Boss Lady Diaries :: My Productivity Tool Kit

August 26, 2015

This is my desk un-flitered and un-styled; sadly, this is how my desk looks more often than I would like to admit.  I love running my own business. Really and trul,y I do. BUT, there are days when I feel completely overwhelmed and overworked. When I have one of those days, I try to take a step back and figure out what went wrong. To be honest, things tend to go a bit haywire when my lack of organization catches up with me. I’m great at getting organized, but staying organized is a different story. A typical day includes everything from shooting photos for the blog and social media, responding to emails, working on custom projects, helping my intern get things organized to package product, making weekend plans, going to the gym – you get it, like you, I’m juggling a lot of balls.

To get back on top of my “ish” as I call it, I start off by cleaning my desk/work space. Once I get my desk clear, I can begin to think clearly again. Over the course of time, I’ve found some amazing tools that aide in my productivity and help to keep me organized and my mind clear – I call it my Productivity Kit.

• Andrew Johnson’s Hypnotherapy MP3s – You can try the Relax “tape” free of charge.  I love Andrew’s voice and his relaxation technique.  I listen to these whenever I can’t sleep or am feeling anxious.

• PhoneTag – Answering the phone takes up a lot of time.  When I worked at the law firm, my secretary screened all of my calls.  Now I do the same thing with Phonetag – it’s voice-to-text technology transcribes voicemails and sends them to me as an email.  I can quickly read the message and determine when I should return the call. It’s definitely worth the $10 a month.

• Boomerang – All entrepreneurs get things done when they have the time which is often during the wee hours of the morning.  But, just because you draft an email at 2am does not mean it should be sent to the recipient at that time. Hooray for Boomerang!  It’s free for 10 emails a month.  Need more, go on and upgrade!

• DropBox – The name says it all.  Drop your stuff in a box and find it when you need it. My business, it feels like my life, is stored in DB (as I affectionately call it).  So easy to use and a great way to share files with your team.

• Evernote – Perfect for storing articles and organizing your electronic clippings in a myriad of notebooks you create, get it EVER-NOTE.

• TinyScan – Who has room for a scanner, printer, fax machine and all that other stuff in their home office?  But, you know what?  I can scan a full document from my iPhone with TinyScan.

• Hours Tracker – If you do any kind of custom or billable work, you’ve got to keep track of your hours so that you can properly invoice your client.  Ask any lawyer who’s failed to keep time for a day how hard it is to go back and re-create what you did.  Hours Tracker helps you keep track of your time in real-time.

• Bit.Ly – Not only does this handy URL shortener allow you to post your links in a Tweet, it also allows you to create custom URLs and keep tabs on click rates, etc. Bit.Ly is pretty awesome.

• Adobe Shape – A great tool for creatives and non-creatives alike; Adobe Shape allows you to convert your handwriting or illustration into a vector that you can then use in another app or Illustrator and Photoshop (oh, and it’s free). Woo hoo!!!

• Colored Folder Creator – I’m ashamed to admit it, but my desktop is often a hot mess.  My husband has looked over at my laptop one too many times and commented on how awful the random files and documents look on my screen. Slowly, but surely, I’m getting it together by using Colored Folder Creator’s color-coordinating my files and making everything pretty and neat and organized.  Embrace the rainbow for $6!

• Blue Apron – I’m lucky because my husband loves to cook, but we’re both busy and getting to the grocery store regularly doesn’t always happen.  Enter Blue Apron.  Weekly, on whichever day you choose, they send you the ingredients and receipes for 3 tasty meals.  It’s only $60 for two people – you kind of can’t beat that with a stick!

I hope you find these tools useful! I’d love to hear about the tools in your productivity kit.

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