Gina Trapani at Lifehacker has posted her top ten free or cheap productivity tools.

Pen and paper tops a list in no particular order. I get the hunch that these old-fashioned tools are making a come back in the productivity market. Mike Rohde’s Back to paper post caused quite a splash a month or so ago.

Other old favourites are there too—your phone, a filing cabinet and an inbox tray.

Software doesn’t miss out entirely; Quicksilver and TextExpander earn their spots.

Why are Top Ten lists so popular? Usually you know all the things on them already, but seeing them through someone else’s eyes often helps you to see them anew. Check it out.

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For the record, before the hit count was reset by the move to the new domain, Hawk Wings’ most popular posts ever were:

1. Top ten things every Mail.app user should have (6904)
2. MacFreePOPs: Getting emails from hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, SquirrelMail, AOL, etc (5464)
3. Talking Mail.app: John Gruber (4311)
4. 202 different Apple Mail icons (3434)
5. MailTunes: A great idea, but…. (3431)
6. Talking Mail.app: drunkenbatman (3088)
7. Mail Appetizer - Notification for those who can’t wait (3078)
8. Getting Things Done in Apple Mail (2916)
9. Mail Act-on - Getting sorted, saving time (2787)
10. Switching from Thunderbird to Apple Mail (2786)
11. Mail Forward: AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo! to Apple Mail (2700)
12. MailTags 1.1 released (2662)
13. Importing email from Outlook and Outlook Express (2574)
14. Talking Mail.app: Merlin Mann (2508)
15. Got some things done in Apple Mail, Part II (2496)

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Top Tens must be a seasonal thing. Everyone’s doing it. Digg blogged a list of top ten apps for Mac. TUAW made a kind of anti-list.

There’s a list of ten fastest growing branded web sites with Apple on top. There’s even a list of ten signs that you are a GTD disciple.

Here’s my list - the top 10 plug-ins, add-ons, scripts, and helpful apps that every Apple Mail user should have. The best stuff is at the top:

1. MailTags. (That was easy). Just get it.
2. Mail Act-on. Sorting emails on the fly with user-defined rules.
3. MailAppetizer. Beautiful and useful “in your face” notification.
4. Mail Scripts. Excellent AppleScripts for Mail.app. I haven’t blogged them in detail. Andreas Amann’s own web site is the best introduction.
5. Mail Stamps. Those lozenge-shaped buttons in Mail 2.0! What were they thinking? Banish them forever.
6. MailUnreadStatusBar. Discreet and useful notification.
7. JunkMatcher or SpamSieve. It’s a draw for me which of these offers the better additional protection from spam.
8. Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger. The only book dedicated to help you get the most out of Mail 2.0. Packed full of tips and other goodness.
9. QuickSilver. Generally excellent and the most valuable third-party app I use. It sneaks in here because you can also email files directly from its interface and do lots of other neat things. Free. Astonishingly.
10. Spell Catcher X. Spell checker, snippet manager, on the fly formatter. Useful in Mail.app and elsewhere.

There are lots more that didn’t make it due simply to the way I use Mail. But you can find them all in the Hawk Wings Plug-in and Add-on List.

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