaps even optimizing your email. Whether you are a Googler, Yahooligan, Microsoftie, or you went indie, with an incoming onslaught of messages it can be tricky to keep important ones close at hand. For me archiving, labeling, and snoozing are my best friends. They allow me to keep my inbox near zero (there’s always those sticky ones). I apply these tactics both to Gmail (personal) and Microsoft Outlook 365 (work).
This post from Clean Email includes most of the tactics that I apply daily. One Gmail feature not listed that I think is the cat’s pajamas is Multiple Inboxes. This setup allows me to see my primary inbox plus one or two mini inboxes (based on label) at the same time.
Helpful videos
Ready to take your email game to the next level? You have options.
Clean Email - inbox cleaner app
Hey - A fresh approach to email, from the folks at 37 Signals (makers of Basecamp)
Superhuman - visually stunning, blazing fast email (with optional 1v1 productivity coaching)
What I’m Enjoying
The Pump Daily: a daily newsletter, the positive corner of wellness, from Arnold Schwarzenegger 🦾, Adam Bornstein, and Daniel Ketchell
🤩 Feedback
Got feedback? Use the Comment button below (or reply to this email). I’d love to hear from you. Which tech tool is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Leave a comment with all the juicy details.
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🧾 Mission
My mission is to provide valuable, actionable information about tech tools to small business owners, entrepreneurs, and organization leaders. I’ll look for the tastiest morsels of useful news and notes to share while you focus on the success of you, your business, your organization.
Until next time.
Take care and be well,
Rob