Tools For Productivity
Of all the challenges I’ve heard mentioned by business owners, employees, and freelancers, “not having enough time to get the most important tasks done” is the most common. Poor time management, outside distractions, multi-tasking, disorganization, and forgetfulness all stand in the way of productivity. Some time consuming aspects of business management (especially in the cloud these days) can be outsourced if you are using big software packages to help manage your business, such as NetSuite or similar. However if you or your workers could just use some helpful and simple tools for getting back on track and staying ahead of the game, take advantage of these great finds designed to save you time, keep you organized, and increase freelancer productivity! You’ll complete your to-do list in less time, more efficiently, and more effectively. They’re all very straightforward and easy to use, and most important of all – they’re all free!
Dropbox
Dropbox is an excellent way to keep your document files organized quickly and easily. This service lets you save items to your “dropbox” while simultaneously saving them to your computer, mobile phone and your Dropbox web account for consistency. With Dropbox, you don’t have to deal with the pain of multiple copies of the same data files, or waste precious time emailing yourself updated versions of the files. You can also invite your project team to look over specific documents and folders for simple feedback collection.
MakeSomeTime
Managing invoices poses a big challenge for entrepreneurs. You can sign up with MakeSomeTime to keep track of invoices, clients, projects, and bill times, all within your internet browser. Their free plan lets you add up to five clients and deliver one invoice per month.
Dlvr.it
A neat little tool that automatically tweets your new blog posts. In addition to auto-publishing your new posts to twitter, this app will also post on any other social network you have connected to it. Dlvr.it also lets you integrate your bit.ly account. But it also has its own default URL shortener anyway, which saves you the trouble.
Fonolo
Tired of navigating through countless phone menus? This web service tool grants you access the phone menus for customer service numbers and allows you choose any menu directory path and then sends you right to it, bypassing those annoying automated response systems.
Wetransfer
For those irritating and frustrating times when your work is just too big to send through an email, try using Wetransfer. This service tool makes it incredible easy to send your files, docs, or projects to anyone with an email address. All you have to do is just upload and hit send.
Evernote
This popular note-taking tool is great for marketing vital online resources. You can keep yourself organized by categorizing items into different notebooks and subsections that you can customize in any way you choose. The best part is that this app synchronizes with your mobile smartphone and computer for fast access from anywhere.
Pidgin
If you’re like me and you use IM chat networks for the office, home, school or anything else, you can save time by using Pidgin. Supporting the largest assortment of chat networks including the popular AIM, MSN, Google Chat, and Yahoo Messenger platforms, this tool lets you log into multiple chat accounts simultaneously. Get ready to chat up a storm.
Remember the Milk
(I always forget the milk). This task management website will help you stay focused on the tasks at hand so that you can get more done in less time. You can update and add tasks from any location, receive important reminders and alerts, and organize your tasks. Remember the Milk can be used on the iPhone or Android smartphones, as well as the iPad.
Rapportive
This productivity plugin does wonders for your email. It gives you a detailed background profile on whoever sends you an email. If you are like me and you get an email from somebody you forgot or don’t know at all, one of the first things you’ll do is Google them to get the facts. Rapportive takes care of that for you. It’ll search and show you all related social media account information on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more – all from your inbox.
Yammer
This “Twitter for Business” tool lets you communicate in a closed environment and share files. It won’t replace traditional email for your business but it is great for downsizing large quantities of group emails and sharing links and files in an efficient way.
Collabtive
This open source project management software runs on almost any computer and does it well. Collabtive lets you to manage projects by creating different tasks and assigning them to different people. The progress of these tasks can then be tracked using their easy-to-use GUI. The project administrator can then add multiple users to the program and each person can access the interface through their browser. There’s also no limit on the number of users that can work at the same time on the Collabtive program.
So what about you? Do you have any time-saving, easy and free tools that you use to help keep you on task?
That’s a great list to consider, thanks a lot Vincent. We have been using Dlvr.it, Pidgin and Rapportive. To manage files, notes and other content we use Syncblaze with which sharing and collaboration is a breeze. We also use BatchBook to manage our contacts. These productivity tools are really beneficial to businesses and helps us grow faster.