07 Nov 19 Things That Will Make You Happier at Work in 2018

These Tools Will Make Business Better + More Fun Every Day

Written by Daniela Cavalletti

9 min read

How many hours do you spend at work each day? In a week, or in a year? And how many of those hours are actually fun and productive, leaving you feeling happy and satisfied?

I do a lot of networking with fellow business owners, and chat to my clients regularly. We also have many discussions about work and life within our team. With the calendar year coming to an end – energies getting low, and everyone hankering for a nice long break – one thing keeps cropping up more and more in these conversations:

Technology – Friend or Foe?

How can we make technology our friend at work, using it to make life easier and smoother? Rather than getting distracted by the many apps and tools – and the myriad of notifications that they can spawn?

I’m a bit of a geek, and like to try out new tools and apps. A shiny new toy like that has often caused me to lose hours and hours down a rabbit hole of fiddling and learning a new app. Just to realise in the end that it doesn’t do what I want it to. Or that a simple spreadsheet or Word document could have solved the problem faster. Not as schmick or cool-looking, … but faster.

19 Utterly Useful Tools For A Happier Work-Life in 2018

I’ve been through the search, explore & discard process so many times, I thought I share with you what I’ve discovered.

All of the following tools help me and my team to enjoy being at the office – head down, bum up, with a smile on our faces. We have fun because we work effectively, smoothly and personably by cutting down on wasted time and adding a sense of community.

Spoiler Alert: there are some non-tech tips at the end of this article, for good measure!

5 Top Productivity + Sanity Tools For Your Business

#1. RescueTime

It’s worth installing this personal analytics service on your main devices to get a sense of how you actually spend your online-day, and then make some adjustments as needed. Those “quick flicks & checks” to Facebook and non-productive sites do add up! Find your screen-time Achilles’ heels so you can avoid them (and get out of the offices sooner).

#2. Boomerang

This nifty email-scheduling tool allows you to send your messages at optimal times (handy if you work with clients in different time-zones!), snooze messages, receive read receipts and – I love this feature! ­– set follow up reminders if someone doesn’t respond to your email. Set, and forget!

#3. InboxPause 

A relatively new feature on Boomerang, InboxPause gives me a break from the distractions and often stress, of forever-inpouring emails. You can pause and delay delivery by an hour or five – your choice! Get back in control, increase your productivity, and feel zen about emails once again. Aaahh … bliss!

#4. Pocket

I constantly come across interesting material for our own blog or the research we do for our client projects. It’s so easy to get sidetracked with that! Instead, for an easy way to collate and organise all this info to be dealt with later, I use Pocket. You can save any link directly from your browser or from most apps onto any device (and sync across your devices). Neat!

#5. Pomodoro Technique

You might have heard of this time management method that uses a timer to break down work into mostly 25 minutes intervals, separated by short breaks. I’ve found those intervals too short to really get my teeth into a juicy piece of writing or planning. So I use 47-minute intervals with 7-14 minute breaks. Why those numbers? I like them. Oh, and I’m using an $4 IKEA timer. Very high-tech of me.

BONUS TIP

Notifications, Any App – Switch those little buggers off; they are utterly distracting, energy-sapping, plus major productivity and sanity killers.

Show Me The Money – 3 Worthwhile Finance + Sales Apps

#1. WORK[etc]

It’s a bit of the odd kid on the block and I arrived at it after testing other platforms like BlueCamroo, WorkflowMax, etc. Every business has different needs around user numbers, pricing, user experience, functions; and aesthetics play a big role as well when choosing your CRM and workflow program. It fits my business right now, but as both – the software and my business – evolve, I’ll review this key business system every few years. Like, right now.

#2. Xero and QuickBooks

When I started my business MYOB was still all the rage … jeez, that was overly complicated, even for a number-nerd like myself. The emergence of uncluttered, easy to use cloud accounting software has been a boon to small businesses. I’ve been using both QuickBooks and Xero. If you’re doing your own books, both platforms are great. We’ve now grown to a team size where we use Xero for CRM integration reasons and user number cost-efficiency. But if you’re a smaller business, a bookkeeping novice – and live-support and time tracking are important for your sanity and productivity – I recommend the very affordable QuickBooks Accounting Online.

#3. PandaDoc

A lot of time gets eaten up by preparing, sending, and chasing fee proposals, NDAs and other documentation you need a counterparty to review, sign and return. We’re looking to implement document automation tool PandaDoc. It made the cut over other apps due to its price, modern interface and integration with Xero. Yay to shorter sales cycles and better close rates!

4 Ways to Making Marketing Great Again … At Very Little Expense

#1. WordPress

Why spent loads of money and make your life complicated when you can have an easy-to-build and easy-to-use website? In 2009, I built my first WordPress website from a template and it served me well for a long time. Our current website was built professionally from another template, which is so customisable it is utterly on brand. Updates to the platform and template are free, and updating our new site is still easy as. Hurrah!

#2. Canva ­

Need a great image with text-overlay for Instagram? Want to advertise your product on Facebook? Or maybe customise your LinkedIn header or YouTube channel page? Say hello to Canva’s handy drag-and-drop interface that has correctly-sized templates for all social media platforms for you to customise in no time. No tech skills required.

#3. MailChimp 

Creating marketing email-campaigns is child’s play with MailChimp’s marketing automation. We send branded emails to stay in touch with our clients and prospects through customised drip campaigns. Yup, thanks to MailChimp we’re finally doing what we’ve been preaching all these years to our clients.

#4. Buffer 

This app manages our social media accounts’ post. We prefer Buffer over others like e.g. HootSuite to schedule our messages, because it’s so uncluttered, flexible and easy to navigate. And it’s extremely affordable.

Can You Hear Me? 3 Clear Communication Channels

#1. Gmail and Google Suite 

Love it! Gmail, Google Calendar (and everything else that goes with the Google Suite apps) is simply the easiest to use, cost effective and so damn quick to set up. No need for nerd-support to add users, keep your email up, and everyone connected.

#2. Skype 

We love using Skype for national and international client and team video conferences. FaceTime and Google Hangouts just didn’t catch on with most our clients due to real or perceived tech barriers. Skype’s simply easiest to use. It’s share-screens function makes it painless to work on or explain project information with ease to anyone, no matter how tech-savvy they might be. Instant messaging allows for easy sharing of files and links. And, bonus, it’s free or dirt cheap to call international landlines and mobile phones via Skype.

#3. Paperless Post

It’s important to remember the human in all of us, and speak to it. A thank you goes a long way, a birthday message or remembering the birth of a child are kind ways to foster stronger personal bonds. With our team and with our clients. We use PaperlessPost for online and paper cards (and also handwritten snail-mail and carefully-chosen pressies) to remember and acknowledge the important moments of those we work with.

4 Ways to Clever Collaboration

If you want your in-office or remote team to work like clockwork, give these little gems a go.

#1. Dropbox and Google Drive 

Sharing files and collaborating on documents has never been so easy thanks to the cloud. We do work with Google Drive with some partners, but find Dropbox more user-friendly and cleaner. We use it for all our client projects, to coordinate and share our writing, editing and proofing work between our team members and clients. With options to either allow edits or only share links to downloadable files all documents and structures remain safe and protected when needed, or allow collaborative approaches. Dropbox’s file-recovery feature – which allows us to go back indefinitely to inadvertently deleted files – has saved a backside or two over time!

#2. Asana

Asana wins over Trello as our preferred app to track our team’s tasks because it’s more modern, slick and versatile. We organise our blog content pipeline, and keep track of marketing and admin jobs via relevant boards to which we can pin cards with specific tasks and subtasks allocated to projects, deadlines and team members. Nothing’s ever going to get lost again. Neat.

#3. Slack

For our bigger marketing and admin projects we use Slack as our collaborative communications tool. Specific emails can be hard to find in our crazy inboxes. Think of Slack as a cross between instant messages and emails – but all concentrated around a topic you choose and invite select members to. Discussing and advancing marketing projects collaboratively in Slack has increased our team’s productivity drastically.

#4. Quora 

We’ve started using Quora as a marketing avenue for our business by answering questions. But this question-and-answer site has been a source for resolving tricky tech and other questions for us for a long time. It’s one of only a few sites that require its contributors to register with their actual names which has given it a lot more accuracy and credibility than other sites. But if in doubt, double check!

There you have it – these are the tech apps and tools that make CavaCom tick over and hum with productivity, personality and a good dash of fun.

No-Tech: The Human Factor

We are surrounded by technology all day, and that can be a bit overwhelming and exhausting in itself.

So, for good measure, I’m throwing in a few no-tech tips that make me and my team not just more productive, but happier. Happier to come to work, and still healthy-feeling when we leave at night.

#1. Standing Desk

My height-adjustable sit-and-stand desk keeps cramps and fatigue away. And I do think better while on my feet.

#2. Good Lighting

It’s not just good for the eyes, but a well-lit room with multiple warm light sources is cosier and good for the mood.

#3. Comfortable Chair

Don’t skimp on the cost for your chair. It might try to kill you otherwise. Honest.

#4. Chill Out

Nobody can stay switched on and productive forever. Take a break away from your desk. Get outside, or retreat to a quiet nook in the office (sans tech!) where you can switch off. Go crazy and meditate, go on!

#5. Feed Yourself

Eating well and in good company will nourish not just your body but also feed your mind and restore your spirit. Try and share some ideas over a shared meal, and see your team’s creativity and fun surge.

What Does 2018 Have In Store For You?

We are complex beings, us humans. Well-oiled machines when we’re at our peak – but a little glitch can cause a chain-reaction that can send us into befuddlement, exhaustion and overwhelm.

During an eventful 2017 I’ve come to appreciate the ways that we can make our busy work-lives easier, smoother and more fun. Optimising how we run our business and making our work environment healthy, stress-free and fun (for us and our team) is an ongoing task worth pursuing.

I hope you’ve found some useful practical tips in this post – and will share of some of your own with all of us in the comments section below.

What will you change in 2018 … to be happier and have more fun at work?