All posts in Productivity

What is the Best Email App for iPhone? 13 Apps Battle it Out

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In our increasingly mobile-first world, we’ve come to rely on getting business done on the phone much more than ever before.

The difficulties of efficiently managing email on a smartphone has likely been a major factor for the rise in team communication software like Slack.

However, it doesn’t need to be this way. And we can’t let it be this way.

That’s why this Process Street article is dedicated to exploring the different email apps for iPhone in order to find which ones have which strengths, and to crown an overall winner.

The apps will be judged primarily on how well they achieve their intended aims, with depth of features and ease of use affecting their scores from that base. I’m going to try not to consider price while calculating a score, but I will mention pricing where relevant.

You can check out the quick overview of scores below and the full breakdowns app by app through the rest of the article.

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How to Beat Procrastination and Use It to Your Advantage

how to beat procrastination

So, you want to know how to beat procrastination? Well, here’s the simple answer.

You can’t.

At least, not completely.

No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to completely eliminate procrastination. There will always be tasks you put off, and there will always be projects that get shelved in favor of others.

You can, however, learn how to use procrastination to your advantage and make what many see as a chronic issue into one of your greatest strengths.

First, however, you need to know your enemy. That’s why today I’ll be covering:

  • What causes procrastination (and when that isn’t a problem)
  • The benefits of procrastination you can take advantage of
  • The drawbacks that can come back to bite you
  • How to use it to your advantage

It’s time to stop stalling and get stuck in.

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Little’s Law: How to Analyze Your Processes (with Stealth Bombers)

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Simple as it may be, Little’s law is an incredibly powerful tool in the arsenal of almost any team. From performing back-of-the-napkin calculations to showing the performance of a system over time, this formula is one of the key building blocks to running an efficient business.

Without Little’s law, Lean and Kanban wouldn’t exist, and key elements of America’s nuclear deterrence would be left up to chance.

After all, you can’t fly B-2 stealth bombers into action if they’re all under maintenance due to bad queue management.
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The Best Browsers, Compared with Data: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Safari, and Vivaldi

As a gateways to the internet, browsers are one of the most popular types of software out there. Everyone needs one, but which is the best? The market changes so quickly, it can be hard to keep up with the facts.

Which is the fastest? Which has the best extensions? Which is the most secure? While many people use Chrome, or their default pre-installed browsers, this doesn’t necessarily indicate a ‘best’ browser.

If you’re reading this, you want to find the fastest, most capable, browser for your needs. Finding the most popular isn’t enough, because those stats aren’t always related to quality.

Browser popularity data from W3Counter, retrieved October 2017.

In this article, I’m going to use hard data to decide on the best browser on the market, looking at the most popular options: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Opera, and Vivaldi.

I’ll compare speed, memory usage, range of extensions, privacy, and usability.

Looking for a new browser? Want to be sure you’re using the best technology on the market? Keep reading for a full data-driven comparison after a general overview.

Click here to skip down to the hard data and avoid the broad overviews

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The 17 Best Apps for Business: A Look at Our Team’s Home Screens

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With today’s fast pace of living, it’s vital to have on-the-go access to everything that’s important to your work.

Rather than staring blankly out of a window on your train or bus to work, you could then instead be planning your day and organizing meetings, or commenting on tasks and sorting through your inbox to avoid getting distracted at the office.

However, with the sheer variety of technology on offer it’s also difficult to know what mobile apps you should be using.

That’s why I asked the Process Street team to share the best mobile apps for business they have installed and how they use them.

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From the most valuable apps across our entire company to one-off niche cases that could do with a little more exposure, in this article I’ll highlight the apps that let our team stay productive and make every moment count.

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The Complete Guide to Dictation Software: How I Saved My Hands

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Dictation software isn’t just something that can save you time by typing out your speech and performing commands. Talking instead of typing can and will help you prevent lasting damage to your hands.

You might think that sounds silly, and so did I.

I’m 23 – way too young to be worried about my joints or work-related injuries (my work isn’t exactly manual labor).

Then my hands seized up. Repetitive strain injury.

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The 15 Most Useful Evernote Alternatives for Notes, Screenshots and Documents

Evernote is the Swiss army knife of productivity tools. It does a hell of a lot, but doesn’t do anything amazingly well. Maybe it was designed to replace your need for multiple apps by rolling them all into one, but its feature bloat makes it a pain to use, and there are many Evernote alternatives you can use instead.

We’ve already written a lot about Evernote; everything from Evernote templates to a comparison against Microsoft OneNote. In this article, I’m going to suggest worthy alternatives to Evernote in the areas of notes, screenshots, documents and bookmarking. While technically Evernote does do all of these things, there are more options out there.

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How To Avoid Distractions and Consistently Hit Your Targets

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“I won’t get distracted”, you tell yourself, “I’ve got a deadline – I’ll be fine”.

Next thing you know you’re looking at the goals-per-game statistics for second division Scottish soccer team Raith Rovers from their 1976/77 season.

I know because it happened to me. It was 1.15 goals-per-game. In the league only – not including cups.

This is why I’ve had to drill myself to be able to work effectively, and why I’m telling you how to avoid distractions today.

how to avoid distractions getting distracted up squirrel

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How to Onboard a New Virtual Assistant: 2 Real Processes We Use

For startups and small operations, virtual assistants can be vital.

The general idea is: instead of hiring a full-time specialist or wasting time on data entry, you hire a VA.

It sounds easy. You just hire a VA, right?!

But what happens after that is the hard part. Straight after hiring comes the onboarding and training. That’s the part where you get your new VA up to speed with how your company works, and how the tasks, rules, and responsibilities are going to be different from the other companies they’ve worked for.

You’ll need to explain how to use your stack of tools, and how they can work as efficiently as possible. It’s also a process for you: you need to remember to check in, make sure everything’s set up properly, and review their performance.

In this post, I’m going to go over some of the key things to keep in mind when onboarding a virtual assistant, and share two of our internal processes with you.

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How to Wake Up Early and Save 91 Hours You Waste Snoozing

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Alarm goes off. “Five more minutes”. Snooze. Sleep. Repeat until you’re late.

Ignoring your alarm repeatedly creates a habit, and habits are hard to break. You start to ignore it more and more because you’ve conditioned yourself to do so. Even if you want to get up early, your subconscious is working against you.

Small snoozes quickly add up too – just 15 minutes each day sends 91 productive hours down the drain every year. That’s more than two working weeks you waste each year.

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Knowing how to wake up early is only half the battle – to start your day the right way, you need to make it an automatic reaction to your alarm.

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