Everyone wants to be productive, organized, successful, and efficient, but there are some of us that geek out a little more than others. Many organization geeks spend hours painstakingly labeling and color-coding their filing cabinets and refrigerators, while efficiency geeks look for back routes to get to work in the most time or gas-efficient way possible.
This post is for the productivity geeks out there. You know who you are. These productivity-boosting tools are for you.
Jing
Jing is a simple computer service that captures screenshots and video screen shares and allows you to share them quickly and easily with your team. This is especially great for those of you working from home or with outside contractors. Simply use the tools within Jing to show how things look on your end, point out spacing and other changes you’d like, and generally make suggestions or recommend changes.
Jing is significantly faster than standard screen share programs because it’s incredibly fast, and can be done by one person at a time. You don’t have to schedule a time to share your screen with your contracted employees to show them a problem. Instead, record or snap a picture of it and instantly send it to them via email, chat, and a variety of other platforms. ?
Flow
Think Evernote meets GoogleDocs meets Email meets Chat and you’ve got a rough outline of what Flow is all about. This task management program makes it easy for you and your colleagues to remain in constant communication without getting caught up checking your email fifty times a day. Instead, you create projects within the Flow system, and then tag people who are necessary team members for each task or project.
You can communicate quickly with each other in comments, and share everything necessary to complete the project. The best thing about Flow is that it keeps you in communication with your project partners without forcing you to log into productivity-sucking email, head over to someone’s office, or waste time on a phone call.
You can try 30 days of Flow for free.
TaskRabbit
We like this service because it simply helps you get things done. Sure, you can just as easily move boxes and stack files as the next person, but when you’re focusing on things like profit and business development, it’s time to delegate those other tasks. No underling to delegate to? Find a helper with TaskRabbit. Whether you need someone to run out and grab lunch for you, clean your house while you work from home, or help you put together the desks and chairs in your new office, there’s a TaskRabbit for you.
Simply describe your task, set your price (or request bids), and then choose your TaskRabbit for the job. Imagine how much more efficient you can be with a friendly person helping you with daily tasks!
TimeDoctor
We like TimeDoctor because it tells us exactly what we’re doing and how long we spend doing it. If you run a business, work from home, or work as a freelancer, figuring out how much time you spend on certain projects and outlets (both for personal and business use) can help you figure out how to stay on track. If you jump around between websites, email, and documents, TimeDoctor will track this use and send you reports, giving you the ability to see if you’re using your time effectively.
Monitor your time used on different social media outlets, spent updating the website, uploading blogs, and even crafting your emails and newsletters. While there are plenty of great browser-blockers out there, TimeDoctor takes it to the next level by simply tracking the time spent on various tasks.
For an employer, you can choose to monitor your team’s activities using TimeDoctor’s features, or simply take advantage of the time management principles and create simple communications within your team.
MailChimp
Everything should be streamlined and as efficient as possible, no matter how big your company is. Email newsletters included. We like MailChimp because it stores your email address, allows you to have numerous lists and sub-lists, and creates beautiful, modern, organized email newsletters to keep in touch with your clients. It’s one of the more popular products out there simply because it’s much more efficient and versatile than its competitors.
With MailChimp, you can create an account and send off an email in just a few minutes. Other products like Constant Contact and iContact are great, but they just aren’t up to speed. They don’t have quite as many nice templates available, and require you to spend quite a bit more time getting set up.