Tools and Resources in my Daily Work Flow

Everyone has their own “work routine” that consists of how they check their email, when they respond to emails, which sites or apps they use to help stay organized, and even methods to stay motivated and focused.  This is my attempt to share the tools, resources, and sites I use on a daily basis.

Productivity Focused

• I’m a big believer in Todoist. It is my primary way to organize, catalog, and prioritize tasks and thoughts that come into play during the day.  If I “think” something, I’ve learned that it MUST be written down or I will forget it.  Those thoughts, planning sessions, and scheduling all go into Todoist.
• I’m also a “list person” and have found that an outline is a great way for my brain dumps.  That is where Workflowy comes to the rescue.  I have been using Workflowy’s natural method of managing lists and brain dumps for many years and would be lost without this resource.
• But sometimes I have to plan with the big picture and it helps to use a mindmap. I use MindMup to help me easily put into visual context the structure of a project or idea.

Business Focused

• In my day-to-day running of WPStudio.com, I’m constantly in email. Most of the time I’m in the Zoho Suite of Apps which are a lifesaver (and affordable) for a small business.
• Communication with members and interested observers is vital to the membership of WPStudio and so I spent a bit of time using a program called Sendy to manage all my group communications.
• One of the benefits of the WPStudio community is access to the private Slack channel where like-minded WordPress freelancers can grow and share together.  So Slack (either the website or the app) is almost always open.
• And since the focus of my work is around WordPress training and building plugins and themes, I spend a lot of time using these services: WordPress.org, ServerPilot, DigitalOcean.
• Since I work almost entirely online, I also need a good graphics editor.  But I’m not always on a device that has the graphic programs installed and that lead me to find my new favorite graphical editor. Gravit Designer is now my go-to image editor.

Other Daily Tools

• I’m a big sports fan so BleacherReport gets visited when alerts get sent to my phone. (ESPN has gone downhill for pure sports reporting and I’ve found the focus on sports to be better at BleacherReport.)  I’m also a huge Cricket fan and will be periodically checking CricInfo.com
• Feedly… Feedly… Feedly.  I only have a short period of the day that I can devote to soaking up what’s happening around the world, around WordPress, and around other interests I have.  So Feedly does all the work for me and lets me quickly flip through everything I need, tag things I want to come back to, and stay on top of the “goings on”.
• I also have a number of private and internal WordPress sites that I’ve built/customized to perform specific tasks that I visit on a daily basis.
  • One site operates as a “start” page with all my useful bookmarks and notifications.
  • Another site is my status dashboard that keeps me on top of the statistics of my company.
  • I’ve customized another site to be my “social network observer” that allows me to watch multiple elements and respond at the same time.

I know I’ve left off a number of sites/tools/apps that I use on a daily basis, but these are ones I use all the time.  What sites or tools do you find yourself “living in” or always being open?