Tag: textexpander

Automate the stuff you do all the time

Example of snippet used to invite for a meeting

Do you sign your emails the same way 80% (or even 100% of the time)? Do you find yourself retyping bits of text, like “let’s meet up – send me your information” and “here’s our latest press list”. If you’re like me, you’d really benefit from using a small piece of software to help you be more productive (a little bit at a time) all the time.

I’ve been using Smile Software’s TextExpander for several months now, and I’m amazed at the amount of time I save from emails I send a lot of the time.

Instead of writing, “what’s a good time to meet? Send me a few dates and times and we can find a suitable time?” I just time “t-meet” and the following text is auto-filled whereever my cursor is pointing:

Please suggest a time for us to talk at http://tungle.me/gregmeyer – this is a service I use to schedule meetings with fewer back-and-forth emails – I hope you find it useful.

I look forward to speaking with you soon.

This is useful for a few reasons:

I don’t spend as much time typing stuff over and over and make fewer mistakes.
I send similar standard emails based on tasks, which saves a lot of time in my day when I already know what I’m going to write.  I can focus on the message I’m adding to the email and less upon the actual nuts-and-bolts of the process. This makes a four- or five-sentence email into a much shorter process.

I have a standard reply when I’m solicited by people I don’t know.
This one’s my favorite – how many times have you received semi-junk email (“bacn”) and thought, “I’d like to reply, but I don’t have the time.” I now have boilerplate that I’m able to customize quickly and respond to the other email quickly without breaking my flow.

I can share my best “snippets” with my teammates.
Now that several people on my team at work are also using TextExpander, I can literally make them more productive immediately by writing a TextExpander snippet and saving it in our group Dropbox folder. This is an excellent way to standardize a marketing message, prepare three or four standard replies to an inbound query, or just to make everyone happier that they can type less.

My best productivity hack is that I get to think more about what I want to say.
Thanks TextExpander! You’ve helped me to spend more time crafting an effective message and less time typing it.

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Automate the stuff you do all the time

If you’re in a job like mine (which is likely if you’re reading this), you type. A lot. In fact, you probably type most of your day away.

Would it surprise you to know that much of the time, you’re typing the same thing over and over again? If you’re dealing with customers, talking to suppliers, or reaching out to media contacts, you’re probably either cut and pasting, riffing on a familiar pitch, or downright copying information you send from one person to an email you send to another.

I’ve been using TextExpander (http://www.smileonmymac.com/TextExpander/) to save time. It’s only been a day, and it’s already saved me 30 minutes of typing.

Assuming that I type about that much every day, work 5 days a week (hah!), that’s 10 hours of time a month. 120 hours a year. Three weeks spent typing that I otherwise could be doing important things. Like thinking. (I know what you’re thinking – productivity arguments are tough to prove given the other shortcuts we would normally use – but isn’t it worth looking at something that could save you and the rest of your team that much time for only $35?)

So take a look at what you type. You can prototype a better set of next actions, make sure you’re more consistent with your introductions, or simply not have to remember the right URL to that important piece of information (for me, it’s “d-users”, which produces “Here are a few Gist users in their own words: http://bit.ly/aFaZPq“, and other snippets.) By the way, if you want a similar strategy for the PC, check out ActiveWords (http://www.activewords.com).

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