One of the greatest challenges for the busy mompreneur is time management. Every week I get a call, email, text or other form of communication from a mom who is pleading for help managing her time! I don’t claim to have a magic pill for time management success, but I can tell you that it helps when you have the right tools in place. (In addition, of course, to getting clear on your priorities, but that’s another topic entirely!)
Because I like to share all my secrets with my sisters, I invite you to take a look inside my office and discover some of my favorite time saving tools. The best part about these gems is that they are all FREE!
1. Managing Bookmarks/Favorites: Diigo: This is the wonder drug of online browsing! I don’t know what I would do without Diigo. If your Bookmarks Bar (or browser Favorites) has grown so large and unwieldy that you can no longer find anything, then you need to check out Diigo today.
2. Sending Files: Dropbox and YouSendIt. If you send large files frequently or have trouble sending email attachments, then stop using flash drives as messengers. Both of these programs have a free version and they are super intuitive (which means I can figure them out without my tech support husband’s help!).
3. Measuring ROI: So you’ve invested time and money in a new website and you want to know if anyone cares. Try Google Analytics to track website traffic and even measure ROI on your social media efforts, so you can spend your time (and your money) wisely.
4. Spying on the Competition: Want to be the first to know when your competitor launches a new product? Or when someone is talking about you online? Google Alerts is a free tool to help you easily monitor news and information and keep tabs on everything from industry innovations to your old boss. Set up an alert on your own company name today!
5. Video Chat: Skype is my favorite video chat service, although there are others on the market. The ability to have a quick chat on instant message and to show something on a video chat is a tremendous time saver to me. And it saves money with free calls overseas. You can also let the kids talk to Grandma with it!
6. Screen sharing: I’ve introduced many clients to Adobe Acrobat’s Connect Now web conferencing service as a tool to work more efficiently with a virtual team. There’s a free version that allows screen sharing with one other party. It’s perfect for an online meeting that saves travel time!
7. Phone: Looking for a way to separate your business calls and personal calls so you can better manage your time? No need to invest in another phone line. Try free Google Voice with call forwarding and online voicemail. It’s also a great way to protect your privacy if you work from home.
8. Social Media: If you’re wondering how you can better manage your time on Twitter or Facebook, then HoootSuite might be the perfect solution. You can schedule some of your updates in advance and easily monitor specific online conversations.
9. Conference Calls: If you ever find yourself wishing you could have a virtual meeting with more than just a couple of people, then check out Free Conference Call. You can easily set up a free account and invite up to 99 people to call in for a meeting. I’ve used this service for everything from teleseminars to Girl Scout planning meetings! You can also record the conversation and download the audio for free.
10. Productivity: If you’re having trouble focusing and simply can’t seem to get any work done, try setting the timer on one of the devices you already own (your phone, computer or watch). Setting the timer allows you to create space for a specific task so you can eliminate distractions and dedicate time to one important project.
Next to Nothing: Here are a couple of tools that are not free, but they are low cost and have a free trial!
Scheduling Appointments: Time Trade: If you’ve ever spent three weeks and engaged in voice mail tag and a chain of emails just to get a date on the calendar, then you need to check out Time Trade.
Passwords: Do you have too many passwords to remember? Or worse – do you use the same obvious password for everything from Amazon to you online banking? Then check out 1 Password – a program for storing and creating unique and safe passwords so you never have to remember (or search for) a password again.
What are your favorite time saving tools? Share them with us here!
Ten Free Tools to Help You Save Time in the Office
My Boys Would be Better Off If I Abandoned Them
I suppose the title of this column got your attention. Of course I don’t mean it in any literal sense but I’ve begun a mantra/rant lately that includes this notion. My older son just got accepted to an expensive private college, The Berklee College of Music. For a number of reasons, he/we do not qualify for any financial aid. Upon consulting with my friend Jodi Okun of College Financial Aid Advisors, who helps families with these issues for a living, I learned the reasons we did not qualify for financial aid.
Before I illuminate those reasons, I have to declare that my son did himself and his family no good – as far as getting any scholarships – because of his lousy grades and failure to even take the SAT or other college entrance exams. His outstanding musicianship and showmanship at the audition, required by Berklee, clearly overcame any deficiencies from his report cards and lack of college entrance exams. He shines when he does his music and he worked quite hard preparing for that audition. It paid off when he was one of less than 200 applicants accepted for early admission – to the only college to which he applied.
When we visited Berklee for his audition, we were informed on our parent/applicant tour that any acceptance would be accompanied by whatever aid/scholarship help the accepted student was eligible for. When that wonderful “You’re In†letter arrived, it didn’t have a mention of aid or scholarship on it. It wasn’t an oversight, as Jodi patiently and, to some degree, laughingly explained to me.
See, I was just too darn responsible. I’d done things that just didn’t help the family cause when it comes to qualifying for financial aid. My younger son is academic so he may succeed in getting some sort of scholarship. I’m trying to incentivize him to do so with various promised bribes. If I’d done some or all of the items on the following list, my son (and his younger brother who wants to go to NYU and will likely get in) might have qualified for financial aid:
1. Abandoned my boys when their mother and I got divorced.
2. Gotten in terrible debt.
3. Not paid my mortgage, credit cards bills, or rent (we rented shortly after my divorce, for 4 years).
4. Spent every penny I ever earned.
5. Became any sort of addict, especially gambling where I could have lost everything we had.
6. Gotten caught and arrested after committing a serious crime that got me new housing – in jail.
What was I thinking? Now, I have to scrimp, save, and sacrifice to send my son to the college of his choice. Thankfully, I did save a certain amount for my sons’ college education from the moment they were born. But, the cost of college has risen far beyond any predictions we carefully made 19 years ago. I put away more than enough if they chose to go to community college for two years and then transfer to a state college or university. For that matter, I saved enough for Berklee and NYU based on the projections available for their tuition two decades ago!
In short, I did everything right and consequently got treated all wrong. Yes, private loans are available – at wise-guy interest rates. Jodi asked me a few simple questions about my finances. When I answered that I actually had some equity in the house we bought a couple of years ago and that I had retirement accounts that still held some value, Jodi said we were out of luck.
Aside from my irritation at this ironic fact, I was concerned that if I gave my son a so-called “free ride,†I’d not be doing him any service. I asked Jodi why I couldn’t self-finance a loan to my son for part of his college education. We decided that my son should be responsible for one year of his education. Jodi prepared a loan document, replete with an amortization schedule, and we set it up exactly the same as if he’d received formal financial aid.
His loan is interest-free until six months after he graduates. It then accrues interest at the rate for government financial aid. He then begins a payment schedule that shows him exactly how much he’s reducing this debt in the same way mortgage holders see their loan amount reduced each month by regular payments. Of course, I have no collateral other than his word and signature on the loan document, but I feel it gives him a stake in his education that I hope will keep him mostly centered on completing it.
When did things go so wrong in our country that being responsible seems to equate with being punished? That is how I feel. Yes, I can afford to pay these exorbitant costs for my boy’s college education but it will most definitely hurt our lifestyle to a considerable degree. Their mom is not a factor and the huge amount of money she got from our divorce is evidently long lost so looking to her to help is not an option.
On the other hand, my second wife – who is my boy’s step-mom – has to suffer our downsizing of lifestyle. She has accepted this fact with incredible grace given how she’s come to love the boys so much. I just can’t help but feel there is something seriously wrong with this scenario!
