January 12, 2015

The World's First Email Organizing Smart Skin for Gmail

Introducing Sortd - the World's First Email Organizing Smart Skin for Gmail. Transform your Gmail Inbox into organized lists!

We are proud to announce the launch of a product that has been in the making for quite some time.  Say hello to Sortd for Gmail!

What is Sortd?

To quote one of our early users - "If Trello and Gmail had a love child it would be Sortd". Sortd has actually become known by many of our users as "Trello for Gmail".

But it deserves a little more explanation than that. This is why we made Sortd...

You flag, star and mark messages unread to try and stay on top of things, but your email gets messy and out of control. Here’s the problem - important emails get lost below the fold and you lose track. Let's face it, your Inbox was never meant to be a To Do list!

Sortd expands your Inbox into a flexible set of lists for important email and other things you need to get done. Your emails, tasks and priorities now live together in one easy-to-use drag and drop workspace. It’s still good ol’ Gmail, only now it can do way more!

There are loads of useful task management apps (in fact there are too many apps), but you already use Gmail. All your work is there, you are familiar with it, you know where to find things. Plus Gmail is awesome!

Which is why we built a Smart Skin that works inside Gmail. Sortd brings the worlds of organization and email together into one interface, so tightly integrated that you can manage your email and tasks in one place.  No need to switch to other apps to get organized.

If you are a visual thinker, you will love Sortd.

Sortd's Key Features and Benefits

Drag & drop to prioritize your email

Sortd is the perfect place for those emails you aren’t sure what to do with.  The days of a messy inbox, starring, labeling or marking messages as unread are over. You are no longer bound by the constraints of your inbox.

Sortd brings the worlds of emails and tasks together so you can focus on the emails and priorities that count - if you can’t respond to an email right away, simply drag it over to one of your Kanban task lists and get to it later.

Emails and tasks in one place, on one screen, inside Gmail!

No need to switch to another app to plan and prioritize – plan your day right inside Gmail. The spatial screen layout shows you all of your emails and tasks in one place that is easy to use and understand.

Sort and organize your email in a way that makes intuitive sense to you

With a visual column-based (swim-lane / Kanban) board layout, you can customize Sortd to best fit in with your email workflow. Change list names, add as many as you want, and drag-and-drop to re-order. With Sortd, you have complete control over where your information goes.

Spend less time in your Inbox and more time getting stuff done!

Sortd is a flexible workspace for both tasks and emails, so you can finally break free from your Inbox and focus on getting things done! You can even hide your Inbox and read/reply to email right from your lists – it's that easy to align your email habits with your goals and objectives.

Never drop a ball again

Sortd has a follow-up list especially for those items that you need to chase up. With your follow-up list always in view, it's easy to keep track of loose ends.

Inbox Zero

Now that you always have important emails in view, Inbox zero is a reality.  Welcome to clutter free email.

Why we made Sortd

Then human brain is hard-wired to compartmentalize.  We are list-makers by nature – it's just how we are built. We make shopping lists, to do lists, bucket lists... the list goes on 🤓

Gmail search for the most part works perfectly well, but it still feels comforting to know exactly where things are.  It feels good to be organized. But it also comes at a cost. How much time and attention is consumed in your day just trying to maintain some semblance of order?

Even long after we had started working on Sortd I still found myself spending an unjustifiably large portion of my day cleaning up my Inbox, trying desperately to reach the elusive Inbox Zero. I've never managed to get there. Inbox bankruptcy - yes, but Inbox Zero escaped me. So I accepted my life of email overload and the daily cleanup it requires.

Many of us are spend our days working under pressure - pulled in directions that are in no way in line with our goals and work objectives. So we spend most of our time stressed and frustrated that we aren't getting through work.

If you are falling way short of your expectations of what you know you are capable of - you're not alone.

Some people have got it all figured out – the gifted few who just know what they need to do – those annoying people who say – ‘what email problem?’, or ‘no, I don’t write anything down, I just remember what to do’.  They don’t bother to take a notepad into a meeting, and when they do take a pen it’s there to chew on.  These people somehow have it all under control.

Then there are list people.  List people love to backlog ideas, write down their life goals, plan, diarize and organize.  Some are so obsessive about it that they have committed their lives to a strict process or methodology (like GTD, Pomodoro etc).  The list people have got systems for being organized but they, like everyone else, still have email. And unfortunately, their email Inbox is the one list that isn't made by them.

Lastly, there are people who are just all over the show, they are not the list people.  Often they are defiantly against the principle of using lists at all - some might call them the right-brainers.  And seeing that these people don’t fall into the first category, they are simply disorganized, don’t see the value in prioritizing, and don’t get much done.  If you fall into this category, I’m sorry but there is no hope for you.  Probably only due to the fact that you don’t believe you need help.

For the rest of you who do want things to change, we made Sortd to help.

Our mission at Sortd is very simple - we want to help you get your day back - to have your own objectives clearly in mind and work consistently every day towards achieving them. Most importantly, we want to help you do all this in a calm, organized, orderly way – to be able to get things done and still be able to make time for your personal life, your interests, your dreams and aspirations.

We're creating the tools, methodologies, and the support - just to help you get the sense of satisfaction you deserve in knowing they are on top of everything and doing what you are meant to do.

Join us on the journey to a world with less email, more action and better sleep!

Written by
Wayne Silbermann