The Baydin Blog | Email, Startups, and Search

We’re looking to find a suitable to do list application from Windows. It would be great to have something as elegant looking as Things for the Mac that syncs with the cloud, runs on Windows, and is accessible via the iPhone. Web-based is fine, but it needs to use Gears or AIR to run without a network connection.

The list of requirements for a high-quality to do list for me (in rough priority) are:

• Runs in Windows
• Create a new task with one keyboard shortcut (ideally the enter key)
• Accessible via iPhone
• Supports multiple lists
• Somewhat attractive and somewhat elegant
• Rearrange Tasks

Has anyone found a great app like this?

We’ve tried Remember the Milk (multiple lists support sucks), Google Tasks (works OK, but has some quirks, and native app would be better), Tudomo (no web/iPhone access, plus expensive), FruitfulTime (entering a new task is a 3-step process, total dealbreaker). Since we build Outlook addins, we’d use Outlook, but we can’t get to the tasks in the cloud. 

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It’s already 11 AM, and you’re staring into the monitor with your eyes glazed over. There are still 21 messages in your inbox, and none of them are compelling. So instead, you decide to read a little bit of news and catch up on how the Red Sox did last night.

Next thing you know, it’s lunchtime, and there are still 21 unread messages in your inbox.

We’ve all been there, and that’s part of why we included a special structured procrastination tool in Boomerang.

Good procrastination vs Bad procrastination

Procrastination is like cholesterol – there’s a good kind, and a bad kind.

The real problem isn’t that we can’t face dealing with any of these messages. It’s that the number of them is overwhelming, especially since many of them require at least a couple minutes worth of yak shaving to get them finished.

At this point, we can either fall into the trap of “bad procrastination” and go check out some links on the web, or we can use “good procrastination” to help us get rid of some of the less-important or more annoying email messages for a while, so we can focus on the more valuable and easier messages first. 

Here’s how Boomerang can help

Just right-click the one of the low-priority emails that you want to deal with later, hover over the Boomerang menu, and choose to bring the message back at a random time.

Use Boomerang to bring the message back before 5pm today, within a week, or sometime in the next month. Boomerang will return the message to your inbox, unread and flagged, for you to work on some undetermined but bounded time later. That way, instead of dealing with 21 messages all at once, you can take care of each one individually.

Of course, the messages are still accessible, right there in the Boomerang folder. So if you find yourself a few extra minutes, you can work on them right away.

It’s all about willpower

Scientists have discovered that the root cause of procrastination is often that people have only a limited amount of willpower. Clearing out some of the messages that you don’t want to deal with right away can make it easier to get your to-do list under the threshold of how much willpower you have right now.

You can deal with the other messages later, after your willpower has had time to build back up. Try using Boomerang for structured procrastination today (it’s free to try), and discover a better way to procrastinate.

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We previously talked about a great way to measure how productively we’re working using a utility called RescueTime. But even when we know how effectively we’re working and have formulated a plan for how to improve, it’s still hard to execute. Distractions are insidious – it always feels harmless to spend just a few seconds or a minute on something else. But it’s easy to let a small amount of time browsing the web or playing a game to grow into a life of its own.

The best way that I have found to stick to a “fuzzy” goal, like spending less time on sports forums, or getting to bed at a reasonable time, is to make the goal concrete instead of fuzzy.  That is, set a realistic goal that is measurable – so that achieving it becomes black-and-white.

Making goals actionable – and with teeth!

That’s where stickk.com comes in. It’s the brainchild of Yale Law Professor Ian Ayers (author of Super Crunchers, which I highly recommend), and it encourages you to sign a contract that you will achieve your goals.  You can set the stakes if you fail, appoint a friend to monitor your progress, and send out weekly achievement emails to people who support you in your goal.

Lots of the contracts taken out on Stickk are just for bragging rights, but many people (including me), have taken out contracts where the stakes are monetary.  You pay Stickk the amount you are “wagering” on yourself, and when you report back that you achieved your goals, they return your money.  If you fail to achieve your goals, they donate the money to charity instead.

There is one even more intriguing twist to the site – you can ask Stickk to send your money to an “anti-charity” if you fail to achieve your goal.  For instance, on one of my goals, I asked them to send the money to a nasty anti-environmental lobbying group if I failed.  When confronted with the prospect of not only losing my money, but losing it to a group encouraging pollution, I had plenty of motivation to make sure I hit my target every week.

Lessons learned

One key to making stickk work well for you is to make sure that the goal is something you can accurately measure and something completely in your control. For example, I had bad results with a goal I set to get to work on time every morning.  I was doing pretty well until two weeks in, when an accident on I 93 backed up traffic for two hours.  I was late, and failed to achieve my goal for that week, sending me into a tailspin.  A better goal for me would have been to make it so that I left my house before a certain time.

The Productivity Challenge

After giving myself a couple weeks to acclimate to the RescueTime measurement system, I think I have a good ballpark for how well I’m working, and I think I have all the categories set up correctly. Now that I know how much room I have to improve, and a guess as to how much improvement is reasonable, I’m taking out a commitment contract to increase my productivity percentage (as RescueTime measures it), and to limit the amount of time I spend on very distracting activities.

We’ll see how well it works. Have you taken out a contract like this? If so, let us know how it works for you in the comments. And if you’re interested in taking on a productivity-boosting challenge along with us, let us know that in the comments or connect with us on Twitter.

Also, you can get free stuff for achieving specific business goals if you particpate in the Staples Stickk To It Challenge.

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Baydin was featured in an analyst report today.  Not an April Fool’s joke

The analyst firm is ZapThink, and their focus has been on enterprise SOA and cloud computing initiatives.  They are now taking a deeper look at the startup ecosystem – both describing how startups can create value for enterprises and helping startups themselves figure out how to position themselves to get larger companies as customers and form partnerships. 

They are beginning their work with startups with a new report format called ZapTakes.  ZapTakes are quick one-page synopses of promising startups.  They describe the problems the startups are tackling and how their solutions work at a high level.  Based on a conversation with the founders and some time spent with the products, they describe the areas in which the startups show the most promise and the key areas where they need to improve. 

Baydin was featured in the first ZapTake, which was published this morning. 

According to Jason, “Baydin (www.baydin.com) targets the information overload problem so prevalent in organizations today by helping individuals manage the information in their email inboxes and on their corporate portals.” 

To read more, get the full report here:
http://www.zapthink.com/2010/04/01/baydin-email-collaboration-productivity-enhancer/

We think it’s a pretty reasonable summary for such a short format.  Of course, we think the technology Baydin’s working on has 6-lightbulbs of game changing potential (since we’re totally revolutionizing the way people search for information inside the firewall), but we’ll give ‘em a pass on that

Since they’re just launching this new format, the report is available for free.  If you’re an enterprise or an investor looking to learn more about startups that are poised to make a big impact, this is a good place to start.  If you’re part of a startup that wants to be featured in one of these reports, we’re happy to make intros to the folks at ZapThink. 

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