For small businesses, it can be difficult to stay on top of clients, leads, and projects that are evolving every day. Here’s how Daylite can help supercharge your team to shine brighter, handle more clients, close more deals, and execute more projects. Designed for Mac, iPhone, and iPad exclusively. 

Daylite empowers small businesses by improving team efficiency and making collaboration easy—everything is organized, searchable, and accessible (even offline). You can easily access information and segment data tailored to your specific client’s history. You can manage and share everyone’s schedules, project status, and next steps. 

Seamless Apple Integration 

Daylite is the only Mac CRM and productivity app that integrates with Apple devices and most of the built-in Apple apps and features, like direct Apple Mail integration. You and your team can capture all email communication in one place and create opportunities, appointments, and tasks right from Apple Mail. 

Linking 

Its linking capability is what makes Daylite shine. You can link emails, notes, tasks, projects, appointments, and other records to existing contacts in Daylite. This enables teams to quickly and clearly view an organization’s structure and access the information they need in a unique way. 

CRM + Project Management 

Daylite’s productivity-focused design helps you and your team get more done throughout the full customer lifecycle. From meeting prospects and winning business to managing the moving pieces on projects, all the way through to following up on referrals and repeat business, it’s all done in Daylite.
If you live by the mac, you’ll love Daylite. Start your free 30-day Daylite trial today!

I often hear from listeners/readers looking for a research solution in the Mac ecosystem. My favorite app for this, without a doubt, is DEVONthink. DEVONthink is the most professional document and information management application for the Mac. It’s the one place for storing all your documents, snippets, or bookmarks, and working with them.

The Integrated A.I. assists you with filing and searching, while the extensive search language with advanced Boolean operators.

DEVONthink features a Flexible sync system that supports many cloud services – or lets you synchronize over the local network too – with everything securely encrypted. This gives you the choice for however syncing works best for you!

It has Smart rules and flexible reminders that let you automate all parts of your workflow and delegate boring, repeating tasks. Let DEVONthink automatically organize your data with rules you define!

DEVONthink’s AppleScript dictionary is one of the largest on the Mac. There’s no part of DEVONthink that can’t be automated. Extend DEVONthink’s functionality with your own commands by adding them to its Scripts menu.

Even templates can have scripts inside and you can set up new documents with data from placeholders, or inserted by your own AppleScript code.

And, of course, there’s so much more, from an iOS companion app, email archiving, scanning, or even an embedded web server for sharing your data securely with your team.

I use DEVONthink for document storage and organization. I also use it for research both as MacSparky and a lawyer. I love the way the DEVONthink developers have thought through all the little details from syncing to using the built-in artificial intelligence.

I find the combination of innovative features and automation support irresistible. Interested? MacSparky readers can get a 20% discount on DEVONthink..

My thanks to TextSniper for sponsoring MacSparky.com this week. I’m a fan of this app.

TextSniper is a Mac OCR app that can extract text anywhere on your Mac’s screen and automatically save it to your clipboard so that you can paste it anywhere you need it. It can even read the text to you. The whole thing works a lot like the built-in screen capture on the Mac, just way more powerful.

Also, TextSniper doesn’t collect your data. The text recognition is processed on your Mac and does not require an internet connection. 

With TextSniper, you can:

• Quickly get a text from PDFs, Zoom calls, Presentations, and Videos. 
• Copy text from anywhere, even images and websites that don’t let you select text.
• Quickly grab data like email addresses, phone numbers, and links.
• Read QR codes and barcodes.
• Get text out of just about any image format, including JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP.

I find myself using TextSniper constantly in my daily work. As an example, my wife sent me a picture of a letter she received. I needed to grab some data from the letter (account number, etc…) TextSniper came to the rescue.

TextSniper works with macOS Catalina and later and also works with Parallels Desktop

Get TextSniper now and enjoy the fastest way to copy uncopyable text, wherever it may be. Use promo code TS2022 to get an additional 25% off. 

Do you ever feel like you forgot to do something, but you can’t remember what? Oh, yeah, that email you meant to respond to but just didn’t because … life. SaneBox, this week’s sponsor at MacSparky, has got you covered. 

SaneNoReplies tracks emails that you haven’t responded to yet. With SaneNoReplies, you can monitor who you haven’t replied to yet and follow up with them. “What’s this magic,” you’re asking. All of the emails you haven’t responded to end up in one place with SaneBox: the SaneNoReplies folder. Emails that haven’t received a reply go in here, allowing you to keep track of whom you’re supposed to get back to. Now no one will slip through the cracks. It’s a round up of the emails you need to follow up, all in one place.

Interested? SaneNoReplies is included with all SaneBox plans. Click here to sign up for your free trial, and you’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Give it a whirl.

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Daylite, the best native CRM app for your Mac. It is that simple. Daylite has been around a long time, yet it has evolved with great features like cloud sync and a modern user interface. You should check it out. Rather than me waxing on poetic about Daylite, the team at Daylite wanted me to write about productivity this month (after all, Daylite is all about boosting you and your team’s productivity!), and I’m glad they did because I’ve got a lot on my mind about time block lengths.

One of the most common bits of feedback I get from people trying to hyper-schedule is that it falls apart on them after a day or two. This, most often, is the result of people making unrealistic block lengths. For example, say you want to work on your personal cloaking device tomorrow, and you give it an hour block. Then when the time comes, you spend three hours working on the project. That’s great that you got three hours of deep work done, but it blows your daily schedule to pieces. Then you feel like you’re behind on everything else for the rest of the day.

The failure when that happens, usually, is in the planning. Specifically, as humans, we tend to be way too optimistic in estimating how long things will take. If you had thought about it the day before, could you have anticipated you’d need three hours instead of one? If you’d planned your day around three hours (instead of one), wouldn’t things have gone a lot better?

If you want to seriously give hyper-scheduling a go, I’d recommend a few things:

1. Overestimate the time it takes.

If you think something is going to take an hour. Multiply that by 2 (or 3!) when making your plan. This is particularly true for project work. The kind of stuff that requires you to dig in always takes longer than you think. If you over-estimate and finish early, give yourself a break (or work on something else). Most likely, though, by doubling your estimate, you’ll just be giving yourself adequate time to finish your work. Once you consistently land within your time estimates, you’ll see the real benefit of time blocking.

2. Keep score.

Whether you do time tracking or keep notes, find a way to track how often and how badly you miss your estimates. That can create a feedback loop for you when planning future blocks. By paying attention, over time, you’ll get much better at estimating how long your work will take, and your scheduling will get a lot more effective.

3. Be kind to yourself.

You will make mistakes when trying to make these kinds of changes. As you are learning how to get better at this stuff, do not beat up on yourself. This stuff is hard. With a bit of patience and time, it does get a lot easier. You’ll see.

When blocking your time, your calendar is your friend. And do you know an app with excellent calendar integration? Daylite! See how I did that? (Daylite has a whole suite of tools for small business including a calendar.) My thanks again to Daylite for sponsoring MacSparky this week and letting me turn this sponsored post into a content post.

Looking your best isn’t just about what you see in the mirror. When you hand someone your business card, you also want to look your best. Thoughtful. Classy. Refined. Memorable. Is that you? 

That’s also Hoban Cards. Hoban Cards is a tiny letterpress printing shop that specializes in minimal printing for creative individuals and small businesses. They not only print business cards but also calling cards, stationery, thank yous, invites, wedding invites and RSVPs, dinner menus, wine lists, coasters, and clothing tags. Watch their letterpress in action craft tiny pieces of personalized art.  

You could pay less for something that will come off a laser printer. Or you can take it to the next level with a Hoban Card. There are beautiful templates and typography to choose from. The crisp letterpress impression will make a splendid notable impression when you hand them out. Use “MacSparky” to get $10 off any order. Get yours today.

New year, new you going as planned? If you resolved to declutter and clean up your inbox for the new year, consider giving SaneBox a try. You can test it out for yourself with their 14-day free trial.

There’s nothing to download, and SaneBox works with any webmail/email client. So, why SaneBox? SaneBox will learn from you how to manage your inbox.

They have powerful A.I. that analyzes your email history and learns what is important to you. Not every email needs to be read immediately. There are some that you can read and respond to later, and SaneBox will automatically move those to your SaneLater folder after some training. That leaves only the important messages in your inbox so distractions are kept to a minimum.

Then, SaneBox will send you a daily digest, which summarizes the new email in your SaneLater folder, and here you can check if there any mistakes or emails you need to move or re-train. Not all email is created equally.

Give SaneBox a whirl for free for 14 days and get the robots to help manage distracting unimportant email. 

My thanks to TextSniper for sponsoring MacSparky.com this week. I’m a fan of this app.

TextSniper is a Mac OCR app that can extract text anywhere on your Mac’s screen and automatically save it to your clipboard so that you can paste it anywhere you need it. It can even read the text to you. The whole thing works a lot like the built-in screen capture on the Mac, just way more powerful.

Also, TextSniper doesn’t collect your data. The text recognition is processed on your Mac and does not require an internet connection. 

With TextSniper, you can:

• Quickly get a text from PDFs, Zoom calls, Presentations, and Videos. 
• Copy text from anywhere, even images and websites that don’t let you select text.
• Quickly grab data like email addresses, phone numbers, and links.
• Read QR codes and barcodes.
• Get text out of just about any image format, including JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP.

I find myself using TextSniper constantly in my daily work. As an example, my wife sent me a picture of a letter she received. I needed to grab some data from the letter (account number, etc…) TextSniper came to the rescue.

TextSniper works with macOS Catalina and later and also works with Parallels Desktop

Get TextSniper now and enjoy the fastest way to copy uncopyable text, wherever it may be. Use promo code TS2022 to get an additional 25% off. 

This week MacSparky is sponsored by Timing. Timing is a time tracking app that records your time automatically and then reviews it for you later.

It’s a new year and time to get rolling with some new habits. The problem is that your perception of how you are spending your time is a lot different from reality. How can you make changes without good data? It’s hard to track your time if you’re doing a bunch of different things at once or don’t have the right tools.

That’s where Timing comes to the rescue. With Timing, you instantly see how you are spending your time so you can work more productively and make smarter decisions about how to spend your time.

The Timing app makes recording and reviewing your time easy with automatic tracking and a simple interface for adding details about what you did each day so you can see how much time was focused on each task. In addition, you can use Timing to share projects and times across your team while preserving each team member’s privacy.

I even made some screencasts on how I use Timing. I run Timing on my Mac every day, and you should too. Download the free 14-day trial today and get 10% off for the first year!

The New Year is here, and my favorite software sale is nearly over. WinterFest is the annual sale from a collection of the best indie-Mac software developers. Everything is 25% off and there are some remarkable apps you can get, but not for much longer.

Just some of the software on sale at WinterFest that I dig:

Scrivener – The killer novel-writing tool.

Tinderbox – The idea organizer and planner.

BBEdit – THE power tool for text.

Hook Pro – The link-everything tool I use for contextual computing.

Marked – Brett Terpstra’s Markdown (and more) toolset.

Nisus Writer Pro – The word processor made exclusively for the Mac.

DEVONthink – Do you really need me to explain DEVONthink?

Scapple – An idea capture and process tool from the maker of Scrivener.

There are a bunch more. Just go to the WinterFest website and see what tickles your fancy.

This year, I bought HyperPlan from WinterFest. It’s an interesting visual planning tool that lets me use a graphic model to connect ideas. This is just the kind of thing I can get excited about.

All of the software in WinterFest comes from long-time, respected Mac software developers that are all about making great software. Even though everything is discounted you’ll get full versions with complete support and upgrade privileges. Go check it out before the sale ends.