The World has changed. Manual work days are gone.
Many a time, you must have heard “Work smarter, not harder.”
There is a lot of difference in long working hours and productive work. With the right tools at your fingertips, you can save your time, increase your productivity and efficiency at work.
So to help you, today I would like to share some productivity tools that I use to be more efficient at my work.
Hope you find them interesting and helpful.
#1. ClickUp
I am a process oriented person but am forgetful a lot of times. Sometimes, I get busy with too many projects and miss important deadlines.
ClickUp is a solution for this. As an all-in-one project management platform, ClickUp allows me to organize all my work and personal to-do lists in one place. I can set up recurring tasks, create screen recordings, create important documents, as well as visualize my tasks in many different views such as Gantt view, Mind Maps view, or Table view.
It's simple, user-friendly with depth to customize for advanced use cases. What I like is that it's a a flexible infrastructure that scales with my project and personal needs. Best yet, it has a Free Forever plan that suits my needs perfectly!
#2. Wunderlist
I am a process oriented person but I am not good at memory. Sometimes, I get busy with lot many things and miss important activities. This makes me unproductive.
I started using Wunderlist to create a to-do list and set up recurring to-dos. Now, I do not forget anything. :) The thing I like the most about Wunderlist is, as soon as I open a new tab in Chrome browser I have immediate access to my today’s to-do list and it also allows me to add activities to the list without opening Wunderlist.
I start my day with Wunderlist. Now, if I forget to add in Wunderlist, then maybe I will need one more app which will remind me to add in Wonderlist. Hahaha :D
#3. Evernote
There are over 50,000-70,000 thoughts travelling each day in a human mind. Huge.. Isn’t it? Recollecting the important thoughts among all these is a bit difficult for a human mind. Thoughts are obvious. But we don't document our thoughts and they disappear.
Many a time, I tried to recollect my thoughts maybe a website I visited, an app I found useful, an article, etc. But, the tragedy is I fail to recollect.
This tool - Evernote helped me to make a note of my thoughts, reference websites, tools, articles I think are relevant for me. Now simply I can go back and check out the notes created by me.
#4. MailTrack
After I send an email to the prospect, I was not sure what to do next? Should I just follow-up with the same email or shall I send another email with more engaging content?
What if you can know who has opened your mail and then decide what to do next?
Recently, I started using MailTrack. MailTrack is a Gmail Extension that tracks if recipients have read the email. Mailtrack helps me to know whether the recipient has seen my email or not. Based on status, I decide my next email. Open notification helps me to contact the user at the right time.
#5. MS Office - I am sure you are familiar with MS Office - Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.
MS office helps me in the day to day activities like writing proposals in MSWord, presentations in PowerPoint, reporting & maintaining sales record in Excel.
The best part is non-techies need less learning curve.
#6. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is my best friend. I got connected with 1000+ Professionals on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a university as thought leaders keep writing on various topics and students like me keep exploring. The best thing is, I can qualify our signups too.
#7. Intercom
Working at a SaaS company, iMocha, an online assessment software - I wanted to have an integrated communication and user engagement tool. I started using Intercom which helped me in conversions.
First thing, I accomplished a set of automated emails, based on user behavior in the trial period. This makes sure my messages reaches to each and every one at the right time, even if I am not at my desk.
Also, Intercom enabled our users to get in touch with me online for required support. Live chat helped me in a prompt response. Fast support is one of the reasons our users take our paid subscription.
Intercom has saved a lot of my time which resulted in more sales. :)
#8. Grammarly
I can’t afford silly grammatical mistakes in communication with my users.
Grammarly helped me to rectify small errors in writing while sending emails and chatting with my clients.
Thank you Grammarly, you helped me in writing this article too ;)
#9. Google Calendar
Being a process-oriented person, I always keep my scheduled meetings documented. But, I was not sure if my prospect does the same? Many a time, I was waiting on Skype for meeting and prospect never turned up. He just forgot :(
To avoid such situations, I started using Google calendar. For every fixed meeting, I create an event in Google Calendar and add the prospect’s email address. Now Google reminds him/her about our scheduled meeting. At least, now I get cancellation request if he got busy :)
#10. Calendly
Earlier, I was finding it very difficult to get user's time for the product demo. I use to send requests for user availability and wait for their response. No response... :(
Eventually, I started using Calendly. With the help of Calendly, I now share my calendar and allow the users to book my slot, as per their availability. Now every user signing up with us receives an email with my calendar link.
I was happy to see that interested users started booking my calendar. Yayyyy.
#11. Skype
Again, I am sure, you must be using Skype for your online communication. I use Skype for Video / voice calls and instant chat.
#12. Trello
Being a customer's face, you need to be always updated about Customer’s request and activity status. Anytime customer calls me and asks me for the status, I am clueless.
Trello, helped me to keep a track of the status of all pending activities. Now I add each request in Trello board and assign it to respective resource. Trello helped me to push important tasks, to take immediate action for all pending activities.
Pheww..!
Work life is now simple, productive and successful.
Lastly, I would like to suggest, identify the gaps in your workflow and then search for a right tool that will help you to increase your productivity at work.
Your Tools!
I rely on you, my readers, to extend the list of the tools you might be using. Do share your tools in the comments below to help me as well as the overall community.
And, if you like this post, do me a favor, share it! :)