There are numerous apps to organize your life and be more efficient in the digital age. As a business owner, these apps will help you to get things done faster and more accurately. Don’t forget, time is money.
Harvey Mackay once said time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it, you can never get it back."
Therefore, the best you can do is to make the best of the time at your disposal. The following five apps will help you use your time more efficiently.
Factors to Consider When Selecting a Life Management App
Getting organized involves a lot of moving parts. No single app that can help you get everything in order. Hence, you need different apps to manage your to-do list, schedule meetings, and manage your inbox, and customer relationships.
But even then, each category has competing apps you can use to achieve these objectives. So, here are the factors to consider in choosing an app that suits your business needs best.
The App Should Be Easy to Use
You need an app that’ll make your life simpler and more manageable. Unfortunately, some apps have top-notch organization tools, but they require technical skills to operate.
The balance between an app's capabilities and ease of use is vital. For example, Google Calendar has achieved this balance. You can access the calendar with your Google account without needing to log in again. You also don't need technical knowledge to figure out how to plan your time using Google Calendar.
Note: Don't choose an app because it is the most popular in your business circle. Only select an app you are comfortable using without asking for assistance regularly. You can always upgrade as you grow your skill level.
Ability to Integrate with Existing Devices and Platforms
Choose tools that can easily integrate with all your existing platforms and systems. Such tools will make it easy to streamline your business processes and increase your productivity levels.
Remember, organization and productivity are like two sides of the same coin. You cannot be productive unless you are organized.
Hot Tip: use Zapier as your base platform for determining the integration capabilities of your chosen app. Zapier integrates over 5000 business automation tools, hence could be a good litmus test for your app.
The App Should have Security and Safety Measures
While you want to be organized, it should not be at your data privacy and security expense. In the current age where security breaches are common, the last thing you want so is to invite trouble home.
You also have to be conscious of the customer data you hold in your business. Therefore, an app without guaranteed data privacy and security threatens your business. It may compromise your customer data leading to distrust and even possible lawsuits.
Ability to Manage and Organize Tasks
At the very least, the app you choose should help manage your tasks and time effectively. For example, if you are a virtual assistant, you will deal with multiple projects from numerous clients. None of your clients will be happy if you fail to deliver their project on time or give them substandard work.
Hence, you want something to help you plan and organize the numerous tasks to ensure you complete each on time and deliver quality work.
Now that you know what to look for in an organization app, here are the top five apps to choose from.
1. Todoist
Todoist helps you remain productive by planning your tasks weeks and months ahead. Todoist lets you juggle numerous tasks efficiently by enabling you to create a simple to-do list. The app's user-friendly interface lets you view the list in a single view.
The list view enables you to not forget upcoming tasks. You need only 15 minutes a day to go through the app and update yourself on your impending tasks.
We love it because it is cloud-based. Hence, you can access and manage your tasks from any convenient location. Here are the notable benefits you can expect from using Todoist:
You can track your productivity through the use of the backup and reports feature
You can use the tool to assign tasks to your team members or external collaborators
You can customize tasks using Todoist. For example, you can set a priority level for your tasks
It offers great cross-platform capabilities and integration with other tools
Affordable payment plans that also include a free plan
2. Evernote
Evernote is one of the best note-taking apps you will come across in the market. The app helps you organize yourself by capturing ideas, organizing files, and managing ideas. Evernote allows you to take notes and use them to get work done. You can capture your ideas and organize them on the same app.
The ability of Evernote to integrate with numerous automation tools gives it an edge over other note-taking apps. Evernote will help you will achieve the following:
Create notes
Take voice notes
Attach documents
Scan images
Capture clips from the web
Character recognition
Web Clipper
With Evernote, you can never miss out on any ideas. For example, you can even clip and save articles from the web that you think can help you grow your business. However, the app has come under the spotlight for having expensive payment plans and its decision to scrap the free plan.
3. Trello
Your life's organization extends to your workplace. Trello will help you get organized in your business projects. The intuitive app helps you organize, coordinate and track all the projects undertaken in your business. Though we prefer ClickUp, Trello is a great option, especially for beginners.
It’s one of the most reliable tools for collaborating with internal and external teams. Trello's Kanban-style design makes it a visually appealing yet easy-to-use user interface.
You can easily see all the project timelines and to-do lists, and team members can share ideas and files in real-time on the platform. Trello is also very customizable, allowing you to personalize your boards in a way that works for you.
4. Notion
Remember how we said that Evernote is putting off customers by charging high prices for their app? Give a hand to Notion, your worthwhile free alternative. Notion is not just your standard note-taking app. It doubles up as a reliable task manager.
The app offers a connected workspace where your team can create documents, take notes, and organize their work. The level at which Notion will help you automate your workflows and tasks will leave you feeling like you practically have a personal assistant.
Notion’s AI further contributes to your organization by enabling you to arrange your ideas to generate content or a presentation. The AI will also save you precious time performing editing functions, such as adding tags, suggesting related pages, and creating tables of contents.
Moreover, you will appreciate the affordable cost of Notion. Before you think of upgrading, the App's free plan has enough features to meet the organizational needs of a small business owner.
5. Any. do
Not many organization apps on the market are easily mobile-compatible. Any.do defies these odds by having highly compatible Android, iOS, MacOS, and Windows versions.
Any. do is a simple yet well-designed task management enables you to create daily reminders on your to-do list and subtasks to manage your workload.
Any. do integration with tools like Google Calendar ensures you have an easy time setting up reminders on your tasks. Moreover, it's Any.do Moment feature encourages members to review their daily tasks before committing or deferring them.
Organize Your Life and Business Processes Now
Do you want to be organized but have little time to create processes that’ll make your life easier? Check out our business process improvement services and get in touch. We will audit and streamline your services so that your business can be organized and use all its resources efficiently.
Comments