Increase your productivity. Choose to use the right tool for the job and you will save yourself time and energy and, quite possibly, a good bit of frustration, too. Here are some top picks for your business.
Hold better meetings
• Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, and Nokia fitness trackers allow you to walk while you take a meeting—either walking with other meeting participants or while on a Bluetooth device and your phone
• Interactive-calendar (choose your favorite for your device) allows you to manage your time and your priority tasks and see when others are free for meetings
• FaceTime, GoToMeeting, and Skype For Business eliminate the need to gather in the same room to conduct business, saving time and resources
Learn
• LinkedIn Learning may appear in your inbox as a free trial for a week, otherwise it is a monthly subscription
• TED gives you access to a variety of educational speakers and their TED Talks
• YouTube hosts how-to videos, tutorials by professionals, cautionary tales by amateurs, and a little bit of everything else in between those two positions,
Remember
• Dragon converts your verbal notes to text
• Evernote, as we previously wrote about in “Remember Everything With The Evernote App,” is the cloud version of those scraps of paper and sticky notes you have cluttering your desk
• Notes comes pre-installed on Apple devices and can be used for quick lists
Run a professional office
• Apple Pay, PayPal, and the Square makes getting paid easier
• ColdTurkey, Focus, and SelfControl (depending on your operating system) limit access to distractions while user focus is on what is important or high priority
• Office apps from Apple and Microsoft produce documents, e-mail, images, spreadsheets, and more—learn to use the features that will save you the most time like document styles, short-cut keys, rules for e-mail folders, meeting scheduling, macros for spreadsheets, etc.
Track
• Accounting software from Freshbooks and Quickbooks allows you to track accounts payable and accounts receivable without having to outsource the work
• Evernote, Expensify, and TinyScannerPro—all scan and capture receipts for you; Expensify works with Quickbooks
• MileIQ tracks your mileage (and when you sign up through my MileIQ link for a free account, you’ll get 40 free drives every month plus, if you ever upgrade your account, you will automatically get 20% off your annual MileIQ subscription and I’ll be paid a small reward)
The list of apps and tools continues to grow. You can still be productive without having to try them all out. Let Tate Design handle your strategic marketing, web development, and graphic design. E-mail Tate Design at [email protected] or give us a call at 610.725.0702.