COVID has presented numerous challenges to productivity; in this post we share four tools that we discovered while working from home that may help you stay productive.
COVID has unceremoniously disrupted our ways of working – and as we know, necessity is the mother of invention – so new ways of working are plentiful. Over the past month I’ve experimented with a variety of new toolsets and techniques, and outlined below are four that work, for me…and they may for you as well. Who doesn’t want an upgrade to their researching, collaborating, productivity, and learning arsenal?! Enjoy!
Tool: Trello, www.trello.com
What’s it do? Kanban for your personal / workgroup task list.
It’s different because… Everyone has a list of tasks, whether in MS Office, Teams, or simple activity managers or lists, and most are limited in their visual appeal. Research has shown that visual task boards enable a variety of advantages, including focus, productivity, efficiency, and time-boxing tasks, visually. Trello is a simple Kanban system for personal / group use, that allows you to quickly and simply identify tasks that need to be done, and visually manage them to completion. Who doesn’t want a quick way to see what they’ve done, and what’s next?.
How it helped? During Covid, without external deadlines or motivations, it’s easy to let non-essential tasks bleed over into the next day, week, etc. For me, a visual reminder of what needs to be done keeps my plate full / more productive, and the completed tasks provide satisfaction and sense of achievement.
You might also consider: Planview, Slack, or Jira for more formal project environments.
Tool: Miro, www.miro.com
What’s it do? Cloud-based collaboration.
It’s different because… It’s visual, it’s got pre-formatted templates for common types of mindmap, it’s in the cloud, and it’s got integrations – dozens of them. Whether you’re looking for development tools – user stories, journey management or UX design, Lean tools – fishbone, value-chain or Kanban, or Innovation tools – Concept and Mind Map, Miro’s got you covered. Very short learning curve for such a powerful tool.
How it helped? Recently I attended an online education event using Miro – and was delighted at the experience. Easy collaboration, easy to learn, visually appealing, with tools that enabled the instructor to facilitate seamlessly via Zoom, including breakout rooms, timers, etc. Perfect for design thinking, education, or innovation collaborations.
You might also consider: Sketchboard, Coggle, Mindmeister, GitMind, Canva, Mindmaster.
Tool: Anki, apps.ankiweb.net
What’s it do? Flashcard-based self-study tool.
It’s different because…We’ve been using them for years to learn – flashcards have been with us for decades. Flashcards are apparently the best way to learn / remember things – experts use words like ‘active recall’, ‘metacognition’, and ‘spaced repetition’ to spell out the benefits, I just know it works. With easy setup, card synchronization across platforms / devices, support for media and decks of 100,000+ cards with flexible layouts, the learning potential is endless.
How it helped? I’m terrible with names. Like really terrible. It’s not personal, it just is. So for a recent online event, there were 50+ attendees scheduled to attend – so Anki, plus a quick screen grab of their picture from LinkedIn, along with name, title, company, geo, plus about 4 hours practice over a couple days, and à voila, names-and-faces challenge solved.
You might also consider: Brainscape, Adobe Spark, Quizlet.
Tool: Feedspot, www.feedspot.com
What’s it do? Feed Aggregator
It’s different because… Feedspot is a mega-aggregator of content – from blogs (e.g. WordPress), content hub sites, publishing platforms (Medium, Reddit). You’re spared the drudgery, if you’d like, of selecting all the individual feeds to aggregate – Feedspot has curated, aggregated feeds for popular topics – I accessed and configured a curated Artificial Intelligence feed within 30 seconds, delivered in digest format daily to my inbox. Bonus that it presents you with expert / non-traditional content, giving you a broader set of content / opinions for a given topic.
How it helped? I’ve got an interest in Artificial Intelligence – and to stay current, I found myself visiting quite a number of websites, sometimes daily. With Feedspot, I’ve been able to streamline getting the content, while being exposed to additional content outside of the mainstream websites.
You might also consider: Reddit or Medium. Tomato, tomahto…choose between the two based on the experts / depth of forum / content for your particular topics, but neither will aggregate both sites.
Solera Strategies 