In my last article I brought you 5 of my top 10 favorite Google applications for improving online productivity. These are free apps that I use on a daily basis and I’ve found my productivity has improved.
So without further delay, here are my top 5 favorite Google apps for productivity:
5 Google Reader
I think one of my biggest productivity gains came when I switched to Google reader from my other feed reader.
For one, it’s a much more streamlined reader then most. Plus it gives me more ability to group my feeds using tags, and scan them much more quickly. I’ve found that I’ve saved over an hour a day just by switching.
Plus, because it too is web based, I can access it anywhere meaning I can always stay in touch. And with the advent of Google Gears, I can also download my feeds for offline reading.
4 Google Docs
I am finding that I am using Google Docs more and more especially for sharing documents with others across the web.
It used to be that I’d prepare a document, send it to someone who would then mark it up, and they’d send it back to me. We’d go through rounds and rounds of this. Obviously a big time waster.
But with Google Docs, you can collaborate on that document online. Simply upload your document and invite other users as either viewers or collaborators.
Best of all Google Docs supports a variety of formats for both upload and download of documents and spreadsheets.
3 Google Calendar
This spring I made a concerted effort to move as much stuff off my desktop as possible. Mostly because I find myself working on both a desktop and laptop, so it makes it difficult to co-ordinate my activities.
This is where Google Calendar came in. I simply put all my actions and appointments here and I can access them from anywhere with an Internet connect. Further, I can share my calendar with others, so they can see my free/busy time, and I can set up multiple calendars (ie different calendars for different clients or activities).
Also, Google Calendar enables my to import my calendar data via a feed into my desktop application so I can continue to receive alarms and notifications of upcoming actions, as well as emailing me when actions are due.
2 iGoogle
I’ve been using a personalized Google Homepage for quite some time. At first it was more of a novelty but now I find I rely on it a lot.
This is because I can customize the display of the homepage with whatever I want. For example, on my homepage I have a summary of my online calendar, my gmail account, and more. In addition I also have local and national news. Within a few minutes of scanning my home page I know what I’m doing and what’s happening in the world, rather than visiting a half a dozen sites to get the same information.
Further, I can add additional tabs to help keep this information organized. The ability to create these tabs helps to keep me focused while giving me the ability to have diversions throughout the day.
1 Gmail
By far my favorite, and most productive Google tool is Gmail. Since I am a web worker, email is my primary mode of communication. Therefore I need something fast, lightweight and easy to use.
One nice thing about Gmail is that you can set it up to automatically retrieve email from multiple accounts. For example, I have 10 email accounts. Some for personal reasons, some for business, and others I use for different things such as link building requests and forum submissions.
But I have set up Gmail to get the mail from those accounts and then deal with it accordingly.
Using filters I can let Gmail determine what to do with my email. For example, emails that come from friends and family are tagged as such and put into my inbox while email from link building efforts is also tagged, and some is automatically marked as read and archived.
If you want to improve the power of Gmail, you can also get an extension called Better Gmail which is a collection of Greasemonkey scripts designed to enhance Gmail.
But even without Better Gmail, I’ve found I’ve probably saved an hour or 2 per day by becoming better at email with Gmail.
There you have it my 10 favorite Google apps that have helped me get more organized and more productive.
