I had a man ask me a couple of weeks ago; “How do you do keep up with all the things you do”? Sometimes I wonder that myself. So I thought I’d write about three things that help me keep at least a little bit sane.
Feedly – Feedly is an online site (news aggregator) where you can collect and read all the blogs that you like to read in one place. Before I installed Feedly I use to get numerous emails from every blog that I followed as they updated. As I follow hundreds of blogs this became quite the challenge. So Feedly has been a lifesaver because I can go there when I have time and read as much or as little as I want at one time. You can organize your content in categories; so I have Business, DNA, Genealogy, Photo, Scrapbooking, etc. You can also set up favorites so they are at the top of your sidebar so you can’t miss them. You can also save to Evernote. (Evernote is a timesaver and organizing tool in itself and there are lots of books written about it.)
If you find something but don’t have time to read it you can mark it “read later” or you can “save to a board” so you will always be able to find it. Of course, you can share with all your peeps as Feedly is linked to all the social media sites.
The FREE account allows 100 sources, 3 feeds and you can access from your desktop and your mobile. Yes, they also have a mobile app. If you have more than 100 sources then you can opt for the Pro account but it does cost $$..
Note that to me, a blog post is different than a newsletter or weekly email. So my followers can sign up for my blog posts as they are posted but they can also sign up for my emails where they receive the blog post and additional items that I think are useful. This could be updates on DNA sales and specials, updates on The DNA Angel Project™, sales at both Forever and Shop the Hound.
Outlook – Yes Outlook, is my every morning tool. Each morning I look at my calendar and see what I have to do and here’s how I use it. I’ve set up categories for various tasks. Tasks like Important, Inventory, Conference etc. That way I can look at my calendar and I can immediately visualize all the important things I have to do today and then if there are others item I look at those after. I use recurrence so I can set up something in my calendar such as “check inventory” and after entering the category and the recurrence pattern (daily, weekly, monthly or yearly) and the length of time I want it to keep reminding me it will appear in my calendar over and over. I do know you can set up tasks but I find remembering to check them off a hassle where I can go into the reminders and dismiss all at one time.
ScanSnap ix500 – Something that I use almost on a daily basis is my ScanSnap. We are a techy household and I found this tool and my husband fell in love. He has one at the office and we actually each have our own. It works really slick. Like today I had a document that I’m sending to the Ontario Archives and I wanted to keep a copy for my files. I was able to load it and it scans front and back and then I have a choice of what to do with the document. I can save to a file or I could have emailed it to someone. That’s what I primarily use it for. But you can scan photos (although I haven’t) but it might be a possibility for some of the not so delicate photos I have. You can scan receipts and business cards and it also integrates with Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and more.
These are just some of the tools I use to “Get my poop in a group” (#GMPIAG). What are some of yours?