5 Productivity Tools We Love
Here at The Doers we’re huge fans of any platform that makes productivity easier. As a bunch we’re pretty productive, but TikTok is a thing and we all have our weaknesses right?! So sometimes, good old pen and paper or an excel spreadsheet are not going to cut the mustard. If like us you like the idea of streamlining your processes, you’ve come to the right place.
When it comes to productivity tools, there is a lot out there - it’s a big market these days, There are tools that help you take more effective notes, others which help freelancers calculate their time working on certain projects and apps just to help you concentrate. With so much out there it can be hard to find the right one for you, after all, you’re in the market to streamline your process, not add extra hurdles to it. As a team, we try a lot of different tools, some of which don’t stick - but that’s just part of the process. So for us, a good productivity tool reduces time spent on a certain task, is easy to use and to share with your team, and has good UI - we’re a sucker for a sleek design.
With this all in mind, let’s dive into the productivity tools we love at The Doers:
Notion
Our number one will always be Notion, it has truly revolutionised the way we work. We always find it hard to pinpoint exactly what Notion is, other than completely essential to the management of our business. It’s a central hub of sorts that allows you to create documents, tables, galleries, pretty much anything you can imagine. As we work with a lot of clients and have a brand to manage ourselves, we can neatly organise our files by the client, create a schedule of work, content plans, and easily get feedback from other team members.
We will note this is only scratching the surface of what Notion can do, it’s a great platform that can mould to any type of business whether it’s a consultancy, a brand, a charity and it’s even great for personal use. Some of our team members use it personally to plan holidays, house moves, and even which restaurants they want to visit. The opportunity with this platform is endless.
Toggl
At The Doers we are powered by incredible freelancers, so it’s only natural we’ve nailed which tools make being an independent business work more smoothly. One of these tools we love to recommend is Toggl, put simply it is a time-tracking tool that allows you to accurately calculate where your time is spent each day. When you’re a freelancer you either work with a fixed rate, a daily rate, or an hourly rate, but regardless of how you work having a time-tracker can be super useful to find out how long tasks are taking you, where you could potentially out-source and in time, with the data - how you can plan your week.
Whether you need to track your time for monetary purposes, or just because you would like peace of mind about what you spend the majority of your time doing - this tool is absolutely brilliant. The data really helps provide a much better idea of what a week looks like in your shoes, spoiler alert - admin takes more time than you think!
Dubsado
Something that has cropped up a lot recently is the rise of project management tools, ones that streamline the admin side of running a business with several clients. Working with clients isn’t as simple as just agreeing on some work, doing the work, and getting paid for the work There are a lot of pieces of paper, zoom meetings, progress updates, and of course, invoices to deal with. Thankfully here at The Doers, we have a Laura to make sure this all runs smoothly, but to some people, this process can be a little overwhelming. And that’s where Dubsado comes in.
We’ll start by saying Dubsado is a beast of a program, it allows you to automate every step of working with a client with a customised workflow. From getting lead capture from your website to booking appointments, sending contracts, and invoicing (it’ll even chase your late payments for you!). Whilst it takes a hot moment to set up, it’s a true investment to any business looking to spend less time on the paperwork and more time doing the fun bits!
Zapier
Oh, Zapier, where would we be without you? Asides from Notion, we would say that Zapier is our most used productivity tool. So what is Zapier? Essentially an automation tool that allows different platforms to speak to one another. The function is simple it follows the idea that: if this does this, then that does that. All you have to do as an end-user is check the platforms you want to speak to each other are available on Zapier (most are) and tell it how you want one to talk to another. It’s as simple as that.
A simple integration to explain this might be that you want Gmail and Slack to talk to one another. You could set up an automation that every time you receive a new email, you get a slack message telling you to check your email. It’s pretty slick and great at saving time on any type of admin where you’re transferring information between one platform and another.
Forest
Lastly, a little fun productivity tool that we love at The Doers is Forest! Whilst Forest isn’t going to automate pieces or organise your whole business, it’s a really handy app if you’re prone to a bit of procrastination! The app is simple, it’s based on the theory that deep work is best achieved in 25-minute bursts. The idea is that whenever you start a piece of work, you ‘plant’ a virtual tree, once you’ve hit start - you can’t mindlessly scroll through your phone, as it will kill your virtual tree (it’s brutal, trust us). So instead of picking up your phone, you have no choice but to spend 25 minutes working. And when it’s done? You add a new tree to your forest. Simple as that.
The nice thing about this app is that the Forest team actually plants trees, you receive virtual coins for each tree you plant which you can then spend on buying real trees for the planet. Pretty nice way to make sure you work eh?
That sums up our favourite productivity tools which make our daily working lives that little bit easier here at The Doers.
Be sure to share your favourite productivity tools with us below too!
This post was written by our Inner Circle member, Allie. If you’re in any need of social media advice or help, do be sure to book a 30-minute discovery call.
