Automation: Doing More In Less Time
I originally wrote this article on Medium, and it was accepted into the startup and entrepreneurship blog, The Ascent. Since people found the information useful, I'm updating it here with some more information.
With day to day work, staying focused on daily tasks needs to be as efficient as possible. If your an entrepreneur, there are usually 20 different things that you need to do before close of business. I’ll let you in on a little secret; working smart AND harder will open more doors. There are plenty of tools to help with this, but I’m going to share my top two at the moment, and I’ll come back to this as I discover more and more.
Boomerang For Gmail
My work goes between time zones, so when it comes to sending out emails at the appropriate time, my go to choice is Boomerang. I can write emails that I need to send out, and have them sent at an appropriate time to land in the recipients mailbox. There’s also the added feature of being able to have time sensitive emails return to your inbox as a reminder so they don’t get buried. Have an important engagement a week away, and need that email front and center the day before? Boomerang it and have it in your inbox right on time.
IFTTT (IF This Then That)
This one is a huge time saver if you’re willing to put in a little bit of work. IFTTT connects a plethora of apps and links them together in a way that goes beyond native features. It’s almost like taking your favorite app and strapping on a turbo booster in the form of your other favorite app. Photographer needing to get your images on Twitter from Instagram without sharing twice? IFTTT links both with an applet that runs every time you post. And depending on how you configure your applets, you can actually ‘chain’ them to trigger off one after the other. For instance, I have an applet that sends photos on Instagram to my Tumblr page, but I also have an applet for my Tumblr page that sends photos to my Facebook Page upon publishing a new post. My one Instagram post published to two platforms in one click. Get creative with IFTTT and you can begin to see all the possibilities it can help you with.
Clearbit Connect
Clearbit Connect is one of my favorite plug-ins for Chrome. It's like adding LinkedIn right into your email. What Clearbit allows you to do is look up the email address of people working at companies. If you're looking to connect with people at companies via cold emails, and you need help finding people, Clearbit is a solid solution.
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