The Best Tools for Busy but Successful Organizing or Productivity Consultants
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How good can productivity consultants be if they are not productive themselves? This might be the biggest oxymoron of all: consultants don’t have it easy to stay organized. They give essential tips to individuals and business teams on how to make their days more productive. But they should always start from themselves.
For a productivity consultant, digital tools are a must! A plain old notebook no longer serves as an effective organizer. When you start writing down ideas and plans there, it will become a total mess. The right tools will keep all your plans and projects in check.
So let’s list few tools that are essential for a productivity consultant’s productivity.
1. Asana
If you’re used to recommending tools for businesses to become more productive, you’re certainly familiar with Asana. It’s a project management tool that’s perfect for synchronizing a team’s work. It keeps all projects together in a simple interface, and all members of the team can update the progress of their work.
Asana is great for organizing your clients. You can list different projects, create tasks lists, and update everything on a daily basis.
2. Writing Services
For a busy productivity consultant, a tool that organizes their daily schedule may not be enough. You’re working on various projects at a time. You have to analyze data, prepare presentations, and give relevant recommendations. In addition, you need to monitor the progress your clients make.
Writing services can take away part of the burden. They can help with analytics, and they can certainly prepare great presentations and guidelines when you need such materials for your clients.
Here are few writing services that are safe, reliable, and affordable:
3. Basecamp
This tool is similar to Asana, so you can choose the one you like more. It’s a project management solution that allows you to keep track of all tasks and projects. However, Asana is more focused on tasks and projects, whereas Basecamp is an overall organizational tool that even gives you a text editor that you and your team members can collaboratively use.
Basecamp is also great for daily to-do lists. You can mark due dates and the tool will remind you not to miss them. The file-sharing functionality is great!
4. Tableau
When you take a look at your workflow, you’ll easily notice that data analytics take the most time and effort. To understand what a particular client needs in order to boost their productivity patterns, you have to take a look at their current practices and achievements.
If you’re dealing with businesses, you’ll often get confusing data in messy MS Excel sheets. The business owners don’t understand this data, and that’s exactly why they struggle with productivity. With Tableau, you can change that for them. This tool enables you to visualize data in a very clear way. From there on, you can start throwing in actionable tips that would improve the client’s effectiveness.
5. MailChimp
Are you reaching out to as many potential clients as possible? It’s very important for organizer or productivity consultants to nurture leads. Email marketing is an essential aspect of that process. You’ll need to write high-quality content that informs your target audience about the importance of productivity systems. You’ll send such content to your email subscribers on a regular basis.
Out of all email marketing software options, MailChimp is probably the most popular one. It’s great because it has an awesome customer support system. You can create great email newsletters with the tool, and integrate them with your social media marketing campaign.
6. RescueTime
You’re probably suggesting tools like this one to your clients all the time. RescueTime is all about helping you to become aware of what’s stopping you from realizing your full productivity potential. Are you really too busy, or are you wasting time on meaningless tasks?
This tool will keep track of your daily habits and will give you a report to analyze. You’ll see what activities drain your energy out without delivering good results. You’ll see exactly how much time you spend on Reddit, social media, and other websites that are not essential for your work.
7. G Suite
Gmail is most likely the most important communication tool you use, right? You also rely on Google Calendar and you like Google Drive because it’s easier to use than MS tools, right? G Suite integrates all those tools into a single platform. You get Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Meet, and other features that are specifically targeted at businesses.
You can bring in multiple users, share files, and manage everything in a very secure and user-friendly environment.
Over to You
You have to be a great example for your clients to follow. Of course you’re busy. You’re going through a crazy schedule every day, but you already have the knowledge on how to handle such pressure. All you need now is support from the right tools. Are you already using some of the seven tools we listed above?
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RescueTime sounds like a neat resource. I am not familiar with it, but will certainly check it out!
I’ve heard of it but have always been afraid to find out where I’m spending my time! :O
I hear that Janet!
Great article! Basecamp is great! I love how easy it is to use. Wrike is also a good alternative to Asana.
I tried Basecamp a number of years ago with the intention of using it for collaborating with clients, but found that my clients didn’t want to have to log into another site to communicate with me. I know it’s very popular though!
I love G Suite. So easy to use and it seems that most everyone uses it. It make it easy to on-board a new employee because they usually are already familiar with the product.
That’s true! Most people are familiar with Gmail, even if they haven’t used G Suite itself, and for most users, there’s very little difference between the two.
These are wonderful resources for small businesses. I find that determining a simple system or tool that will work to accomplish your goals is important. Having an application just to say you use an application is not an effective way to run a business. Taking the time to really see if the application works the way you want it to is super important. Otherwise, you are just wasting time.
Great points, Sabrina! I was in a group where people were often asking if XXX was a good app to purchase, and the leader always reminded us to look for tools to solve problems in our businesses and not to chase the latest shiny object.
I use FocusMe which sounds a lot like Rescue Timer. I am also a huge fan of Trello for teams.
Brilliant! Thanks for sharing, Jamie.
RescueTime sounds like a valuable tool to check out. Although I agree with Janet and Seana that it might be a bit too “enlightening” to find out where my time is actually being spent.
I use MailChimp . They have or will be changing their fee structure soon. It’s been free for me, but I think I’m going to have to switch to their paid version. Do you have any advice on that? Is the paid version worthwhile?
They have already put through some of the changes. If you have autoresponders set up, you won’t lose them but you won’t be able to add to the series or create new ones. I noticed this morning that you need a paid account to access most of their templates too. If you don’t need those features, you’re probably fine to stick with the free version. One thing to note is that if you upgrade to a paid account, you can downgrade to the free version if you don’t need the extra features anymore, but you can only downgrade ONCE, so you have to really think ahead!
Hi Tom,
Great Post! Thank you so much for sharing this valuable post on the best tools for successful organizing or productivity consultants. I am really impressed with the list of the tools and Mailchimp works fine. And the best among them I would say is the G Suite. Keep up the Good Work…
Keep Sharing…
Cheers,
Abhay