Organization Hacks & Cool Tools to Kick More Butt

When you preach “process, automate, organize, and measure” to scale and grow your business, you had better walk the talk.

So, I’d like to peel back the curtain and share some of my favorite business tools that help me:

• Buy Back Time
• Measure Productivity
• Get Focused
• Get Organized

Here is this Quarter’s Organization Hacks and Cool Tools to Kick More Business Butt

Buy Back Time by Measuring how You Spend It

Tool: RescueTime.com

Set your daily targets for time doing the the most productive things. Label what drives your revenue and what is distracting with your customized dashboard. Buy back 10% to 50% of your productivity with this free app. It also works across multiple devices – iOS, Android and Kindle. Super cool features with Premium account like actually blocking access of distracting sites during set business hours.

Drive Productivity with Focus

Tool: Focus Booster

Make every minute count—literally. Installing Focus Booster gives you a countdown clock on your screen. You set the time to give yourself a targeted amount of time to focus and work without distractions. I set this baby for 25 minute increments where I ignore everything else and plug ahead. After it counts down, it buzzes and you get up and take a break—walk up and down stairs, get a drink, pet your dog or walk your dog up and down the stairs and get him a drink. Any way you look at it, it boosts your focus, drives productivity which drives your profitability.

Organize Your Reading and Research

Tool: Evernote

How often do you run across information or an article that you know you want to reference, share, read further, or save? In this new “content” driven online economy, we are bombarded with excellent, usable content every day. How do you store, tag and organize stuff that you’re not even sure how you’ll use? Evernote. Bag it, tag it, sort it and keep for reference later.

This free app has tons of great features and uses and the premium feature is affordable too. From categorizing market research to competitive data, to ideas for store displays, Evernote is a great way to wrangle information overload into bite sized pieces.

Make Better Decisions Through Insight

Tool: Wufoo

From new product interest to registration forms, Wufoo is the easiest form creator I’ve ever used. Plus, if you’re presenting or proposing information from the data you’ve gathered, you can customize a report with graphs or charts from your findings. Embed survey codes into emails, social media or even your website.

Impress the socks off somebody with your market research and results. And, it’s fun to say: WUFOO!

Keep a Cleaner Mail Box and Be Prepared

Tool: Dropox or Dropox for Teams

Working across multiple devices and traveling to present proposals or to speak, I always have a back up plan because things get lost, people get late, and technology gets corrupt. Dropbox is a great way to make sure that you’re not traveling with your only copy of your critical data or the only way to access your presentations and files. It’s also nice to transfer large files and share with groups or teams rather than clogging up the pipes.

Streamline Project Management and Communication

Tool: Xtrant

Speaking of not clogging up the pipeline, Xtrant provides users with a one stop project management communication hub. Upload and share working documents, videos, communicate, set privacy and communication levels and most importantly, AVOID the circular email chain of CC and FYI that can clog up and delay progress. Basic account is free, upgrade to add team members.

If you’re searching for more tools to stand out in business and maximize your time and resources, check out our earlier post: 7 Cool tools To Increase Your WOW Factor.