Weekly Round-Up #77: How to plan your week, What's your Time Management type and Making Ourselves Miserable
In this week’s round up we look at how you can make your planner work for you, some Google Calendar tricks you may be missing out on and some Apps that I think will simplify your life.
Hello and welcome to this week’s round-up! In this week’s edition we take a look at some Google Calendar features you may have missed, how to balance your work & life and how to stay away from your phone.
How to Make All Those Lists Work in Your Planner – Gifti Etcetera
I’ve been meaning to write a post about my current system of task lists, calendars and generally how I “Get Things Done”, until then check out this post from Giftie Etcetera which has some good ideas about how to use lists. It’s planner (as in ring-bound) orientated but I think you could adapt it to work with most systems.
9 things to put in your planner on Monday mornings for a productive AF week – Hello Giggles
More planner related goodies here. I whole-heartedly recommend putting a meal planner/shopping list in your planner. I have a free A4 downloadable Meal Planner and will be releasing more sizes soon. I will admit that it’s initially hard to get into a meal planning routine but it makes so much sense – someone on one Facebook group I’m a member of saved over £300 a month!
9 Google Calendar Features You Should Be Using – Make Use Of
This article is worth a read even if you don’t get past point 1! Appointment pages sound like an awesome idea: I can see it as a useful tool for so many reasons – companies looking to sort meetings out, people booking consultations and bloggers sorting out posting schedules just to name a few. Read the rest of the post though, there are many more top tips!
Which Countries Have the Most Vacation Days? – Get VOIP
I think after looking at this I’m moving to Brazil! Oh, and there’s a slight problem with the post. Whilst EU countries require their members to give workers paid holiday, this isn’t a flat 4 weeks it’s worked out based on the days/hours you work. And this may all change for me if we have voted to leave the E.U (I’m writing this on the 23rd June at 11pm…. we’ll know for sure in 10 hours!)
The real reasons you procrastinate — and how to stop – Washington Post
Do you procrastinate? If so read this post to figure out why you’re putting things off – it might not be for the reasons you imagine!
12 Bad Habits That Are Making You Less Productive – Hubspot Blog
Stop doing your easy tasks first! It may seem like the best option but it can actually dampen your productivity. Oh, and leave your phone at home and batch process emails!
The Complete Guide to Breaking Your Smartphone Habit – The Art Of Manliness
Speaking of leaving phones alone… can you? I’m in the middle of writing a post about my phone use (or should that be lack of) and I think that we need to take a step-back from our always on connectedness and start interacting in the real world – and this post can help you to break the habit.
Why Increased Efficiency Will Make Us Miserable – Tech Crunch
As someone who works (in part of my life) in retail, things like home delivery have a huge impact on my sector. We have some customers who some into our store whose only interaction during the week is with the shop floor assistants and cashiers. Buying stuff online may seem like a convenient option but what harm are you doing to your local community and your social skills?
5 Time Management Personality Types and Actions to Improve – Quickbase: The Fast Track
Are you one of these 5 time management personality types? Check the list and see how you can fix your issues.
19 Tools to Help Small Business Owners Get Stuff Done – Business 2 Community
Not just for small business owners, there are a few good tools on this list for a variety of organisational needs from time-management and project management to sorting out money.
7 Tips for Work-Life Balance as an Entrepreneur – Huffington Post
There’s a couple of tips here that suggest outsourcing certain tasks are a good idea – this is especially important if you try to stick to the Four Hour Work Week plan (although I don’t think that works) but there are some other good tips about time management and not multitasking.
She Takes An Ordinary Command Hook And Uses It In The Most Extraordinary Way – Wimp
I use these hooks to keep the cables around my TV tidy – when my Chromecast, Hard drive or headphones aren’t plugged in I use the hooks to keep the cables out of the way. I never thought about using them for shelving or kitchen organising – I must try the pan lid one as I have one particular lid that always causes a problem!
15 Things Insanely-Productive People Do Differently Benjamin P. Hardy on Medium
Do you know who you are, or where you are going? If not, then perhaps you need to take an introspective look at yourself to kick-start your productivity.
The following products and services have been sent through to me and I have included them as I think they will be of interest
Disclaimer I have not received any financial compensation for recommending the following services, I list them as I feel they will be of benefit to my readers
CometDocs – App Suggestion
The guys over at CometDocs suggested that you might be interested in their app – and I can see it will be of great use to a lot of you! You can convert your PDF documents to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and more which I wish I had a few years ago when I was receiving all sorts of rubbish from clients!
To Round – App Suggestion
This app looks very interesting. Add tasks and watch them bobble together. It’s an interesting non-linear concept for task management that may really suit people who have trouble coping with formalised lists.
VitalTime – App Suggestion
We all know health is a major factor in being productive, but we also want to keep a track of what we’re working on. Vital time covers both bases tracking your time and your tasks as well as looking after your health too.
Messgen – App Suggestion
Do you find yourself sending the same emails over and over to people? Sure, canned responses are great but you still need to tailor them to individual people – especially if you’re applying for a job. Canned responses through email, whilst a great idea have some limitations. I’ve just started using them to quickly reply to messages I get on the blog which ask the same questions and it cuts down my response (and work) time greatly. Messgen extends this “canned response” idea a bit further with the ability to pick and choose from a variety of responses. It’s well worth a look of you send a lot of very similar emails.
Have A Great Weekend!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s round-up, as always if you have an interesting post on productivity, time management or work place practices then please send me a message through the contact page.
If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter yet, make sure you do using the form below – I have some great free downloads coming for you in the next week.
- Follow Katy Whitton on:
Love To Round App, very mind designed and for more Free, the perfect match ! Good Work +1
Agree with Jane – To Round is really fun
Thank you for including my post (Giftie Ecetera) in your round-up. You are correct. It can be adapted to any system. I’ve made these recurring lists on computer-based plans and in a Moleskin.
You’re more than welcome!