In today’s society, productivity is becoming more and more important. The key reason for this is that effective use of time has become (in many cases) more valuable than money.
Here at Smart Document Solutions of Arizona, we want you to be as productive as possible. We offer solutions that promote environmental sustainability, overall office savings and of course, increased productivity, all to help you achieve your goals. That being said, we thought it would be fitting to put together a list of free online resources to help you remain productive and even increase your productivity.
1) Evernote
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 5 years you’ve likely heard of Evernote. On the odd chance you have been enjoying the “slug-life” I’ll give you a brief overview of how fantastic this incredible resource is:
- It allows you to sync both your mobile phone and laptop and desktop with your tasks for the day
- It allows you to take searchable pictures (the text in the pictures is used when you search)
- It allows you to set reminders
- It allows you to create and manage different types of lists
- It allows you to record audio memos
- and more…
If you have been living under the proverbial rock for the last half-decade – a great article to check out may be from Tim Ferris‘ blog/vlog who recently interviewed Phil Libin the founder of Evernote.
2) Moosti / The Pomodoro technique
The Pomodoro Technique (thanks Jaime Tardy and @eventualmillion Team) is a method created by Italian Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980’s. Pomodoro Is Italian for “tomato” and refers specifically to the tomato-shaped timer that Cirillo used when he first came up with the technique. The idea is that you can prevent burnout and increase creativity if you break up the time you focus on a task. Pomodoro’s are simply blocks of time between work and break. Where moosti.com comes in is that it is a super-simple online timer that requires only an internet connection. The Moosti site allows you to monitor your focus time, your break time and longer break times. I highly recommend the method.
3) Rescue Time
This is a fantastic program that allows you to track exactly how productive your time on the computer is. So for example – Maybe you thought you spent 6 hours on Linkedin looking for prospects and about 20 minutes checking your Facebook updates. Good ole Rescue Time – which keeps track of every application you have open throughout the day – will give it to you straight. It will give you a down-to-the minute breakdown that shows you how you really spent 5 hours on facebook, 2 hours on Youtube, and approximately 17 minutes on linkedin. In addition it color codes the productivity of different sites for you. HINT – a lot of RED is bad, a lot of BLUE is good. Purple and you’re having a mediocre day. You can also use rescue time to block sites you don’t want yourself visiting while you should be working. It’s helpful for those of us who have a difficult time focusing. (Thanks again to @eventualmillion team for this suggestion.)
4) Unroll.Me
Real quick, without looking, how many unread emails do you have in your inbox right now? If you answered over 100+ or even 50+ for that matter it may be time to take a look at unroll.me. This is (currently) a free tool that allows you send all of your email subscriptions for the day to an email digest much like Google alerts. When I first signed up for this service it took my emails down from several dozen daily to the single digits. With that extra time I just found more time to obsess about livestreaming platforms like Periscope and Blab.im – but that’s not the point! The point is this will definitely cut down on the time it takes to sift through your email subscriptions for the day and may even help you realize the ficus-picture-of-the-month email subscription may not have been the best and highest use of your time and thus empower you to unsubscribe from it. (for the Trifecta – @eventualmillion made me aware of this resource– I can’t recommend her enough)
5) IFTTT
If This Then That is computer programmer speak for if a certain condition exists then a certain action should occur. For the purposes of this post we’ll just say that if you were wondering how some people get their Instagram photos to actually show on twitter the moment they share…it’s probably the tech at IFTTT that are to blame (or thank depending on what crazy pictures you post.) The site and app simplifies the connection between apps, websites and programs that typically work in tandem and makes some processes happen automatically and seamlessly through the use of recipes. The really great thing is that it simplifies things a lot if you work in the world of social media and/or internet marketing. (Big Thanks to PeriscopeRyan for getting me hip to this platform!)
So there it is – a list of great free tools to stay productive or even become – more productive today. If you are interested in learning how to be more productive by automating your printer services just let us know!
