A good article on Harvard Business Review by Peter Bregman on why multi-tasking is stressful and unproductive. So, the next time you are working on your projects try to switch off your phones, IM’s, email and see if working on one thing at a time helps you complete the task at hand and makes you feel lighter…

Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%. We don’t actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.

Read all of it without multi-tasking…

A quick video showing how you can add your tasks from anywhere in DeskAway…

According to Stone, she first noticed the email apnea phenomenon in herself, as she was checking her email one day. Stone realized that she was holding her breath as she sifted through her inbox, as her brain whirled and she tried to figure out where to file things, what to respond to, and how to deal with the assortment of emails which arrives every morning. Once she noticed her own email apnea, Stone started looking around her, and she noted that other people apparently did the same thing, breathing shallowly, hyperventilating, or not breathing at all while checking their emails, using their phones, and engaging in similar tasks.

Read more about email apnea

I would assume this happens more often in the morning when we strive to check our mails before anything else - have they replied? did something go wrong? do I need to reply to this person right away? how am I going to sift through so many emails? etc… What could work is to become aware of the amount of information coming in and then going through/ replying to the ones that matter today. Other stuff can wait for a day or two. ‘Urgent’ and ‘real-time’ are overrated words.

What do you mean when you say an app is ’simple’?

a. Easy to use
b. less features

If you said (b) then read on…

Everyone wants simplicity. The same desires are there whether the device be a new cellphone or a shop tool, the dashboard of an automobile or the choices while shopping in a store. “Why can’t my technology be as easy to use as my garage door opener?” asks one paper on the topic: “one button and it opens or shuts the door. Simple, elegant.”

The cry has been picked up by everyday people, newspaper reviewers and professionals alike. But if it is so obvious, if the need is so great, why don’t the products match the cry?

Read more…

Last week, our payment processor 2Checkout added support for Paypal as one of their payment options in addition to payment via a credit card. This is great news since DeskAway users who wish to pay by PayPal can do so while upgrading their account.

See the announcement on 2Checkout’s website.