How Fastmail + Morgen power Tom’s productivity
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Fastmail is happy to partner with other tools and services, like Morgen, that help our customers make better use of their valuable time. Check out how Tom Mault, Head of Digital Transformation Consulting at Zürich Bike Box Rental, increases his productivity by using Fastmail and Morgen.
1. What are your favorite Fastmail features?
I looked around at options, and Fastmail stood out as the leader, offering a great interface, features, and pricing model.
I use Fastmail’s Masked Email feature. I use it for a simple layer of privacy when signing up for marketing email newsletters or waiting lists. I adopted this very early; I initially purchased a second domain with no identifying data (two random but easy-to-remember words) and set up wildcard forwarding & sending from Fastmail. When Masked Email was launched natively inside Fastmail, it was a nice quality of life improvement, which only improved when Fastmail launched their Masked Email integration with 1Password.
2FA authentication with physical security keys is something that I have adopted across all key services. Email is the center of my digital life, so it makes sense to protect it! I have seen firsthand the pain that occurs when a hacker gets inside your email account. My grandparents got hacked a few years ago, and it took weeks to unwind all the services the hacker used their email access to reset passwords. The hacker even did cheeky things like enrolling themselves as a backup email address on other services. So, knowing I can defend my email account with a physical 2FA key is a no-brainer!
It is rare to feel that an email service understands you and builds features that will make email better—but I genuinely feel this when I receive Fastmail product updates!
2. How do you maintain your workflow?
The core of my workflow is to triage email from the Inbox and to either action it immediately or sort it into one of the following custom folders.
Next Actions are tasks that will take longer than a few minutes to complete but are important to get done.
Waiting For is something I will need to act on when another person completes it or if I would like to track its progress. An example might be moving an email about an online shopping order here until it gets delivered.
Reference is information that is likely to have enduring value, which I will check in the near future. I often create sub-folders here. For example, one of my hobbies is Triathlon, so when I go to races in other countries, I will move emails from the race organizer, flight details, and hotel bookings into this folder. Then, I have one place to find everything I need about that race in one easy-to-check place—no stress on race morning when I need to find my registration confirmation!
I also use rules and filters to do a couple of things. Firstly, I filter off emails from Substack into a separate folder called To Read under the inbox and auto-forward all emails to my Readwise Reader inbox. Readers have become a key part of how I handle book notes and reading, and it was super simple to set up the right filters in Fastmail to get all my content out of my inbox and into a reading tool.
I also use filters to pull out emails I want to review on a less urgent cadence. Underneath Inbox, I have a folder called Weekly, where emails from sources like The Economist and NYTimes go - I don’t want to blast myself with news when I open my inbox, so hiding it until I want to review it works well for me!
Other than this, I use Archive constantly. Data is cheap, and you never know when you might want to recall an email!
3. What are your favorite Morgen features?
Morgen has nudged me to be more intentional about my day. The reality of my job running a Consulting team is that I have a lot of conference calls throughout the day, aligning and meeting with various people. Using Morgen to schedule key tasks into my calendar and click them as done has helped me be more intentional about carving out time to get 2 or 3 key items done in a day.
Morgen is the first and last thing I check on most work days. I love getting a view of what’s coming up on the agenda tomorrow, and in the morning, I use it to pause and consider whether my Key Tasks are reflected in the schedule of the work day.
4. What do you like about using Fastmail and Morgen together?
I run my personal life out of Fastmail. It has all my data in my Inbox, and my Fastmail calendar is full of personal activities.
One of my favorite things about using Fastmail and Morgen together is that I know my data is secure, but right alongside it, I can also securely view my work calendar. I don’t want personal appointments in my work calendar, and vice versa. So, this combo lets me get a merged view that respects personal and private data.
I use this combined view of work and personal calendars a lot. For example, when checking to see if my wife and I are free on a given date, I can quickly check whether I am traveling for work that day. It’s a low-stress way to ‘log in’ to work data without feeling overwhelmed by opening my work email and seeing many things I need to take care of on Monday during the weekend.
Between Fastmail and Morgen, I feel I have the right tools to get things done while maintaining security and privacy.
5. Do you want to tell people anything about how you stay productive online?
Yes:
- Learn the keyboard shortcuts! This can be a huge timesaver.
- Think about your personal knowledge management system.
- Control the scroll - I still find myself chasing the dopamine of scrolling through social media, and you can see how products are changing to keep your attention. Try to be intentional and ask yourself what you want out of social media.
Start using Fastmail and Morgen together today.
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