I get excited thinking about systems of work and deep diving into productivity tools that help shape my workflow. Today, I wanted to tighten my stride and dedicate a post to celebrate the sinew digital productivity tools out there. What’s a sinew tool? These are the small yet critical digital utilities that do one thing really damn well, earning my confidence and making them integral to my workflow. What unsung tools are in your workflow?
Fantastical
I was having dinner solo in Sacramento in 2013 when I read about the update to Fantastical (wait, doesn’t everyone remember where they were when their favorite calendar app got its big upgrade). The Thai food was great and I spent most of the meal playing with Fantastical. The natural language text input that autofills into all the right fields, the integration of reminders into the calendar, and the great looking dark view. Flexibits did a great job designing this app - it’s quick, it’s pretty, and it’s dependable. I can type (or dictate) “Meet Brian for coffee on Tuesday August 16 at 10am at Espresso Bar” and the app drops all the right info into the correct fields as soon as I click done. Works the same way for to-dos too! Just remember to type todo as you get started. Fantastical scores 4,800 4.5 star ratings on the iTunes store. It’s fun like Agendus was fun on Palm OS!
Instapaper
Every role I’ve ever held has included a strong component of research and discovery. As projects become more complex, the need for research and recall becomes more ingrained in my work. The constant urge to learn more, to gather more competitive research, and to deep dive into new market analysis, competitors, or new big ideas isn't unique. The problem to solve is - how and where to store all of this digital information that makes it easy to access the right piece of info in the right moment - especially when it’s been months since I did the original research?
There are different solutions out there, but my go-to is Instapaper. Why Instapaper? It offers integration into all common web browsers and iOS (for info capture) and the java applet that embeds into your favorite web browser grabs pages and works fast. The article viewer removes all ads and extraneous formatting and looks great on Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. The best part: I can highlight and take notes inline in the articles in my library. What? Yep, highlights and annotations! Even better, Instapaper lets you set up folders to categorize your research - everything from strategy articles, to industry data, to recipes - and file it away until you need it again. The search function works really well for quickly finding your saved articles later
Assistant.to
How often have you spent time emailing back and forth to set up a meeting? In a recent post, Cal Newport posits that writing longer email is a great time saver. Instead of writing, “let’s meet for coffee, how’s your calendar over the next couple weeks?,” tighten up your writing and include a couple dates, times, and a location. Assistant.to, a Gmail plug-in, let’s you book meetings in one email. Insert available dates and times into your email and the recipient can pick the meeting time that works for her. With a click, the meeting is processed by Google Calendar and populated into both calendars. Assistant.to keeps track of your availability and remembers your most recent meeting locations to autofill into cal invites. Worth mentioning that the invite recipient doesn’t need to be an Assistant.to user and can use any email/calendar service (Google, Exchange, etc) to accept invitations.
IFTTT
My favorite social media tools offer a healthy dose of set-it-and-forget-it and IFTTT absolutely falls into that camp. Create an account, login to your web services, and then create recipes. Do you want to receive a 6:00am text if the weather falls below 40 degrees? Do you want to auto-post from Instagram to WordPress any image that you tag #cooltastic? Change your Twitter profile photo if your Facebook Profile photo changes? How about downloading any Facebook image that’s tagged you to Dropbox? There are many, many more combinations and more complex usage, but these are good examples to give you some idea how IFTTT (If This Then That) works.
DateCalc
I can’t tell you how many times this simple due date calculator has come in handy in a client or prospect meeting - usually right around the time the client admits a ridiculous delivery date and I have to remind her that that date is only 12 business days from today. DateCalc has an easy to read interface that lets you quickly calculate the number of business days (or natural days) between two dates. The paid version ($4.99) is great for remote teams spread across the globe because you can add in international holiday offsets and avoid accidentally scheduling heavy project work over national holidays. Not that I’ve ever done that...
iA Writer
Once in awhile I want a stripped down text editor to draft a document without any distraction. In those moments, I open iA Writer on my phone or MacBook. It has a clean interface and can go into focus mode - where the preceding sentence is blurred out when you begin writing the next sentence. Drafts can be saved directly into Dropbox. This hack is particularly helpful if, like me, you catch yourself editing while you’re writing. In those moments where you need to blurt all the words on the screen without stopping to edit in the moment, iA Writer is tops.
I coach and write about productivity as a force to empower high performers to do more of the higher order work that propels their careers. Contact me with questions or training requests. I’m organizing one-on-one and working group sessions now.
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