Today's guest blogger--Mary Jo Johnson--writing about tools for organizing your workday

Guest author--Mary Jo Johnson

This article is published by paulamdeangelis.blogspot.no based on a Content Marketing Partnership with the author Mary Jo Johnson. 

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5 Best Tools that Make Organization at Work a Breeze

Organizing your workday can be very tricky. Whether you belong to a big or small enterprise, getting through the gamut of workday tasks will always have its challenges. With the popularity of remote work gaining a strong foothold in today’s “new normal,” managing your workload while making sure that everyone stays connected and on top of things has become twice as hard. 

It can be a bear trying to get everyone on the same page. Too many tasks, meetings and collaboration, new information coming in daily, new employees joining, old ones leaving, trying to preserve and update knowledge within the company — how do you not get lost in the chaos?

Luckily, there are tools out there geared towards organizing your work and helping you run your workday more efficiently. There are hundreds of them floating around the interwebs and you can get lost in the chaotic list of organizational tools, ironically enough. So how do you choose the right one for you?

Choosing the right tool

First, you will need to take stock of what you have and what you need. What kind of service are you looking for? Are the tools you found equipped with the features you need in your organization? Compile a list of possible apps that might be useful for you. 

Second, once you've compiled a list of possible organizational tools that you might use, consider their ability to address all the things that you need them to do for you. If you can find just one tool to do all the organizational tasks you need to be done, then why get two or three separate tools to do what one platform can do?

Third, read up on the reviews. You’ll need to hear what actual clients have to say about the tools you are considering. Feedback is a key component to an informed decision; and once you’ve picked the tool/s you need, return the favor and write an honest and constructive review. 

Fourth, test them out. You really won’t know if the tool will work the way you envisioned it if you don’t try it out. Go through your picklist and take the tools for a test drive. Put them through the tasks you need them to run and see how well they hold up or how fast and efficiently they can accomplish those tasks for you. 

So now that you have the initial steps in choosing the perfect organizational tool for you, let’s delve into our list of tools (our absolute top favorites!) that we think might just be what you need.

The Best Organizational Tools for Work

Trello

Let’s start our list with Trello. This is a project management and organizational tool that uses task cards and project boards. This tool allows you to write down your daily tasks into virtual cards, assign due dates, and add attachments. You can invite your team and assign tasks to them, as well. 

Their project boards allow you to put your visualizations into an organized platform where you can monitor your project’s progress. You can collaborate with your team regardless of where each of you is based. It is very easy to use, and best of all, Trello syncs across all your devices. 

Slab

As their headline says, Slab is a “knowledge base that democratizes knowledge.” It’s a nifty tool that lets you create, store, and organize your data. It also integrates well with your existing tools, so there would be no need to replace your stack and relay new instructions to team members. Its Unified Search feature allows you to pull any needed data from any of your existing tools. Sweet, right? This shaves off time trying to remember which tool has what data. Another useful feature is Slab Topics, which not only organizes data into folders and tags, but also provides relevant context for easier browsing, learning, and transferring of knowledge within the company.

It also offers dozens of templates from industry leaders to get you inspired and give you ideas一so whether it’s onboarding new employees, documenting weekly team meetings, or creating user manuals, Slab has an extensive library of templates designed for your organizational needs.

And a bonus: it’s easy enough to use that creating and organizing can be done even by the least savvy members in your organization.

ProjectManager.com

If you manage large and diverse teams, you might want to consider ProjectManager.com. This award-winning tool has over a thousand integrations including Microsoft Office, Salesforce, Dropbox, Slack, and Google Apps. 

It has Gantt charts, kanban boards, and task lists. They have project management software, planning tools, and project dashboards among other things. You can collaborate and plan projects with your team quickly and easily. It works on both PC and Mac and doesn’t need any downloads or complex installations. 

Box

Box is one of the most secure cloud storage services available today. You can choose with whom you want to share your files. You can store all your confidential business information into the Box Drive and rest easy that it will remain secure. 

It is also integrated into Mac Finder and Windows Explorer so you can use it in both Windows PC and Mac. You can edit any file, even CAD, in your browser and it will automatically be saved to Box. 

The app itself takes up little disk space. It allows sharing large files without having to download anything. You can just share the link to your files with your team. It doesn’t bog down your systems with large downloads, and it allows for easy and real-time collaboration within your team. 

Microsoft OneNote 

If your company has a subscription to Office 365, you most likely have access to Microsoft OneNote, a great and secure collaboration tool that organizations can utilize in project management, process improvement, and daily operations. OneNote is ideal for managing projects with members in multiple locations as the tool allows real-time correspondence and feedback. 

A feature called SharePoint allows teams to create their own “wiki” and organize and store large amounts of information in one place, making streamlining ideas and resources easier for everyone. 

Conclusion

No matter how busy you get or how chaotic your workdays seem to become, there is always a tool, or several, out there that can help you keep your tasks and schedules organized. These things are there to make your work a lot easier, your collaborations more fun, and your team engaged no matter where each of you is based. All you need to do is find the right tools that will work for you. 

I am my parents' daughter

My parents met in the Brooklyn Public Library; my father was the head librarian and my mother was an assistant librarian. Both of them loved all things 'library', and they made sure we had a library card to loan books from an early age. We learned early on the value of books, newspapers, and magazines to provide important and enjoyable information, and we were avid readers as children. Reading was encouraged by our parents and our schools. Libraries were an important part of our childhood and teenage years. It helped that one of the most beautiful libraries I have ever seen, (if not the most beautiful)--The Warner Library in Tarrytown--was the library where we spent many a summer day looking for books to read.

My father went to his job as head librarian through the years, working for several different companies in Tarrytown and Manhattan. Our dinner table discussions were interesting; I learned a lot about the library world from listening to him, and absorbed his enthusiasm for his job. My father showed me how to use different reference books, so that I could apply to different companies for jobs after college. He knew all about the different reference books that existed. My mother kept a spotless house, not an easy task when we were children. There were places for our toys, and we were expected to keep them in those places, which made sense, because we grew up in an apartment and there wasn't much room to spread out. My mother was able to get three children out of bed, washed, dressed, fed breakfast, all by 8:15 am when we left for school. She had a sense of order and discipline, and she expected us to live according to both.

As I've gotten older, I've realized that my sense of order, my predilection for systematizing many of the things in my life--books I've read, films I've seen, Christmas card lists and lists in general, garden plans--stem from my upbringing. They are the direct result of parents who appreciated order and systems, likely due to their both being librarians. But of course genetics play a part in it too. I inherited the genes for organization and order from both my parents. I realized the other day that one of the reasons I enjoy the new role I have at work (biobank coordinator) is because it requires me to structure and organize information and procedures. I'm good at it and I enjoy it. It is a niche in which I feel comfortable. I channel my parents these days, and it's a nice reminder of how much they meant to me when I was growing up, of how important they were for the security and comfort we enjoyed. I have joined their circle, so to speak, the circle of people for whom dissemination of information, organization, and order, are desirable things.

Practice what you preach

Last night I attended a meeting of Christian women (of all religious denominations) as a guest of one of my friends. She and I have often attended such meetings once or twice a year when I first moved to Norway, but our attendance has been more infrequent during the past decade. The format of the meeting is simple—a few inspirational lectures, a light dinner, some songs, and a main lecture usually given by a person who has a specific message to share. Last night that message was the importance of love in the arena of relationships; how reaching out with love dispels the fear in ourselves and perhaps in those to whom we reach out. It was a very good talk and it brought to mind the message of Mother Theresa, who always talked about the importance of love and starting with those around you—loving your family and those closest to you before trying to make a difference in the world.

What struck me however last night, was the experience we had on the way into the hotel ballroom where the meeting was held. My friend, who is a retiree and a woman who works tirelessly helping the downtrodden and less fortunate in our society, had made reservations for the two of us several weeks ago. She had sent a text message as instructed by the newspaper announcement for the meeting; she had the text message on her phone as proof. When we got to the entrance door, the receptionist did not find her name on the list of registered attendees; she told us that she had to ‘speak to a leader’ about whether we could be allowed to enter or not. I found this behavior rather odd, but said nothing, until 'the leader' came over to us, a small woman with a bloated sense of her own importance, who reiterated not once, but at least five times, the necessity of having received a reply text message as confirmation for registering for the meeting. The confirmation text message apparently allowed you to enter. I could feel my annoyance starting to rear its head; my friend is not a person who will defend or assert herself unnecessarily. She patiently showed the text message she had sent, to the leader, but she had not received a confirmation text message. The leader obviously did not like this at all, but rather begrudgingly allowed us to pay for and gain entrance to the meeting. The explanation for her hesitation was that there might not be enough food to go around for all the attendees. I’ll come back to that. We found two places to sit at a table with several other women and sat down. Wouldn’t you know, but the little leader appeared yet again to inform us yet again of the necessity of having received a text message as confirmation for our registration. At which point, I essentially told her to back off. Told her that we had now heard her say this close to ten times, and that if we were not welcome, we could get our money back and leave. It wasn’t that important for us to be there. At which point she backed off, and extended a welcome greeting to us. But that was only because I got mad and spoke up.

Why do I bring this up today? It struck me last night that there was very little Christian spirit in this little leader’s behavior. She was stuck on the ‘rules’, on following them to the letter, and she obviously needed to appear important to us. No confirmation text message, no entrance. She was worried about there not being enough food; you would have thought she was talking about a full dinner plate per person, which I might have had more understanding for. Not the case. When dinner time came, it was a simple buffet table—egg salads, bread, cold cuts, some fruit and a few cakes—nothing fancy and certainly enough to go around. As it was, there was more than enough food to go around; there were in fact enough leftovers that could have been given to the homeless and the poor who sat right outside the door of the hotel last night, in one of the richest countries in the world. I wonder what happened to the leftovers.

Here’s how the scenario should have played out. This is a Christian organization whose membership decreases for each year that passes, since it mostly consists of middle-aged and elderly women. They are not attracting younger women into the organization. They should be welcoming attendees with open arms, not pushing them away. They should have said immediately at the door, when they saw my friend's text message to them, 'Welcome'. And if there had not been enough food, they should just have said, ‘we’ll manage’, or ‘we can share’. Christ would have done that; he wouldn’t denied people entrance for lack of food. But what struck me the most was the utter lack of hospitality in this little leader; a less hospitable person I have yet to meet. It was disappointing, and it reminds me of how many times I have been disappointed when I have met people who call themselves Christians, yet who do not behave like Christ at all. I don’t care how many times you stand up and talk about the importance of loving others, of being kind to others. If you don’t practice what you preach, your message is not worth a dime in my book. Luckily, the rest of the evening turned out to be enjoyable and more in the spirit of Christianity, so that made up for their little pharisee of a leader. And that was a good thing, because I was moving toward a non-forgiving state of mind after our encounter with her. That’s certainly not the goal of attending such a meeting.