The best techniques and technology in the world won’t help you if you don’t know how to use them. Annoyingly, with it being so new, it’s hard to tell what machine learning marketing use cases there are to base your efforts on.

In other fields, the breakthrough tech is being used in medical diagnoses, spam filtering, fraud detection, translation and more. All you need is some inspiration to get started with your own uses.

That’s why this post exists.

I’ll cover, in detail, the key ways machine learning is affecting marketing, and how it can be used to handle some of your business process automation, provide actionable data insights and predictions, and even win $1 million on Jeopardy.

Before that though, if you don’t know what machine learning is (or want a refresher), check out our other posts on the topic below:

• An Introduction to Machine Learning in Business: Analyzing Your Success
• 6 Useful Applications of AI & Machine Learning in Your Business Processes

Let’s get started.

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Motivation is a massive factor to your productivity, but you can’t stay motivated without inspiration.

Hell, success comes from surrounding yourself with people who are better than you, so why not learn from the top of the heap?

To help, we at Process Street have put together 30 productivity quotes from the best of the best.

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It sounds like a miracle pill or silver bullet. Polyphasic sleep. How to rest for two hours a day with no ill effects.

Imagine everything you could get done with that free time! No more rushing for work deadlines, wishing you could read that book that’s been haunting your bag for a year, or trying to find time to just relax.

Unfortunately, as with most miracle solutions, polyphasic sleep has major associated health risks and little in the way of proven benefits. Most of its good press is down to urban myths and overestimating the positives.

We don’t sleep just for the hell of it – humans need solid rest to process the information gained in waking hours and properly order memories. Unfortunately, the idea of periodically napping throughout the day to replace regular sleep is consistently brought up in productivity discussions.

“An hour on the dream machine keeps me sane.” – Gustav Graves, a literal James Bond villain, talking about his sleep schedule and glowing light mask… thing

The idea is nothing if not persistent, however, and so below we’ll dive into the theory behind polyphasic sleep, the alternative sleeping schedules you can try, and what the best way to get more out of your day is.

Let’s get started.

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We’ve all had those days. No matter how hard you try, you can’t focus. Everything is harder than usual and heaven forbid anyone needs you to be creative.

It’s demoralizing, stressful, and makes you incredibly inefficient. That’s why it’s important to know how to get inspired.

A word of warning, however, as this post will give you techniques to help consistently find your inspiration. These tips won’t always work (everyone’s muse is different) and so it’s best to take these practices and experiment to see what works for you.

We’ll cover useful practices such as:

• How to keep a positive mindset and be more productive
• Actions to inspire you whether you’re alone or with others
• How to recapture that spark once it starts to fade
• Changing your routine (how, when, and why)

But enough blabbering – it’s time to get inspired!

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[ Download our Free Ebook ] – Click here to download our free 111 page ebook on “How to automate the tasks you hate at work using Zapier“.

How to Automate Your Business and Personal Life

There’s always something which can make your life easier. Whether you’re stuck watching infomercials at 2 am through lack of sleep or discovering the wonders of the gimmick section of your local supermarket, the idea of a faster and easier path saturates every part of our daily lives. Even the coffee sitting on my desk could be seen as part of this hunger for convenience; I didn’t grind the beans myself, after all.

‘Typing “how to get rich quick” then hitting the search button on your PC will give you different (and even ridiculous) ways of making a dishonest living’ – Charlene Sampilo

Now, here at Process Street, we know just as well as anyone that, more often than not, any offer of help we are given with a too-good-to-be-true scheme turns out to be flawed. The ads that you see on clickbait sites, running along the lines of “I made $570 in 6 hours, and so can you!”, or some such nonsense, prey on this desire to save some of the time and effort we put into earning our daily keep.

Despite all of this, finding easier methods and time-saving skips isn’t a bad thing. The desire for efficiency without extra effort can be incredibly useful in having a better day-to-day life, whether it takes the form of dodging traffic by taking the backstreets on the way to work or saving hundreds of dollars by going to a single price comparison website.

Well, now you can take full advantage of the power of programming even if you have no experience or technical skill with computers. This little application will allow you to automate your emails, manage your social media accounts and much, much more, with the bare minimum of setup time.

We present you with Zapier.

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One problem dominates the field when setting out to write a listicle.

They’ve been done to death, and a lot of us are sick of them.

From Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post to Bustle and beyond, thousands of lists are published every year, the majority of which are not exactly high-quality.

People see lists and have been trained to think “clickbait”. That’s what this post will help to avoid and prevent.

Read on to find out:

• What a “listicle” is
• Why they are so popular (to read and write)
• How to plan a listicle in 6 steps
• How to write a listicle in 5 steps

Enough talk – let’s get to it.

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My doctor has the worst phone setup I’ve ever encountered.

Wait times are 30+ minutes, the phones are completely clogged after 10 am, and worst of all is the hold music.

A deafening din of distorted notes which at one point may have resembled “Clocks” by Coldplay. If it wasn’t for my own health, I would happily put the phone down and never ring them again.

However, unless you’re as vital to lives as a doctor, your callers won’t stand for the same treatment.

You need a solid game plan. The best hold music you can get your hands on. You need to entertain and hold their interest while they wait for someone to have the time to deal with their problems, or you can kiss that customer goodbye.

That’s exactly what this post will help you to do.

Read on to find out:

• Why you need the best hold music you can get
• Where hold music started
• How different music affects our emotions
• How to structure your hold system
• Some tips to get the most out of your phone system

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Life loves to throw things at us from all directions. The key to staying on top of everything is having an effective schedule to keep you on track.

So how the hell do you create a system for managing your tasks, events, notes, and calendar no matter where you are?

You need to create a bullet journal.

“A full 93% [of educators] state that using their Bullet Journal… makes their lives easier or significantly easier.

As one educator noted, ‘I find it difficult to track all of my classes and schedule in any other system’.” – Todd Foutz, Educators on Bullet Journaling

We here at Process Street know how difficult it is to keep track of everything, so that’s why this post will take you through everything you need to know to create your perfect bullet journal.

You’ll learn:

• What a bullet journal is
• What you’ll need to make one
• How to create a bullet journal
• How to get the most out of it

Let’s go!

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Screencasts are true powerhouses in team communication; they allow us here at Process Street to convey everything in a concise manner with both visual and audial cues, whilst giving the viewer a resource that they can run through as many times as they want.

Unfortunately, many teams put off using screencasts because you have to:

• Spend time recording it
• Wait for the file to export
• Wait for the video to convert
• Wait for the video to upload
• Remember you recorded a video that has now finished uploading
• Manually send it to the right team member

Whilst conversations are more likely to be forgotten or lost, their ease makes them the go-to method for communication (or, at best, a Skype call). This is a huge mistake.

Using just a couple of free screencasting apps you can record your video, spend three seconds saving it and then have it automatically sent to to the right person. Rather than waiting for your time zones to match up or the other person to reply, you can record, save, then get on with the rest of your day.
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“I’d give anything to work from home. It must be so relaxing!”

I’ve heard this kind of thing from my entire family, and with the increasing trend of remote workers it’s not surprising that people want to get in on the action.

The last 3 years of working remotely have taught me otherwise.

Yes, you get to work from anywhere, have more flexibility with your hours, and even wear whatever you want. However, remote work can be isolating, demotivating, stressful as all hell, and even physically damaging.

So, I’ve brought together all of the lessons I wish I’d been told when getting into the game, including:

• How to maintain a work/life balance without a traditional office
• Creating and sticking to your own schedule
• How to stay motivated without seeing your teammates
• Staying healthy and avoiding injuries common to remote work

Also, if you’re looking for remote work, we here at Process Street are hiring!

Check out our jobs page for more information.

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