How will Soocial save me time?

Soocial (pronounced “social”) syncs my desktop, mobile, and gmail address books in one place on the web. If I update a contact, that change flows through all of my devices. If I lose my phone — no big deal, I’ll just sync my new phone with the app.
Services like Plaxo have been around for ages, but they were designed for the pre-smartphone era. Amsterdam-based Soocial is everything Plaxo should have been; it’s simple and it just works.  Soocial provides contact syncing and reconciliation of contacts wherever they may exist, including a long list of mobile phones.  It works similarly to MobileMe, with a focus on accuracy over speed.  Changes are bi-directional and synchronization happens over the air, never again will have outdated contacts or redundant information in 3 locations.

Another strength of Soocial is its backup feature.  If you somehow manage to completely wreck your contact list, restoring it to its previous state is only a click away. All in all, Soocial brings a compelling app with a Cupertino-esque user experience.  You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Soocial offers both free and paid versions.  For those with lots of contacts, the cost is negligible ($4/month or $39/year).

Get Soocial and save time at soocial.com

I just learned that I spend a quarter of my working hours staring at my Inbox.

You may be wondering – how is that even possible?  Brett, what are you – braindead?!

Sadly…I may be.  Here’s the shocking proof – captured by Chrometa itself:

Note that in this sample, I have 37 hours of active time (so that does not count phone or meeting time – only active time on my PC).  This was recorded over a 2+ week span.

Due to product testing and such, Chrometa was not running all of the time (though my co-workers may scoff and say that I’m busted for putting in 20 hour weeks!)

AND here’s the really sad part – individual emails are recorded separately, by their subject line, and are therefore not even included in this massive number!

So the 8+ hour entry under Microsoft Outlook – Inbox is solely due to time that I spent looking at Outlook, without an individual email open.  There are a limited number of things I could have been doing, and none of them are particularly productive:

1. Checking for new email
2. Reading an email through the preview pane
3. Looking at my calendar

I’d like to look at the bright side of this finding.  Like you, I often consider myself way too busy to get everything done that I’d like to.  So in a sense, this underperformance is a good thing, as there’s a lot of room for improvement!

In fact, I know that productivity experts often assert that any time you waste is not limited that time itself, but also encompasses the “switching cost” of diverting your focus.  So if my Inbox time is in fact due to obsessively checking for new email, then I’m losing a lot more time than is even displayed here!

Since it is a new year, and a new decade to boot, it’s a perfect time to look at this area as some real “low hanging fruit” for improving productivity.  It’s safe to say that checking email every 5-10 minutes is a disastrous approach – but what is the right approach?

Personally I’m used to being on the “front lines” from a sales and support standpoint, so a once or twice a day checking of email wouldn’t suffice.  But what would the optimal frequency be?  Every hour?  Longer?  Shorter?

What email best practices would you recommend?