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Drudgery Automation Management |
I will sheepishly admit to being a personal productivity geek. I've read Getting Things Done multiple times, check Lifehacker the way others check their stocks, and am constantly looking for that nifty new Firefox extension that will magically render me Organized.
While I've gone down some dead ends, there are a few little apps that have made a lasting difference in my ability to feel in control of my day - or at least to minimize the drudgery. And given how buried most nonprofit staffers are, I figure anything that saves you a little time might be welcome.
Anagram: when a new major donor prospect or one of your super-activists sends you an email, wouldn't it be great if you could use their email signature file to create an pre-filled Outlook contact with one click? Anagram instantly creates Outlook contacts and appointments out of text you highlight. 99% of the time it pre-fills the contact/appointment exactly right. Free 45-day trial...they also have versions for Palm, Netsuite, and even Salesforce.com (for those of you using SFDC as your database of record). Windows only, I'm afraid.
ActiveWords: I used to type the words "Thanks, Alex" 50 or so times a day...so it was very annoying when I would misspell my own name, have to hit the back button five times, rewrite it, mistype it again, etc. Now I just hit the letter t and then hit the spacebar twice, because ActiveWords lets me create keyboard shortcuts to automate common tasks...could be text snippets, opening a folder on your network, browsing to a URLs, or even a multi-step task. It sits in your taskbar so it works across all your apps. It has a built in calculator for totting up how much time and money it saves you...since installing it a couple of years ago, I've saved 30 full hours and avoided having to type 354,000 characters! Free 60-day trial. Windows-only, but I'm led to believe Quicksilver offers similar functionality on the Mac platform.
Jott. Call Jott's phone number and leave a message for yourself. It will be converted to text and emailed to your email address. Great for reminding yourself of an idea or action item when you're not near your computer. Free.
I've also playing around with Xobni, a new, free Outlook plugin that organizes your email by person...all of your previous conversations and shared attachments with that constituent/colleague/board member in one place. Real potential for improving responsiveness....hat tip to my colleague Will Buchanan for that one.
How about you? What are your favorite productivity apps?
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