Kelly Sue DeConnick conjures up heroes and villains every day. So when her inbox grew out of control and threatened to overtake her sanity, she knew she needed a hero.
A comic book and television writer living in Portland, Ore., Kelly was drowning in emails about her various projects—including comics such as Captain Marvel, Bitch Planet and Pretty Deadly. The relentless stream made her feel, to borrow a metaphor from writer Merlin Mann, like she was living in a rainstorm.
“It’s constant, there’s nothing you can do to stop it, and you cannot catch all the raindrops,” she said. “I just get so much mail, I absolutely cannot keep up with it.”
In addition to her work as a creative professional, Kelly Sue juggles being both a mom and the wife of a fellow comic book writer. With so much to do, she had trouble getting through her legitimate emails each day, much less the low-priority and junk messages. (The garbage does tend to pile up when you’re an early internet adopter who’s had the same easy-to-remember email address for years.)
To compound the problem, the nature of Kelly Sue’s work means she receives a lot of emails about future projects, which she would leave in her inbox until she had time to deal with them.
“I used my inbox as a reminder,” she said. “There were a lot of emails I wouldn’t file because I knew I needed to do something with them at some point but they weren’t on fire. I had things to do that were on fire, so stuff would just sit there.”
She tried printing them out and placing them in a physical trigger file, but she didn’t trust the system enough to delete them from her inbox—so she simply ended up with emails in both places.
“Literally, SaneBox keeps me sane. If there is one tool in my digital library that I would not let you take away from me, this is it.”
“Then the inbox would eventually build up. Once it gets to be over about 300, that’s the point where I just kind of give up,” she said. After trying “all kinds of email add-ons and processing systems” with no luck, Kelly Sue needed a hero.
SaneBox saved the day.
The difference “was immediate. It was absolutely immediate,” she said. “It has cut down considerably on the amount of time I spend on email, and that’s golden. That’s just precious.”
Now, instead of leaving those emails for later sitting in her inbox, she uses SaneReminders to make them disappear—and magically reappear right when she needs them. The rest of her emails get filed into folders depending on what project they’re related to.
“I really like the reminders. I trust them, and they help me clear off my desk and focus on what I need to get focused on,” she said. “It’s a simple system—and the beauty of it is, it works. I adore it.”
Now that her inbox is under control, Kelly Sue has more time for engaging her comic fans on Twitter and Tumblr and writing titles such as “Bitch Planet” and “Pretty Deadly,” both available at your local comic book retailer and on her Amazon Author Page.
After a couple of years using SaneBox, she couldn’t do without it.
“Literally, SaneBox keeps me sane. If there is one tool in my digital library that I would not let you take away from me, this is it,” she said. “I’m a creative professional, and I recommend it to everyone who has an inbox.”
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