Lifehack Deals: Keep Your Email Sanity with SaneBox

As we kick off another weekend, I’m sure you’re not thinking about all of the email you have to deal with when you return to work. I’m not just talking about the email that you left behind for follow-up; I’m also talking about all of the email you’ll receive over the weekend. After all, the Internet never sleeps.

Knowing all of this, can your mind truly be on the weekend at hand? Furthermore, can you keep your mind on the important stuff that goes on outside of your email inbox knowing that you’re going to have to deal with both the important and unimportant messages that will arrive in your inbox on a non-stop basis?

It’s kind of insane, isn’t it?

This is where the latest Lifehack Deals offer comes to the rescue…with SaneBox.

What is SaneBox?

SaneBox contains algorithms to determine the importance of each email that finds its way into your inbox, move unimportant messages out of your inbox into a separate folder, and then summarize them in a daily digest. I’d like to think of it as Gmail’s Priority Inbox on steroids – but it works for all kinds of email platforms. Because of this algorithm, SaneBox separates your most important emails from the ones that can wait. This allows you to prioritize the way you read your messages, saving you time and frustration.

SaneBox works with any mail client you use, such as:

GmailYahoo MailMicrosoft OutlookApple MailMozilla ThunderbirdAOL…and more

Lifehack Deals has worked out a sweet deal with SaneBox. Just sign up to enjoy a free month trial to test out SaneBox, and receive a $14.85 credit towards an annual SaneBox subscription if you decide it’s making you more efficient and effective with not only your inbox – but with your time as a whole. If it works out for you, the savings work out to three additional months of SaneBox…for free!

One of the key features of SaneBox is its ease of use – and adoption.

It doesn’t require any training. There are no plug-ins or downloads, and it works on any email client and service. Simply put: if you know how to use email folders, then you know how to use Sanebox. You manage your email like you normally would. SaneBox keeps all important emails in your Inbox and automatically sends all unimportant ones to the SaneLater folder. You can easily check them at your leisure, and you are also sent a daily SaneLater digest…so you never have to leave your inbox.

Some of SaneBox’s other features include:

Blackhole Unsubscribe: One-click-unsubscribe from people you hate getting emails fromOne-Click Defer Power: Defer non-urgent emails until laterSpam Folder Monitoring: It watches your spam folder for false positives, and fishes out emails caught there by mistakeFollowup with RemindMe: Reminders when an email you sent was unansweredSocial Network Refinement: Make your inbox is smarter by connecting to your social platforms…and much more

So sign up for this latest Lifehack Deals offer today and get started bringing sanity back into your email management with SaneBox. Just click on the “free” button on our Lifehack Deals page and you’ll be sent straight to SaneBox’s registration process. Once you finish there you will have one free month of use and if you decide you like it (which you will) you’ll have a $14.85 credit. If you decide to purchase an annual membership, it will cost you only $40 which is 33% off the price of an annual membership!

Lifehack Presents: Sparrow for iPhone Mini User Guide

We have had some very exciting news regarding Apple products in the past few weeks, but when Mr. Vardy let me in on Sparrow coming to the iPhone, needless to say I was super excited. Sparrow for the Mac is a great alternative to the native Mail.app, so I was hoping that Sparrow for iPhone would be the same thing.

After following this Lifehack Mini Guide, you should find that Sparrow could be the new Mail app replacement for your iPhone.

The Sparrow mail app is laid out a little differently than a traditional list based app. The basic interface contains three panels that you can slide back and forth. The first panel contains all of your email accounts, as well as the button to get to settings, and a way to add new accounts. The second panel is the list of all of your “mailboxes” and label (if you are using Gmail; folders otherwise). The third panel is a drill down on the current “mailbox” or folder that you tap from the second panel. So, the way you navigate is horizontally and vertical.

Accounts Panel

Folders Panel

Messages Panel

Adding new accounts

To add a new email account, go to the Accounts panel, click the “+” button at the bottom right and enter a name for the account (which will be the display name of the email), your email address, and password. If your email provider is supported (like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) the account will add automatically. If you have your own personally hosted email, then you have to enter your server credentials in to add the email address.

Here is how you get your mail done with Sparrow.

Navigating your inbox

The inbox view of Sparrow is quite intuitive.

Inbox View

To check for new mail simply drag the list all the way down to enable the refresh function. This is just like in other list based iOS apps.

You can process your inbox emails one-by-one, or you can process them in bulk. To process your email individually, you can swipe the message from the inbox to the left and you will then be given a set of options to reply, star label (or put in folder), archive the message, or delete the message.

To process your email in bulk, simply tap the Edit button at the top right and you will see a new menu bar at the top. The first checkbox button allows you to mark all of your messages as read. The other three buttons, Move, Archive, and Delete, will be enabled after you mark your messages you want to process. This is a really fast way to deal with your inbox.

Single Email Processing

Bulk Email Processing

Other mailboxes (for instance you sent mail or trash) can be dealt with the same way as your inbox. You can just as easily move and process your mail in these other mailboxes.

Single email and threaded view

Sparrow has threaded email view built right in. So if you are a Gmail user you will feel right at home.

To view your email simply tap on the item in the mailbox you are currently in. If the email has multiple replies associated with it, you will be taken to the latest message and will see the number of the mail message that you are on (for instance 3 of 3). To get to another message in the thread you can pull or push the message down or up to “slide” the next message. Or, for longer threads, you can tap the message number indicator in the heading (the 3 of 3 heading) and you will be taken to a list view of each message. To get to the message just tap on it.

Threaded Messaging

All Threads View

You can quickly process your email with the little blue arrow at the bottom right of the currently viewed email. Tapping that button will bring up buttons to create a new email, forward the current email, star the current email, archive the message, or delete the message.

The bottom message bar

You can also mark a read message as unread by tapping the the small dot in the messages subject section.

Composing messages

To compose a new message, tap the small blue button at the bottom right of any mailbox view. This will bring up the Send To screen where you can add email recipients. One of my favorite things about Sparrow right now is how you can quickly search for a contact and  choose if you want to make them a ‘To’, ‘Cc’, or ‘Bcc’ recipient in one nice little package. It’s super intuitive and the color feedback makes it very easy to use.

Compose a new message

Add To, Cc, and Bcc

To compose the message, tap the Next button after you have selected your recipients. You can then type your subject and message. To make an attachement, click on the paper clip in the subject text box. You will be given two options; to take a photo or choose one from your photo library. Once you add a picture to the email, you will see that you have a nice “gallery” at the bottom of the message where you can add new photos, delete them and view them before sending.

Add a photo to your email

Add more images or delete

If you want to change the email address you are using to send the email, simply tap the top header where the “From” listing is. You will then be given a list of all of your currently added email accounts as well as any aliases you have added (more on that in a bit).

Change the 'From' account

You can also add more people and change the there message type (To, Cc, or Bcc) by tapping on the number of people that the message is being sent to in the To text box. This will take you back to the “Send to” screen where you can edit the messages recipients.

Forwarding and replying

Once you have the basics of sending email down, forwarding and replying is a snap. You can forward and reply in two different ways, one from the mailbox view, and one from the message view.

From the mailbox view

Simply swipe the message to the right and choose the reply button (furthest to the left) to reply to the message. You will then be taken to the compose message screen where you can do all the things like changing the sent from email, adding recipients, adding attachements, etc.

Options for a single email

From the message view

Tap the Reply button at the top right of the screen to reply to the currently selected email. You can then treat it like any other composed message.

To get to Sparrow’s settings, go to the account view panel (the panel all the way to the left) and click on the settings gear in the bottom left of the screen. From the setting screen you can adjust single email accounts as well as behaviors for all accounts

Accounts

Account Settings

Under the accounts heading you can choose an account change the accounts avatar, add a custom account signature, add aliases (that is, other email addresses that this account can put in the ‘From’ field when sending an email), turn sounds on or off, and the ability to refresh your account’s contacts and labels.

The default account option under the Accounts header on the Settings screen can be used to choose a default From account.

Appearance

Pretty general settings here. You can choose how many messages to recent messages to show (from 25 to 1000), how many lines are shown in the preview, and toggles to show your avatars in your accounts screen and the ability to use Priority Inbox (if you are using Gmail).

Advanced

Here there are toggles for turning on reply to all as default, an option for when you label something (or put it in a folder) it will archive it too, and a reversed thread order for your messages (ie. newer emails will be number 1 of 3 rather than 3 of 3).

The last choice is a Panel Button option which allows you to change the behavior of the panel button in your mailbox list panel. By default, the button on the top right of the message list panel will take you back to the mailbox and label list panel, and the button at the top right of the mailbox and label list panel will take you to the account panel. By choosing Go to Accounts in the Panel Button option, the top, right button in the message list panel will take you all the way to the accounts panel.

Social Networks

As of now, you can sign-in with your Facebook account to grab avatars for all of your contacts.

To get back to your inbox quickly from another folder or mailbox view, simply tap the header of the list. For instance, if you are in a folder called “Receipts”, just tap the header of the list and you will quickly move to your inbox. Once there, you can tap the header to get to your unread and starred items.

Quickly change list views

For the Panel Button option, you probably want to choose the “Go to Accounts” option as this gives you the most flexibility. Instead of having to swipe all the way to accounts, you can simply tap the button. Then you have the option to swipe to your Mailbox panel. It’s much more versatile.

Right now there are no push notifications. Some people will find that to be a nuisance, or even possibly a deal breaker, but really it’s kind of nice to not be annoyed by endless message ‘dings’ and ‘boops’. Also, there is no way to turn off the unread count in Sparrow’s badge. Seems like a misstep.

Another potential setback is that because of iOS restrictions, Sparrow can’t be made the “default” mail app. That means, whenever you tap on an email address from, say, Safari or any other app, Mail.app will open instead. This means, that you need to have the same email accounts set up natively on your iPhone as you do in Sparrow, that is if you want to use all of these accounts to send from.

Sparrow for iPhone is a very well thought out and useful application, and for most people can totally replaced the native Mail app on their iPhone. Hopefully this mini guide will help you get you started with using Sparrow for iPhone.

Lifehack Presents: The Doit.im Mini User Guide

There are a host of free task and project management applications on the web as well as for Android and iOS. But, Doit.im is a fully cross-platform application (Windows, Mac, Web, iOS, Android, and mobile web) that seems to fly under everyone’s radar even with its new interface and awesome features.

Here is a Mini Guide to using Doit.im to get things done.

Getting your tasks into Doit.im is pretty easy, mostly becausethere are interfaces for both web and iOS/Android. That means you can add tasks quickly from anywhere.

On the web

To add a task simply tap the Add task icon at the top left of the screen. The Add Task dialogue will appear. From here you can fill in your task details like it’s name, a brief description, whether it’s a next action, a deadline, a project, context, flag, tag, repeats, reminders, and even delegation to a contact.

Of course, when collecting you may want to just do the infamous, “brain dump”, and then add these details later. You can do that by clicking on the Inbox selection on the left under the Collect heading. There, you can add tasks quickly by typing in the text box and hitting enter to add it to the list. You can also us the Smart Add Shortcuts for adding tags, projects, contexts, due dates, etc.

On your mobile device

You can simply tap the big ol’ plus button at the bottom of the screen and enter your task information.

You can fill in all of the task details if you want, but if you don’t, the task will go to your inbox for later processing.

Next, you need to process your tasks that you added to the inbox. You can make your tasks into projects, give them due dates, assign them contexts and tags, and even schedule them for next actions, someday/maybe, or waiting for. Before you do that we need to setup some contexts.

On the web

To add a new context click on the ‘+’ button on the bottom of the left sidebar and choose New Context. A dialogue will popup and you can add a new context like Online, Mac, PC, Phone, Office, etc. After you have added contexts, you can process your inbox by dragging them to the left sidebar on the appropriate context that they need to be completed in.

You can also drag your inbox items to a different “focus”, like Today, Next, Tomorrow, Scheduled (which is actually done when you give them a due date), Someday, and Waiting. Once you drag your tasks from your Inbox to a new Focus, they will reside on that list and not be in your Inbox anymore.

On your mobile device

Processing tasks on your iPhone or Android is a little less intuitive, but you can still have a go of it when you are on the go.

To process a task that is in your Inbox go to the Inbox from the home screen, tap the task you want to process. You can easily move the task to a different Focus by tapping the Move To button at the top right of the screen and choosing a focus. If you want to change any of the details of the task like contexts, tags, project, etc., tap the Edit Task button at the bottom of the View Task screen.

The only way to add new Contexts on your mobile is to create a next task, scroll down to the context option, tap it, scroll to the bottom of your contexts and tap the New Context button. Once you do that for one task though, the context will be available for all tasks.

One of the best features of Doit.im is the way what it supports grouping tasks by projects.

On the web

To add a new project, click on the ‘+’ button at the bottom of the left sidebar and choose New Project…. From there you can fill in the project details and even give it a default context. After you have created your new project you will see it in the left sidebar under the Projects menu.

To view a project, simply click on the project’s name in the Projects menu on the left sidebar. Here you will see all of the tasks that are related to the project, the ones that are marked as next, scheduled, someday, waiting, and even the completed and archived ones. To add a new task to the project you can drag the task from the inbox (or any other list) to the project in the left sidebar, or you can add a task with the Smart Add box at the top of the Project view screen (the same way you can add them to the inbox).

Another way to add a project is to use the handy Convert to project button at the top of the Inbox. Simply highlight a task in your inbox and click the Convert to project button. The project will be added to the Projects list and you will be taken to the new project’s view.

On your mobile device

To create new projects on your mobile, on the Home screen tap Projects and then tap the ‘+’ button at the top right. From there you can enter the important details of the project.

To view a project you can go to the Projects list and tap the project whose information you want to view. You can see all of the info that you can see on the web version, like you next actions, waiting fors, scheduled tasks etc. To add a new task, simply tap the huge “+” at the bottom of the screen to add a task directly to the current project’s next actions.

Another nice touch to Doit.im is the new Filters feature where you can filter your tasks and create other views (think Toodledo’s search feature and/or OmniFocus’s perspectives). Also, you can group your tasks in any way you see fit on almost any list. As of now Filters are not supported on the native iOS and Android clients.

Filters on the web

To add a new filter, click the Advanced link next to the search box in the header. At the filter dialogue you can put in information like the status of the task, priority, a deadline, the context or project. You can even sort and group the tasks buy a number of attributes. After you have set your properties of the filter you can give it a name and save it. The new filter will show up in the left sidebar under the Filters section.

These filters are very powerful. For example, you can view tasks that are related to only work projects, require a phone and a computer, are due in 2 days, and sort them by due date. You are only limited by what you can think up. To bad we can’t add these to our mobile devices yet.

Grouping

You can easily group tasks in any list by clicking the Group by link at the top of the list and choose which attribute your want to group by. Couldn’t be easier.

I’ve been watching Doit.im for a little over two years now and I have to say that it is finally starting to come into its own. With it’s excellent project handling, easy task input, grouping and filtering, Doit.im seems to be a seriously underrated task management application.

Doit.im does have some issues, sometimes slow syncing and app responsiveness as well as lack of continuity in design and features, but overall, Doit.im is one of the best free GTD/task/project management apps available today.

With the help of this Lifehack mini guide, start using Doit.im to get some stuff done on any platform.

CM Smith is a technologist, writer, and husband. He holds a degree in MIS and CMPSC from Penn State. CM is also interested in personal productivity, creativity and how to use technology to get things done. Check out his writing at devburner.net or follow him on Twitter.

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