Try to manage two projects at once. Add two young kids, renovating the garden and some hobbies. Make sure to be present on social media, keep you knowledge up-to-date and innovate for your boss. The list goes on … How not to get lost? How to become more productive? Where to start?

Here are my tips and tricks for better productivity.

RescueTime

First I installed RescueTime – Time Management & Productivity tracking software. This logs the time spent in every program, webpage or idle time. The free version does the job very well. Now you know where you are spending your time and can do something about it. My top improvements were:

• Check for mail only twice a day. Unpin Outlook from the taskbar to stick with the schedule.
• Stop being to present on social media. Stop using hootsuite on your work PC. Use Twitter on your iPhone when at the coffee machine. Start using buffer to even out your own stuff.

Keep using this to improve on a regular basis!

GMail

Next start using your gmail account more. Not only is gmail the best webmail client out there with 10Gb of space, you can automate your tasks and when gmail is not up for it you can use IFTTT to do the job. Some examples I use:

• Forward RescueTime reports to Evernote
• Automate “Thank you for the follow” message with IFTTT

Google has more apps like calendar which I use for reminders from event noted before Evernote put it in the new MAC/IOS version.

Evernote

We all know Evernote but I recently started using it more with The Secret Weapon. This described a best practice how to use evernote on a higher level. In short you tag posts with When, What, Who and Where and have an Action Pending and Completed notebook. I added the manifest to evernote with the !Daily tag.

Also read some (e)books about Evernote. The Trunk has a good list of what is out there.

IFTTT

I’ve written about If This Than That before. I mostly use it to send new RSS items to my Pocket reading list.

Pocket

As mentioned above I use Pocket as my reading list. It integrates with a lot of apps and supports all platforms (with web as fallback) Again I can automate with IFTTT.

Video

I shifted from reading to viewing when learning. YouTube and vimeo are the websites I turn to. Also reviews for products and bringing back memories are there. When I mark a video for Watch Later it is added to my Pocket reading list with an IFTTT receipt.

Grovo contains instruction videos for Tools like Evernote, Twitter, Facebook, IFTTT and many more. Again the free account is enough to get you started.

Other stuff

• Wunderlist for tasks synced between all platforms.
• Notepad Logfile Add .LOG to the top of a txt file in your dropbox and pin the shortcut to your taskbar
• 1Password for passwords synced between all platforms
• Google Chrome with extensions Evernote Clearly, Pocket, Buffer, Evernote, 1Password, DoNotTrackMe
• TimeManage.me a pomodoro time tracker with Windows 8 interface