PCM12 Podcast: How to Get to Email "Inbox Zero" -

The bane of our online world is email, despite how easy it seems to simply push “delete.” Fact is, it just keeps piling up.

Consider this: Laura Stack, a productivity expert known fittingly as The Productivity Pro, once helped someone go from having an inbox with about 26,000 emails to “inbox zero,” aka a clean inbox. The point? If that person can achieve inbox nirvana, you most certainly can. too!

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For links, a free guide and resources, keep reading for complete shownotes…

We have Laura on this week’s PC Mike Techcast, offering tips about best practices when it comes to email management. Her website is http://theproductivitypro.com/

Among myriad tips and best practices discussed, we address:

[spp-tweet “What is the best kind of email to have? Outlook, MacMail, Lotus, Gmail, Yahoo?”]
[spp-tweet “Is it realistic to get email inbox zero?”]
What’s the real problem behind the glutted inbox?
What are people so disorganized with email? Why can’t we just keep up?
How can we keep from having thousands of emails?
Laura’s suggested method of dealing with email
Best email management tools

Tech News and Trends: Net Neutrality, Cyber Security Agency, Apple Watch

The FCC has voted in favor of net neutrality (Read more)

A new government-based Cyber Security Agency has been formed to address the issues we talked about in https://pcmike.com/11 (Read more)

Apple Watch info expected at newly announced Apple event set for March 9 (Read more)

App Review: Eliminate Travel Hassle with These Apps

With brutal cold winter weather gripping much of the country, cabin fever has set in and it’s clearly time for a break. If you’re planning a spring break trip, by taking a few minutes to set up your smartphone with the right apps, you can make sure your trip is hitch-free.

One of the best overall travel-planning apps is TripIt. The app takes all of those email confirmations you’ve had piling up in your inbox and turns them into an itinerary. That means consolidating info from airlines, hotels, and car rental services and putting it into one place instead of standing in a busy airport or hotel lobby trying to find that one important email you need at that exact second. Available for all platforms Free for 30 days, but $49 a year for full features.

Viator will help you make sure you don’t miss what you shouldn’t miss from wherever you may be. The app will ensure you at least know of all the local attractions and hang-outs. But that’s not all – Viator also helps you find lower cost ways to book and take advantage of available option, receive deal notifications, check out user reviews and more. Free for Android and iOS.

If you’re looking for a fun way to capture the sights from your trip and let everyone know where you are and when, try TripColor. The social media album-creation app allows you to put everything into a portfolio with your captions and location details – including an interactive map so friends and family can “follow” you on your travels. This one is for iOS only.

See them in action on my NBC-TV report http://youtu.be/xcPftguqfGE

Interview: Laura Stack, The Productivity Pro

Laura Stack, aka The Productivity Pro, is a productivity expert who provides training and keynotes on office productivity, personal productivity, and time management.

She’s also author of the book “What to Do When There’s Too Much to Do.” Get a free audiobook version of Laura’s book when you sign up at Audible.com for a 30-day trial at http://audibletrial.com/pcmike. Audible offers over 150,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player. Simply sign up and search for Laura’s book by title.

For managing email on mobile devices, Laura recommends the app called Touchdown.

Here’s the iOS version – http://www.nitrodesk.com/iosplatform.html

The Android version is at http://www.nitrodesk.com/androidplatform.html

Online Learning – Free Trial for PC Mike Listeners

I get asked a lot about finding online courses for learning how to use photography software such as Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom CC, which are both on my recently updated list of tech gear. I talk about how I benefited from taking online courses as well as a special deal available only to PC Mike Techcast listeners at pcmike.com/lynda, where you can even try it free for 10 days and see if online learning works as well for you as it has for me. By the way, they have more than 3,300 courses to pick from – including more than 100,000 video tutorials – in subjects ranging from photography, video and audio to graphic design and web development.

With Lynda, you can get:

Unlimited access to all 3,314 courses—more than 100,000 video tutorials
Learn new software and stay up to date
Watch and learn from top experts

Listeners of the PC Mike podcast can get a free 10-day trial. Try any course. Start your trial now and see what you can learn. Just go to https://pcmike.com/lynda to get the free 10 day trial.

Free Audiobook

We have news on how you can get a FREE audiobook download and 30-day free trial by going to http://audibletrial.com/pcmike. Audible offers over 150,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player. For listeners of the PC Mike podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook download with a free 30-day trial to give you the opportunity to check out their service. To download your free audiobook today, go here.

PC Mike Techcast listeners may enjoy “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson. Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. Regular price is $34.99, but it’s free if you sign-up for a trial with Audible at http://audibletrial.com/pcmike.

We Need Your Help!

As we begin a new podcast like this, it’s very important to get a bunch of reviews to be able to show well in the iTunes listings. So if you can, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d subscribe and leave me your rating and review.

Here’s how:

First, open up the iTunes app on your computer or mobile device. Click on Podcasts on top
> From the iTunes Podcasts page, use the “Search Store” field up at the top right corner of the page. Type in PC Mike Techcast under the Podcasts category.
> Click on the logo image of the PC Mike Techcast on the search return page
> From there, you can:

1) Subscribe

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3) Leave a written review.

Thanks to all for the kind reviews we’ve received so far. I read and appreciate every review! If you haven’t left a review please do so. I will be so grateful!

And remember, you can appear in future episodes. Ask a question or voice your comments by clicking the Leave Voicemail tab on the right side of this page here at pcmike.com. You can then use the microphone on your computer to record your question.

Thank you!