A System For Simplicity At Work

Polyvore CEO, Jess Lee, shares a system for work simplicity.

A pretty extreme example of this is that we did a “simplification month” in January. We just asked everyone in the company to make a list of everything that they do, identify the things that are important, and for the rest of the list, simplify it, optimize it or delete it so we can get the company to the simplest possible state.

Full Story: Jess Lee of Polyvore, on the Value of Simplicity

My 7 Favorite Email Tools

Email is something we all have in common. In spirit of sharing more of the things that I find useful, here are seven of my favorite free email tools. These forms make me better at email in some shape or form.

Not all of these email tools are game-changers; some are more novelty. Like anything I recommend on my blog, I have personally used these email tools. and found short and/or long-term value.

Really Good Emails is a user generated collection of the best marketing emails. If you have customers of any kind, this site will be of value to you.

The Email Game. Before I crushed my inbox, The Email Game was my favorite tool for getting to inbox zero. Try it. It works, and it’s kind of fun.

TinyLetter. I want to have one. I love the way it feels. I love the way the emails look.

Boomerang. File this under ‘make email work for you’. If you are not careful, Boomerang will make you look like a super-human. For example, if you e-mail someone and do not hear back in two days, the message will appear back in your inbox, making it super easy to follow-up.

Send from Gmail. This is a Chrome extension made by Google. The extension is an email tool that removes a step from sharing links. Rather than open your inbox and paste the link, you tap the button and it cues up a compose message box with your link already in the message form. Just add the email address of your choice and hit send. I recently started using to quickly share important content, and I love it.

SaneBox. I used this a while ago, and it was great. I think I stopped using it when my free trial ended, but I still recommend this tool if your inbox is in bad shape.

UnrollMe. This helped me unsubscribe to hundreds of unwanted newsletters that were cluttering my inbox.

I purposely didn’t include tools that I think most of my friends already know about. For example, I use Mailchimp for sending newsletters and gmail shortcuts to save time.

What are your favorite email tools? I’d love to know.