More Projects Than You Can Handle? Try Out These 7 Tools!
It has happened again! By the stroke of luck or by the will of some higher power (let’s leave the upper management out of the equation) you have been swarmed with multiple projects that differ in complexity and due time. Since this is not your first rodeo, you are well aware that problem before you requires meticulous planning, careful prioritizing and keeping a close tab on everything. However, last time you tried handling a similar situation, it turned out to be much more demanding than you initially thought. So this time you need to change something – you need to bring something new to the table.
There are always ways to increase your productivity, whether you are in web design ,SEO or graphic design business. In this post, we will present you with 7 tools that can help you organize your time, communicate better and increase your overall productivity, so multiple project handling should become much less frightening.
1. Week Plan
Inspired by the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Week Plan is a task manager that allows you to organize your goals and tasks according to roles and responsibilities, as well as importance and urgency. This app is not meant to be a project management tool, nor the tool for managing teams, but rather personal time organizer for keeping your professional as well as personal life on track. While very light and user-friendly, Week Plan can pack quite a punch when it comes to day-to-day task tracking and overall time management.
2. Sanebox
Simply put, this tool helps you organize your inbox, thus removing unnecessary distractions that email pile up can bestow upon you. Sanebox comes with a variety of options which will enable you to easily unsubscribe from mailing lists and individual senders, delay an email receiving, set reminders, manage attachments and figure out which outgoing mail got no reply. Usage of this app might not get you to reach Inbox Zero, but it will allow you space to organize yourself more efficiently and leave you with more time to focus on matters at hand.
3. Slack
With over 1.5 million paid accounts Slack is one of the most popular applications for team communication and it’s used by 77% of Fortune 500 companies. Whether you are using laptop, tablet or phone, this app provides you with a centralized place to communicate with your coworkers through instant messages and chat rooms. It allows you to create team chat channels organized by topics, as well as private groups and a direct messaging. Slack integrates with a large number of third-party services such as Google Drive, Dropbox or Runscope, and all content is searchable so finding files, conversations and people will be a breeze.
4. Raven Tools
Raven Tools is an online marketing platform that enables you to easily communicate with your clients and deliver automated SEO, social and PPC marketing reports on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis. With Raven Tools you can schedule social media updates, track link building campaigns and audit SEO. Also, you gain access to the research center that analyzes competitors or target sites, so client’s backlinks, domain authority, load time, page speed, and other metrics can be compared against those of their competitors.
5. RescueTime
By running in the background and tracking time spent on websites and applications you visit, RescueTime application will help you plan your day more efficiently. You can limit the amount of time spent on, or completely block access to certain websites and keep track of how much time you’ve spent on meetings or email transcripts. Also, it provides you with productivity score, so at the end of the day, you know just how much you have accomplished.
6. StayFocusd
Similar to RescueTime, Chrome’s plugin StayFocusd will prevent unnecessary distractions by allowing you to control the time spent on websites that are not related to work. It enables you to allow or block entire websites, specific subdomains, paths, pages and even specific content such as videos, games or images. It won’t track your productivity like RescueTime but – to be completely honest – that would be too much to ask for from a free plugin.
Simply put, Active Collab can be called Swiss army knife of project management – task overview, team and client collaboration as well as billing are packed in one small, user-friendly package. You can delegate and track time spent on tasks and discuss every aspect of the process with your team. The project can be shared with the clients so they are kept in the loop, and after everything is done, send them an invoice that can be paid via the app as well. Just as it is stated on their website, this is one powerful, yet simple project management tool.
Having proper tools at your disposal is an imperative when it comes to handling multiple projects simultaneously. Just keep in mind that time is a precious resource that could only be used to the fullest if managed properly.
