We are back again with Google tools that boost your productivity! In this article, we will discuss some underused features to keep your work organized. If you haven’t yet seen the posts on google hacks, check them out here and here.
For a student, it is important to organize thoughts, ideas, tasks and emails. Harvard Business Review shows that 28% of a workday is spent reading emails. From experience, I find this process is taking way too much time, adding friction to our work process. So, take a read of utility actions and handy email tricks to help you organise your day!
Utility Tools
Google Keep
Google Keep is a note-taking application that helps you keep your thoughts organized. This application is available on the web or on your phone (iOS and Android). You can create text or voice notes as per your preference. Here, you can also add time or location-based reminders for your notes. With this, you can easily note down quick thoughts and eureka moments. I suggest organizing your notes by assigning label colours and setting reminders. I recently experimented with taking down voice notes for lectures. I followed up organized these notes according to my modules. this helped me save a bunch of time! You can integrate Keep notes with Google Docs and Calendar. With this, you can maintain a seamless workflow for your studies. With your devices being synced, you have the advantage of accessibility.
Google Tasks
Google Tasks is a wonderful way to make a to-do list. Synced with Google Calendar, you have a visual feel for the tasks that are ahead of you. You can simply start by creating tasks and subtasks. Then set reminders for the important ones. For people who have the habit of rushing through work at the last minute (like me) – this application organization is a saviour. I also have fallen into the habit of updating my tasks list every night. This way, I wake with an understanding of the work that lies before me.
Google Alerts
Google Alert’s is an interesting application that monitors the web for some kind of news and alerts you. You can replace the manual search for a topic with alerts. This way, you could have a hands-off approach while receiving updates about a query. I have a friend who uses Alerts to receive updates about limited-time Nike sneakers. You can track the web for movie releases, research updates and everything else.
Email Organization
We go through our emails pretty much every day. I know, it is a tedious process to read each mail and assign priority to them. But, there are simple ways you can automate this mundane work. You can assign labels to emails and compartmentalize them accordingly. Services like Gmail and Outlook have logic features that apply labels automatically. You can set the condition based on the title, content and source of the email. This way, you have both organized and prioritized your inbox. There are many resources online and most of them are easily implementable. Personally, I aim towards having a 0 inbox mail. This way, I know if anything new pops up immediately. Again, it comes down to what works for you!
Conclusion
Now you have left the art of organizing and optimizing our work process. With this, we come to the end of the penultimate post in the “Master Google” series. Experiment with some of the applications and techniques. See what fits with your process and fine-tune it to suit your needs. Stay tuned for the final post on the “Mastering Google” series.
How do you organise your work life? Do you have any tips to share with our fellow readers? Leave a comment below, tweet us @warwicklibrary or email us at libraryblogs@warwick.ac.uk
Header Image: Brett Jordan.
The Study Blog 