Ok, so I haven’t quite mastered the art of the 5-minute meeting but I am a bit of a productivity junkie.
Short, focused bursts of work, unplugging for hours at a time (to write!) and “chunking” similar tasks are all part of my strategy. Far from a technology geek, I do love discovering time saving apps so I can spend more time doing what I want and less of what I don’t – such as manually tracking mileage.
Here are 5 of my go to productivity apps for small business:
1—Milebug — Plug in your mileage and come tax time, you can have a handy digital report for your accountant! If you’ve been tracking your mileage by hand on a paper log this can change your life!
2–Evernote — Love, love, love this app. From fragments of ideas for blog posts to taking notes at meetings, I use it nearly every day. You can create notebooks based on topics or simply start notes at random and file them later.
There’s a handy search feature so you can search based on keyword. This is useful, when, (if you’re like me) you want to add to that list of books you want to read and you don’t know which notebook it’s in.
Evernote easily syncs across my iPhone, Kindle Fire and laptop so I never lose a thing. It’s also the only app I’ve seen that has whole books devoted to getting the most from it. It’s a workhorse!
3—Facebook Pages Manager – If you want to manage your Facebook Business Page from your smartphone, you need to download this app. (Just check in the App store) You can comment, like, and upload pictures right to your Business Page easily once it’s installed on your device.
4—Shoeboxed–Like Milebug but for receipts. Snap a picture of your receipt and file it away. Saves you the time and hassle of filing and reconciling.
5–Boomerang – If you use Gmail install Boomerang (you can thank me later).
It’ll help keep your inbox clean(er) by letting you mark sent emails with a reminder to follow up if the recipient doesn’t respond within a certain amount of time.
Not only that, but you can schedule emails to send later so your clients don’t know you’re working at midnight.
That would all be cool enough to use it but here’s the way cool part — you can reschedule emails that show up in your inbox. For example, instead of marking emails as “unread” and leaving your inbox as a virtual “to do” list, you can reschedule an email to show up in your inbox in a day or a week or so as a reminder to complete the project! LOVE THIS!
These are 5 of my favorite productivity apps, what are yours? I’d love to hear in the comments below.
Every Tuesday, I post an app or tech tip on my Facebook page, got something to add? I’d love to hear it!
