We’ve all got our own favorite productivity tools, tips, and tricks that help us organize our task lists, assign projects, and manage deliverables. Today, there are more project management and productivity apps and software programs geared toward business owners than ever.
Here, 10 entrepreneurs share the productivity tools they use to stay on top of everything.
1. Monday.com: Streamline communication channels
Aalap Shah, founder of 1o8, an e-comm-focused digital agency based in Chicago, loves Monday.com for project management.
“My business has clients, vendors, independent contractors, and full-time folks all trying to communicate, and it has streamlined our Slack, email, and file management tools into one centralized (and colorful) dashboard that allows us to glance at a project and know where it’s at, ” he says. “I love the integrations it has—be it invoicing, other communications tools, Google Drive—along with the extensive training and documentation that it has for a novice to be able to take this tool and harness it to its fullest potential.”
Shah recommends diving into a few of the webinars or training videos on the site and reading a few case studies. “What’s cool about the tool is that it’s flexible for almost any business, and then within your business, you can set up boards for all sorts of different activities and tactics,” he says. “The best part (and tip I can offer) is getting into a daily habit of using it—I load up all the tasks right after a meeting, for example, so it stays fresh and gets assigned to the right team to execute against.”
2. Focus To-Do: Break down tasks into bite-sized chunks
For managing time and tasks, Brandon Ackroyd, founder of UK-based Tiger Mobiles, prefers Focus To-Do.
“I primarily use it for the Pomodoro function,” he says. “The night before work, I make a to-do list of things that need to be accomplished. Then on the day, the app has a timer to break down work into intervals. I set it to 25 minutes in length and tick off tasks when they are complete. After every 25 minutes passes, I take a five-minute break. After four of these cycles, I take a 15-minute break.”
3. Trello: Color-coded organization
Chloe Brittain, owner of Opal Transcription Services in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, uses Trello, a Kanban-style app, to organize new projects—from a long-term to-do list to an editorial calendar to an SEO campaign. She also uses it for simple things like keeping track of articles she wants to read later.
“I prefer Trello to other organizational tools because it’s versatile but also simple,” she explains. “I can easily rearrange items on a board or card, color code things, add checklists and deadlines, etc., and even with all these layers of complexity, it’s easy to understand visually where I’m at and what still needs to get done.”
Brittain says if you need functionality beyond basic projects, you can use extensions (called Power-Ups) to help you customize the tool to your needs. “For instance, you could add custom fields to your cards or integrate your Trello boards with Dropbox,” she says.
4. Teamwork: Track milestones and due dates
Shane Griffiths, partner at Clarity Online, an SEO marketing agency in Seattle, loves using Teamwork to stay organized.
He says, “It allows us to stay organized with recurring work, due dates, and important milestones. For large projects like website redesigns, we can add the client to our project so they can always see the status and get updates. We can even assign them tasks like reviewing design mockups or delivering copy,” Griffiths said.
Griffith’s favorite tip for Teamwork is to utilize recurring tasks.“That can save you a ton of time when managing a project or simply organizing your week,” he explains. “It’s a very useful platform that can be used both internally and externally to organize a company.”
5. Google Tasks: Assign actions from your calendar
Taiisha Bradley, publicist and founder of Modernoire, a minority business alliance in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, uses Google Tasks to help with her productivity.
“Like many small business owners, I am constantly in my inbox, “she says. “It’s so easy to list my tasks and to-dos right there in my email screen as I read through my emails. My Tasks even adds dates and times to my Gmail calendar so I don’t have to take another action to update my calendar or to create a deadline. The ability to add subtasks to main tasks is even more helpful when a task has many parts to completion.”
Bradley suggests watching YouTube videos of how to use Tasks. “I always learn something new from watching the most recent shortcuts and hacks from “techies” on YouTube,” she says.
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6. MeisterTask: Simple task management
Jose Gomez, CTO and co-founder of Newport Beach, California-based digital marketing agency Evinex, uses productivity tools like MeisterTask to manage and organize his daily tasks, as well as see where other team members are on a project.
Gomez likes being able to assign each project its own Kanban board that enables project managers to track a project’s progress in real-time. He says, “My personal recommendation for MeisterTask is to have separate projects (Kanban boards) and set alerts for task changes (especially if you work within a team).”
7. Evernote: Great multitasker
Shuman Roy, a freelance writer and the owner of a School of Rock franchise in Orangeburg, New York, frequently finds himself jumping from one task to the next, operating on three different frequencies, as so many entrepreneurs do. He finds that Evernote helps him do so much more than take notes, as it was designed to do. He says, “Evernote can capture photo, video, and voice. Great features for documenting lesson plans, song ideas, or technical document notation. The app also lets you track internal and external links.”
Roy says being able to connect to Google drives, audio files, video files, and even sketch handwritten notes is helpful when working in multimedia formats where he and his team are recording meeting notes, taking pictures of whiteboards, and following slides.
8. Zapier: Easier task automation
Samantha Odo is COO of Precondo, a company that helps people research and purchase new condominiums in Toronto. She loves Zapier because it creates a web of all the apps that she uses for storing information and it connects them through automated processes. Odo explains, “For example, if you intend to save a file in Google Drive, you can create a zap and upload it on Zapier, then the document will be automatically saved to Drive.”
9. Calendly: Meeting scheduling simplified
Productivity, time management, and leadership coach Alexis Haselberger hated the time-wasting back-and-forth of trying to schedule meeting times and dates, especially with external parties. Then the San Francisco entrepreneur discovered Calendly, a meeting scheduling software. She says, “Calendly is inexpensive and allows for multiple different meeting types so that you can have the right amount of buffer time built in for travel related to in-person meetings versus calls or in-house meetings.”
10. Expensify: Keep track of receipts
Gone are the days of stuffing receipts in your laptop bag until you can get back to the office to file them. Expensify is a mobile app that makes it easy to scan and track receipts. As a small business owner, this is a lifesaver for Connie Heintz, founder of DIYoffer in Toronto.
Heints says, “I used to carry my receipts around in my pocket and file them at the end of the night, but I found myself losing them and putting them through the wash. With this app, all you have to do is photograph the receipt with your phone and it’s uploaded directly to a spreadsheet.”
She loves being able to share her spreadsheet at the end of each quarter directly with her accountant.
RELATED: 6 Productivity Hacks to Try (That Don’t Require Technology)
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