By Kosta Haltis & Christopher Sale, Founders of Enee
As a mum that is juggling a million things at once and running a business, we understand that your time is precious. That’s why we wanted to write this blog especially for you!
We’ve combined our technology expertise and extracted the best tips from the entrepreneurial minds of Kosta and Christopher (the founders of Enee), to bring you our tips to streamline your work day.
Before you jump into trying out each of these solutions, it’s important to understand your workflow and your personal preferences, when it comes to work and being productive. One solution that may be great for someone, may not be suitable for someone else; so it’s important to consider what your needs are.
The second thing to note is, there is going to be a degree of time required initially for setup, to ensure that these solutions are going to add value to your workday and save you time. These may be things such as, learning shortcuts for common actions, importing new information so that it’s ready to use, or familiarising yourself with the features so that you develop fluency.
But don’t let this put you off! The time spent here won’t go to waste, and it’ll pay dividends once you’ve settled into your new routine.
Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s our list…
● Note-taking apps: If you don’t already have one or have one that isn’t working for you, we have some great free recommendations.
● Task management apps: A good task management app should help you get things done. Here are a couple free apps that have worked for us.
● Save time and headaches with automatic WordPress website updates: Why should you have to waste your precious time dealing with updates?
● More than just an email application: If you think email is a pain and couldn’t imagine how this could be improved, this might change your mind.
● Sometimes it’s better to take a shortcut: Shortcuts that you should be taking to save time.
Note-taking apps
A note-taking app is a great tool for brain dumps, creative brainstorming, idea generation and for well.. Note-taking! Having a good note-taking app ensures that you can keep track of all your meeting notes, ideas and plans – in one easy to access location, so that you don’t waste time looking for them.
Our recommendations for note-taking apps for Apple users are either Bear or Craft. The simple user interface makes both of them a pleasure to use, and the ability to tag, organise and share with others, facilitates smooth note-taking.
For those wanting simplicity and a no frills note-taking experience, we’d recommend Bear. But for those that want a bit more flair, Craft will certainly meet your needs and give you the best performance for your Apple device.
Our recommendations for note-taking apps for Windows or Android users are the classics like OneNote and Evernote.
OneNote has a scrapbooking style, allowing you to place text, images and blocks wherever you please on the page.
Evernote, on the other hand, takes a more traditional, structured note-taking approach, but allows you to integrate it with your calendar, unlike OneNote. It also has a handy customisable dashboard which gives you an overview of your tasks, calendar and notes.
Both of these options allow you to tag, organise, link and share notes; so again, it will heavily depend on your personal style, preferences and how much you’re willing to spend.
Pricing
Bear is free to use with limited features. But if you’d like to sync it across devices (for example, from your computer to your mobile) you will need to get the Bear Pro Subscription for $1.25 USD per month, billed annually.
Craft is free to use. If it does become your primary note-taking app for your business you may want to upgrade to the next tier for $4 USD per month, billed annually.
OneNote is absolutely free for Windows, Mac, Android or iOS.
Evernote is free for 2 devices, with some feature limitations. If you’re looking to extend the limit of monthly uploads, integrate your Google calendar or get more widgets for your dashboard, then you’ll want to upgrade to the Personal tier of $7.50 AUD per month, billed annually.
Something that we didn’t really highlight in any of the above recommendations is the task list functionality. If you choose to, you can create tasks lists in all of the above apps, but in our opinion, the most effective way of tackling tasks is to have a dedicated task management app. More on this in the next section.
Task Management Apps
The primary purpose of a to-do list or task list app should be to help you focus and knock off tasks with ease. Finding the right task management app could be the key to keeping you on track, and to make deadlines less stressful in your busy work day.
Our two recommendations, Todoist and Microsoft To Do allows you to collaborate with others, integrates with your calendar and email, and has the ability to classify tasks with the use of due dates and tags.
Todoist is our top choice as it’s great to use and makes ticking tasks off a breeze. The filtering options (for example based on priority, tags or sections), help you sort through all your many competing tasks, bringing the most important to the top of the pile.
They have also implemented very ‘human friendly’ shortcuts. For example, to add due dates or to make a task a recurring task, all you need to do is add ‘every friday’ or ‘every friday 5pm’ at the end of your task and it will automatically make that task recurring.
Todoist also tracks your progress, displays it visually and records your streaks for bonus motivation! Todoist is available on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and web browsers.
Pricing
Todoist is free with some limitations. If you like their ‘kanban’ style project management, and need to increase your upload limit, collaborators or filters, then you may prefer to pay $4 AUD per month, billed annually.
Microsoft To Do is free on all devices.
Save time and headaches with automatic WordPress website updates
The beauty of WordPress is there’s almost a plugin for any sort of functionality or feature you could be looking for, which is handy if you’re not a developer. However, one of the downsides of plugins is that they are all managed separately by third-party developers.
This means that when security vulnerabilities are discovered, or when bug fixes are made, updates are released at different times. On top of plugin updates, there will also be times where you will be required to update the core WordPress software.
If you don’t keep an eye on these updates and implement them as they are released, then there’s a risk your site could go down or not function properly. For those that understand the value of a good website and rely on their websites to drive traffic and generate leads, this could be a costly consequence. In addition, since all plugins are separately owned and managed, there is also the risk that when you do install updates, incompatibilities arise putting your website in a more urgent, compromising state.
At Enee we can take care of all your plugin updates and WordPress updates! And when things get a bit hairy, we’ll have a backup of your website that we can restore to.
As part of our automated website maintenance we also conduct automatic tests that will alert us quickly if something needs to be fixed, minimising your website’s down time.
If you prefer to be even more hands-off, our proactive website maintenance plan includes support for web hosting and website issues (excluding content and development changes), restoration from backup if your site is compromised and regular testing and maintenance to ensure that your website is functioning and secure.
Pricing
Prices start at $30+GST per month and include the following:
● Up time monitoring and alerting when your site goes down
● Security monitoring and alerting when your site contains known vulnerabilities
● Advanced granular daily backups
● Core and plugin updates with automatic restoration from a backup if the site fails to load after updates
● Backup restorations
● Fortnightly website reporting
Contact us for more information on plans or to get started.
More than just an email application
You’ll be familiar with the usual suspects for email, Outlook, Gmail, Mail for iOS or whatever comes default on your phone. Sure Gmail has some good features like its confidential mode, instant message and task lists, but have you considered radically changing the way that you ‘do’ email? Well Spark has.
Compared to those, Spark is a mean, green (…well, blue), email-churning machine, equipped with the handiest features that make emailing easy.. Maybe even fun?
With Spark you get cool features such as the smart inbox, which sorts your inbox to see what is important first; smart search, which enables you to find emails easily using natural language; and smart notifications, which only notifies you when something is important.
Spark also allows teams to collaborate and compose emails together, discuss emails privately, and delegate emails in shared inboxes.
Unfortunately Spark is not available for Windows, but available for Android, iOS and Mac.
Pricing
Spark is free with some limitations for file storage and collaboration. If you’d like a more full featured version then Spark Premium will give that to you for $6.39 USD per month, billed annually.
Sometimes it’s better to take a shortcut
Keyboard Shortcuts
If you’re planning to use any of the recommended apps, or in fact any application on your desktop computer, we would highly recommend learning keyboard shortcuts!
Keyboard shortcuts significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to execute repetitive workflows, so save some time today by learning those shortcuts.
If you’d like to receive weekly shortcuts and slowly build up your repertoire of shortcuts you can subscribe to our ‘Productivity Tips’ over here.
Email Templates
Another shortcut to improve your workflows and save you time is email templates. All of us can resonate with having the same conversation with different people over email. So the best way to shave off some time is to set up a kit of email templates, ready to be fired out at a moment’s notice.
And that’s it! There’s so much more that we could include to help you save time and become more productive (such as time blocking), but we couldn’t fit it all in this blog! We hope some of these recommendations helped you save time!
Enee provides IT services, website services, and can help you develop websites, mobile apps and custom software. If you need help with any of these, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at [email protected] or 08 7070 0900. We’d love to help you out!