Pocket

Our What’s In My Pocket series offers an inside look at the interesting people who use Pocket to elevate their work and life. Know someone who fits the mold? Let us know at stories@getpocket.com. Next up, we talk to Director of Marketing at Pencils of Promise, Natalie Ebel.

At Pocket we believe in the power of literacy and how it empowers people from around the world to read, engage, and build great things. That’s why we are proud partners with Pencils of Promise for International Literacy Day to raise awareness of the 250 million children around the world who don’t have basic reading or writing skills. You can get involved here!  

Name: Natalie Ebel
Bio: Director of Marketing at Pencils of Promise.
Location: New York, New York
Little-Known Fact: I have a basset hound (#winstonebel) and take hip-hop dance classes at Broadway Dance Center.
Twitter Handle: @Natalieebel @pencilsofpromis

Can you tell us about your background and work?
I am the Director of Marketing at Pencils of Promise (PoP), a for-purpose organization working to provide quality education to primary school aged students in underserved communities in the developing world. I came to PoP from the book publishing industry; I’ve always been drawn to great storytelling.

We’re really excited to be partnering with Pencils of Promise. Can you tell us more about the mission, how you got involved, and what International Literacy Day is all about?
Adam (our founder), the rest of the PoP team, and I have been super avid Pocket users for quite a while. On any given day you can find several articles being passed around Team PoP via Pocket.

Pocket is a dream partner for PoP for International Literacy Day. PoP’s mission is to empower primary aged students with access to quality education and we are currently working to do so in Ghana, Guatemala and Laos.

Over 250M kids lack basic reading and writing skills worldwide. Everyday, Pocket users are able to consume all of the world’s information at their fingertips across devices. International Literacy Day is a chance for all of us to step back and be thankful for the education we’ve received, which unlocks all of that learning and entertainment we access via Pocket daily. On International Literacy Day, we’re thinking about how we can ensure that all children have access to the basic right of education, regardless of geography or circumstance, which organizations like PoP are working every day to provide.

What is a typical day like for you, and how does Pocket fit into your life?
I would say that I interact with Pocket more than any other app on my phone — it’s changed the way I consume information.

My day usually starts with a walk for my dog, Winston. Winston is a bassett hound and his ‘walks’ usually involve just sitting on the stoop outside. This is great built-in reading time in the morning.

Living in NYC also means a fair bit of time spent each day on the train. Pocket helps me pass the time while commuting. I also use Pocket at work, whether I’m researching a certain topic or sharing articles with my team, Pocket’s web browser extension is a life saver.

In the evening I often take dance class at Broadway Dance Center. The classes fill up quickly, so getting there early is necessary, but I don’t mind because I’ve always got my Pocket full of interesting reading.

What kinds of stories (publishers, authors, subject matter, videos) have you been reading and watching in Pocket lately?
I have a pretty large variety of go-to sources for news and entertainment. My trick is a carefully curated Feedly stream, from which I save whatever looks interesting to read later on Pocket. I would say my list always includes: NYTimes, Atlantic, NPR, TechCrunch, FastCo, HBR, Medium and First Round Review. There’s also at least one article each week in Pocket’s weekly roundup that I somehow overlooked. The PoP Medium channel is particularly good, too. Check it out here.

Do you have any favorite stories – articles or videos that have stood out – that you’ve either read / watched or recommended to others through Pocket in the last year?
I usually enjoy everything that comes out of First Round Review. Their pieces are always thorough, thoughtful and relevant for a young and growing organization like Pencils of Promise. One recent article from First Round Review was on the Netflix brand architecture. It was a great refresher and a big hit with the PoP marketing team.

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Do you have a Pocket story? Whether you use Pocket to inspire your work, get organized, plan your next adventure, or read on your commute, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at stories@getpocket.com, and you could be featured in the next installment of What’s In My Pocket.

Our What’s In My Pocket series offers an inside look at the interesting people who use Pocket to elevate their work and life. Know someone who fits the mold? Let us know at stories@getpocket.com. This week, we talk to organizing expert Laurie Palau.
 

Name: Laurie Palau
Bio: Organizing expert, public speaker, blogger, founder of simply B organized, mom of two
Location: New Hope, Pennsylvania
Twitter Handle: @smplyborganized
Little-Known Fact: I make amazing crab cakes.
Started Using Pocket: I signed up in 2012, but didn’t really carve out time to use it properly until a few months ago.
 

Tell us a little bit about yourself, Laurie.

I’m a mom of two girls, 13 and 11 years old. I’m active with my kids, running the house, and managing my family’s day-to-day life. I’m also the founder-CEO of simply B organized, which helps people create strategies to live a more organized life.

What was your path to starting simply B organized?

I was an executive recruiter for 15 years, but I was also the type of person who would end up reorganizing my friends’ kitchens while at my kids’ playdates! I love order, and feel that people add a lot of unnecessary stress to their lives with chaos.

How do you think environment impacts creativity and productivity?

We live in a world with countless distractions: physical distractions, but also, with so much technology in our lives, we’re on 24/7. There’s so much stimulation.

Clutter comes in a lot of different forms, and you need personal accountability and discipline to counter it.

Was there an “aha!” moment when you realized you should be doing this professionally?

Organizing came naturally to me, but I laughed off the idea of doing it for a living until, 5 years ago, an interior-designer friend brought me in as a consultant on organization for some of her clients. Actually starting the business in the middle of a recession was a leap of faith, but it’s been so rewarding. I have a strong online following, and in addition to my private clients, I conduct workshops on being organized at home and work. Best of all, it’s all happened organically, through word-of-mouth recommendations. I am living proof that you can turn your passion into a profession.

What’s your philosophy towards the community you work with?

I want to empower people to improve their lives, but I don’t try to come across as perfect: I’m open about my flaws.

My core demographic is working moms and stay-at-home moms. I took a couple years off work when I first had kids, so I understand these women’s efforts to integrate work and home. I can relate to their struggles — carving out time to read or work out or have a hobby, stress about deadlines, chauffeuring the kids around…

My philosophy is to keep things simple and practical, and my goal with sBo is to take the guesswork out of my clients’ lives and minds.

How do you structure your time so you can be productive?

My day actually begins the previous night, when I spend a half-hour looking ahead, “time blocking” my day, and prioritizing. This is crucial: to-do lists are always a mile long, and overflowing lists (just like overflowing closets) can become overwhelming. So I aim to accomplish no more than 3 home and 3 work tasks per day; anything more than that is gravy.

I don’t want to be pulled in too many directions; I’ve learned the hard way that that is counterproductive. There’s a difference between being busy, being active, and being productive!

Sounds like your life is all three! How and where does Pocket fit into this picture?

By now you know that I don’t like clutter. However, the reality is that information is constantly flowing into our lives, through email, social media, blogs, and so on. I was missing out on articles I wanted to read because I was either deleting them prematurely or they were falling through the cracks. I needed a way to file my “to read” list until I was ready to dedicate time and attention to it.

My husband, a digital media guru and longtime user of Pocket, suggested I give it a try. It’s been a real game-changer.

Pocket is a portal for things that are important to me, and makes it easy for me to go back to them when I can. I don’t have to think about where to go, they’re all just there in one place.

And it’s so intuitive, too; with Pocket you can save stuff with the click of a button!

Has Pocket helped you at work or at home?

Both. I read about building a brand, running a business, being a better entrepreneur, and organizing specific rooms or spaces. I save things to pass along to my clients and blog readers. But I also save content that is useful to me as a mom or matches my interests outside of work.

Do you have a Pocket ritual?

I dedicate weekend or evening time to Pocket, when I’m not being super productive. I’ll sit and read over a glass of wine at the end of the day, as I’m winding down.

Pocket is also great for small periods of empty space — like 10 minutes when I’m waiting for an appointment. I’ll often steal those moments to quickly read something on my phone.

Where do you discover your favorite content? What kinds of things are you saving to Pocket right now?

I find interesting links on Facebook and Twitter, and receive emailed links from friends. My email newsletter subscriptions also help me find good material.

I save articles from sites like Inc., Fast Company, Good Housekeeping, The Huffington Post, Real Simple, and Better Homes and Gardens, plus blogs like Becoming Minimalist and Women on the Fence. I also save DIY tips and recipes.

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How do you use Pocket to get organized? We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at stories@getpocket.com, and you could be featured in the next installment of What’s In My Pocket.

Our What’s In My Pocket series offers an inside look at the interesting people who use Pocket to elevate their work and life. Know someone who fits the mold? Let us know at stories@getpocket.com. This week, we talk to blogger and productivity expert Patrick Mackaaij.

Name: Patrick Mackaaij
Bio: Productivity expert, information manager, blogger, online marketing specialist
Location: Hilversum, The Netherlands
Twitter Handle: @mackaaij
Little-Known Fact: I’m trying to find family ties with the Scottish clan Mackay. According to research done by my family, Joannes Mackay was baptized in Inverness, Scotland in 1673, and moved to Antwerp, Belgium in 1706, but I’ve been unable to complete the chain of what happened since then.
Started Using Pocket: April 2012, just after the rebrand from Read It Later
Tell us a bit about yourself and your work, Patrick!

I work four days a week at TOPdesk, which makes customer service management software that’s used by IT, HR, and Facility Management departments. I also work a lot with those who do marketing and knowledge sharing.

On Fridays, and also on evenings and weekends, I work on my productivity blog.

I started blogging because people used to ask me all the time, “How do you get so much done? Do you have a solution for this or that problem?” Like, with Pocket, they’d talk about keeping browser tabs open to read later, but then their browser would crash, so they’d email links to themselves, and so on.

The blog has an audience in both English and Dutch, and serves as a resource for helpful productivity tools like IFTTT, Buffer, Reeder, Twitterrific, Pinterest, Evernote, and of course, Pocket. My goal is to help people become smarter and more efficient with online tools.

How does Pocket fit into your life?

Pocket is great because it helps me keep everything I read in one place.

I read quite a few blogs and sites. RSS feeds help me a lot, because I don’t have to subscribe to email newsletters or visit each site independently. Using Reeder to quickly scan the headlines in my feeds, I swipe items’ titles to send them to Pocket whenever I find something that I want to come back to later.

With Twitter it’s a bit different. I follow fewer than 200 Twitter accounts, but I basically read everything they post. Together, those accounts bring me a lot of serendipity on a variety of subjects! I use Twitterrific to send interesting links to Pocket.

I save new things to Pocket a few times a day, whenever I have spare time. It can be just a few minutes, even while waiting for an elevator.

It sounds like you’re saving quite a lot!

Yes! Also, I was a Top 1% user of Pocket in 2013, having read 11,440 articles in all — so I definitely don’t just forget about the things I’ve saved.

Any favorite apps that you use Pocket with?

I share items from Pocket Evernote to store what I want to refer back to later. I like Evernote a lot. In fact, I wrote an e-book on using Evernote with two other lifehackers.

For an item that’s written or explained well, or that takes an interesting approach to a problem, I share the link from Pocket to Twitter using Buffer. Buffer spreads my tweets out over time, so people don’t get a bunch of tweets at the odd times I read!

What’s your favorite Pocket feature?

I like that it is available everywhere and offline.

What kinds of things have you been saving and viewing recently?

Social Media: I read the official blogs for Twitter and Facebook, as well as Herman Couwenbergh’s blog, as he’s really good at keeping up with Twitter news.

Marketing: I enjoy Seth Godin’s blog, Dutch Cowboys, and Marketing Facts.

Productivity/Lifehacking: I am a big fan of the U.S. site Lifehacker as well as its Dutch equivalent, Lifehacking.nl (for which I also write occasional articles). The “Getting Things Done” site Meer Effect and Amit Agarwal’s Digital Inspiration are some of my other favorites.

Outside of these, I like reading stuff by Michael Lopp at Rands in Repose, and news from NRC, the Rotterdam newspaper. And of course I also follow the blogs of all the products I write about.

My reading combines my professional and personal interests. I get to keep up with industries I’m interested in and also learn new things.

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How do you use Pocket to get organized? We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at stories@getpocket.com, and you could be featured in the next installment of What’s In My Pocket.

Our What’s In My Pocket series offers an inside look at the interesting people who use Pocket to elevate their work and life. Know someone who fits the mold? Let us know at stories@getpocket.com. Next up, we talk to San-Francisco-based high school teacher, instructional coach, and avid reader Mark Isero.
 

Name: Mark Isero
Bio: Director of Instructional Development at Envision Schools. Also: reading advocate, sort-of pianist, fan of Snoopy
Twitter Handle: @iserotope
Location: San Francisco, CA
Little-Known Fact: I like collecting used Kindles and loaning them to students. 156 so far!
Started Using Pocket: May 2011
 

Tell us a bit about yourself and your work, Mark!

For 15 years, I was a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. I taught 9th through 12th grade English and Social Studies. Now, I’m an instructional coach, which means that I help teachers teach better. I’ve been engaged by a charter school network of 3 schools, working closely on professional development with 15 teachers who then go on to train other teachers in turn.

What first attracted you to using Pocket?

I’m always looking for the best app for a given purpose. When I was exploring this space, I realized Pocket was the best overall service in its category. It was very simple to learn, and looked great too. It was also easy to use on both my computer and my phone.

And what were you hoping to use it for?

As a teacher, I believe in the importance of reading for students. Not just books, but also current events, and online material too. Most students are told by teachers to read, but they don’t have their own reading identities because they don’t feel comfortable reading.

I would ask my kids, “How do you get your news? How do you know what’s going on?” And they would say that they talked to friends and family, or learned things from their Twitter or Facebook feeds on their phones. But sometimes they weren’t very savvy, or “news-literate”, and they wouldn’t know what to do with stories they came across.

I realized Pocket could be a hub for my students’ reading lives, a way for them to follow their interests. And a lot of them really liked Pocket! That helped me achieve my goal: I wanted to make it easy for them not to dismiss something they found online, or to force them to read it immediately or never read it at all. Most importantly, I wanted to get them to want to read.

It’s so great to get students to recognize that words on a page can have real meaning, and that their brains do some amazing processing while they read! I’ve also brought in historical context, talking to them about the print and digital revolutions and the history of written communication.

What kinds of material were these students reading in Pocket?

With the new Common Core State Standards for education, there’s been a big push among high-school teachers to feature more non-fiction in the classroom. In my last year of teaching, I started to collect non-fiction pieces I wanted my students to read. We all shared one Pocket account, so all the students could populate it with articles they’d found on a given topic. It was really good, very visual, and an easy app for students to have on their phones: just perfect.

I also used it as a way to teach research. This is such a difficult process to grasp, especially for kids who are the first in their families to go to college. It’s challenging for them to follow a topic over the course of, say, a month. Pocket was really helpful, a way for them to collect and curate resources, and in a fun way too.

With Pocket I was successful in showing that research is simply getting interested in something, following it for a while, and learning more about it–not a scary or laborious process.

How did they (and the schools) feel about using mobile technology for homework?

Many schools don’t allow use of phones on school property, but the reality is students are using their phones all the time. Sometimes teachers try to enter students’ realms by using apps the students already have, but I think that can sometimes be unprofessional. At the same time, I don’t want to use an app that they would never use (like an RSS reader). Pocket was a great middle ground. And my students used Pocket when they were outside school as well.

How do you use Pocket now that you’re outside the classroom?

Pocket is my headquarters, or hub, for my reading flow. Everyone has a different flow; I try to make mine as simple as possible. I collect information from a lot of sources: Feedly is my RSS app for the blogs I follow. People also email me links.

My blog, iserotope.com, is all about reading. I use IFTTT so that items from Pocket render over to my blog in one step. The “Extras” section on my blog is a collection of additional articles I like, many of which I first read in Pocket.

What’s your favorite Pocket feature?

If I find articles that would be interesting to other teachers, I’ll use Send to Friend to share them. I think this sort of personalized sharing is really appreciated. It’s different from sharing something on Facebook or Twitter, where people get exhausted scrolling through dozens of links that aren’t personally tailored to their interests.

What kinds of content are you saving to Pocket right now?

Social justice: One of the reasons I became a teacher was because I am passionate about social issues. I save a ton of long-form articles on things that are affecting society today, such as the connection between socioeconomic status and health, or between crime rates and education. I read about things like, what educators can do to keep at-risk 6th and 9th graders from dropping out of school. I also read about political and racial matters like stop-and-frisk. The Atlantic is one of my most frequent sources for this kind of material.

Reading about reading: This is a meta-topic!

I’m fascinated by what happens in our brains when we read, what happens to our brains as a result of reading, the effect of reading non-fiction versus fiction…

I like to stay current with the studies that are published on these topics.

Speaking of reading, at the end of last year I got an email from Pocket that told me I was in the Top 1% of Pocket readers! That was so great, because it told me some of my trends. I read 2,715 articles, for a total of 2.5 million words: that’s like reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby more than 53 times over!

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If you’re also a teacher who uses Pocket in the classroom, please tell us how! You can write to us at stories@getpocket.com; we’d love to hear from you!

Our What’s In My Pocket series offers an inside look at the interesting people who use Pocket to elevate their work and life. Know someone who fits the mold? Let us know at stories@getpocket.com. First up, Pocket’s very own Lead Designer, Nikki Will!
Name: Nikki Will
Twitter Handle: @nikkimarie47
Bio: Art-Director-turned-Product-Designer. Also: adventure seeker, pop culture junkie, travel fanatic, avid reader, to-do list addict.
Location: San Francisco, CA
Little-Known Fact: I collect Starbucks mugs from cities/countries I visit, and now have an unwieldy (and quite impractical) collection of mugs. Anyone want to come over for coffee?
Started Using Pocket: The day it launched as Read It Later in 2007. Since then, I’ve saved over 13,000 items to my account!

What do you do at Pocket?

I’m the Lead Designer, so I oversee everything visual for Pocket. I’m involved with projects from concept to completion, so I help determine what problems we want to solve; validate them through research and prototyping; and create pixel-perfect designs. Then, I work closely with our developers as they implement the designs, and with our marketing team to create visual assets that tell the story of Pocket.

More than three and a half years as Employee #2 means I’ve worn a lot of other hats as well. I’ve done everything from customer support to office management to recruiting (speaking of which: we’re hiring!).

I loved the idea of using design to communicate ideas and connect with people.

What made you want to go into design? 

Inspired largely by Target’s whimsical advertising campaigns in the 1990s, I decided I wanted to become a designer/art director in my early teens. I loved the idea of using design to communicate ideas and connect with people. In a twist of fate, I actually worked on Target campaigns at two different advertising agencies after graduating from art school!

What are some of the most rewarding or memorable projects you’ve worked on at Pocket?

The rebrand from Read It Later to Pocket was definitely one! Redesigning the company’s user interface and, ultimately, identity, was my first large project after joining. It was a perfect transition from the advertising world: a great opportunity to flex my art direction and visual design muscles, and a quick, hands-on (and thorough!) education in product design.

Through this process, we refreshed our brand, making it more approachable and minimalist compared to the darker, heavier theme of Read It Later. We also introduced a new Tile View, to put more emphasis on the visual aspects of Pocket.

More recently, there was our Localization project, in which we translated the entire Pocket platform into 15 languages. We had to reexamine every single one of our layouts, to make sure they worked well with all kinds of non-English characters and super-lengthy translations. This has since become an integral step in our design process, leading us to always keep our many different audiences in mind.

Where do you go for design inspiration?

I often peruse Pinterest or pttrns.com when I’ve hit a creative block. The SF Museum of Modern Art is very close to the Pocket office, so I’ll sometimes wander over to their bookstore/gift shop for a burst of color. Malls are not only retail therapy for me, but I find that design trends in merchandising can be a great source of inspiration.

It is so comforting knowing I can just save links to Pocket to look at later. Pocket is instrumental in capturing things I don’t want to lose!

 

How does Pocket help you at work and at home?

I would have given up on Twitter a long time ago if it weren’t for Pocket! I don’t have as much time for Twitter as I did, say, a year ago. It is so comforting knowing I can just save links to Pocket to look at later. Pocket is instrumental in capturing things I don’t want to lose!

What’s your favorite Pocket feature?

That it is available across all platforms. I use multiple devices to save to Pocket and view what I’ve saved; and I use it at different times of day, too. I use Pocket on my phone in the mornings and evenings — while getting ready, commuting, and going to bed — but I also consume lots of content on my computer. It is really great to be able to flow seamlessly between them without feeling confined.

I’ve used Pocket to prepare for trips to Iceland, Italy, Bali, and Machu Picchu, among others. For this year’s big trip, Pocket even helped me narrow down my destination.

 

What kinds of content are you saving to Pocket right now?

Professional: Articles about product and visual design. There are always new tools, tips, and tutorials to learn from!

Travel: I’ve used Pocket to prepare for trips to Iceland, Italy, Bali, and Machu Picchu, among others. I’m an aggressive researcher, consulting all kinds of sources from Lonely Planet and Tripadvisor forums to blog posts to articles in Conde Nast Traveler and The New York Times. For this year’s big trip, Pocket even helped me narrow down my destination: it was down to Morocco, Tanzania, and South Africa, so I did a lot of background reading to help figure out where to go. (Tanzania it is!)

Anything related to running: For the past 6 months, I was saving a ton of items about running, as I trained for my first half-marathon with one of my best friends. I’d never run more than a mile before, so that was a big challenge for me! I filled my Pocket with recommendations on shoes, training plans, techniques, stretches, and how to avoid injury. Over the course of my training, I tagged everything “running”, and shared a lot of items with friends who were also gearing up for their first long races.

In general, I save a lot about things to do and restaurants to try in San Francisco. Plus, I like to cook at home, so I also use Pocket to store all the recipes I want to make in a given week.

Most popular sites in Nikki’s Pocket:

Women’s Health
Medium
The Bold Italic
Runner’s World
Slate
The New York Times

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Do you have a Pocket story? Whether you use Pocket to inspire your work, get organized, plan your next adventure, or read on your commute, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at stories@getpocket.com, and you could be featured in the next installment of What’s In My Pocket.