Business Organizing

The Best Productivity Apps

Last month, we discussed How to Choose a Productivity App and how apps, like anything else, are only beneficial when they move us closer to our goals. Below are some of my favorites.

I’m an app minimalist. I limit apps and use only what I need to work effectively. For email, tasks, and calendar management, I like the G-suite apps. They are global (can be reached from anywhere), are easy to integrate, and the updates are (usually) seamless. I set up G-mail to integrate with Outlook so emails appear in both. I can better see the individual emails on Outlook, but I also enjoy the Google thread function for organizing and retrieval. Although I have multiple email addresses, all emails are set up to go into the same inbox. This means I only need to check one place to find everything.

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Time Management

Top Time Wasters: Meetings

If you’re like most people, you’ve spent time in at least one meeting that went on and on with no apparent purpose, without an agenda, with minimal or no follow through, and without resolution. You might even have wondered why you were there at all. Certainly, there were far better uses of your time.

Meetings can be a huge time waster if not done correctly. Good meeting preparation is essential for productive meetings.

Effective meetings consist of the following:

A Tight Agenda: Ensure you have an agenda, with time limits attached to each agenda item.

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Uncategorized

When Hiring a Pro is Best

If you’re like most busy professionals, your office has projects that need work: piles of papers, clutter on desk surfaces, perhaps even piles of items waiting for time where you can address them. This can be at odds with what most of us want: a clutter-free, calendar-clear, easily managed task list and space.

Below are ideas to help you decide whether you need to hire a professional to help get you from where you are to where you want to be.

Schedule: Most of us have way more to do than time to do it. It can be challenging to carve out time to work on your space when there are so many other obligations on the calendar. How can a large project be incorporated successfully into a very full schedule? Ask yourself how much time you can devote to organizing. Is it possible to designate a day each week, or two afternoons a week, to tackling these projects? If not, perhaps it’s time to hire a pro.

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