Posted on 7th February 2010 by admin in blogging
account, collaboration features, coworkers, email, facebook, friendly time, group projects, group team, hand experience, important things, invitees, Manage, management, managing teams, month, online, own time, personal tasks, productivity reports, project, project management system, recession buster, reminders, system, task, task management software, team, time, time tracking, twitter
It can be hard to work from home, especially if you have various tasks that you need to get done each done; I know from first hand experience. If you’re working on a group/team project and do not work together in the same location, that can make things even more difficult. If you get distracted easily, it’s also common to waste a lot of time doing non-important things (like playing around on Facebook or Twitter), and before you know it a few hours have flown by. So, all 4 of these tools should be great for helping you be more productive and manage your time wisely.
Being “a collaboration-friendly time tracking and task management software,” LogMyTask lets you track your own time as well as see what your coworkers are doing in real-time. Because of its great collaboration features, it is best used for managing teams and group projects. You can create teams and add members by email invitation. Once your invitees join, you can create tasks to be done by the team and for each member.
You’re also able to create and view productivity reports so that you can see where time is being spent most. You can also create your own personal tasks and add tags to help better organize them. Reminders can also be sent by email so that you don’t forget what needs to be done. In the summary section you can view, edit, start and stop tags. With the basic layout of the site, everything is pretty straight forward and best of all, it’s all free.
“An online project management system that allows you to stay up-to-date, on task and connected with your team.” To get the most out of Project2Manage, you’ll need to purchase an account. Luckily, you do get a 30-day free trial on all accounts so that you can try it out before having to pay. There are 6 different account types: free; recession buster for $3.95/month; silver for $9.95/month; gold for $14.95/month; platinum for $24.95/month; and epic for $74.95/month. If you want to know the difference between the plans you can check out the pricing page.
This tool can be used for both large and small businesses. All of your tasks and information are separated by project so it’s easy to keep up with what goes with what. You can create one or more to-do lists to go with each project and drag and drop tasks to reorder them. Events can also be attached to your tasks. There’s even an internal messaging system so that you can communicate with other team members or coworkers from within the site. They can reply to you and also attach documents in their replies.
There is also a feature called “Spot2Jot” which lets you create collaborative documents with your team members and can even be exported to PDF files if needed. There are numerous other features that are included so, as you can see your money won’t be wasted at Project2Manage. If you want to learn more, you can check out their tour.
This is an “online project management, team collaboration and issue tracking” system and has 1 free and 2 paid account types. The 3 account types are: free; freelancer for $29/month; and professional for $69/month – the freelance and professional accounts both come with a 1-month free trial. Once again, you get what you pay for since GoalKeeper has many great features to offer. You can manage projects, tasks, users, comments, tickets and more. You can also create filters to help better organize your tasks. Like Project2Manage, tasks can be dropped and dragged to suit your preference.
Tasks can be assigned to different team members. If someone has an issue or finds a bug, they can be tracked using the internal comment and support ticket system that is included in you package. Sharing files is also easy since they can be directly uploaded and then must be approved by the team leader. If your team uses another language besides English, that’s no problem since you can use any language to name projects, create tasks and write tickets. As you can see, you’re really getting an advanced, top of the line project management system with GoalKepper.
Lastly there’s ToBeeDo, a free “online todo list and task management service that saves your time and helps you to get stuff done easier and faster using its unique simple and fast ajax interface”. You can even use your Google account to login instead of signing up for a new account; it’s up to you. At ToBeeDo, you cannot create teams; the tool is geared more toward freelancers and those work from home. You can, however, create and manage tasks, time spent on tasks and projects.
There’s also an integrated journal that may come in handy for some just for taking notes or keeping a record of what you did for the day. The interface is not very pretty to look at; it’s very simplistic but that also makes it super fast. When creating tasks you can add a summary, context, links and due date. So while this is not great for teams, it sure could be a lifesaver for us bloggers.
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4 Tools For Managing Your Tasks and Projects
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Posted on 7th February 2010 by admin in blogging
action, action steps, big picture, chunks, cup, day, Don, Earl Grey, facebook, goal, health and wellness, informational products, launch, marketing newsletter, money, newsletter ideas, passion, plunge, portfolios, presence, purchase domain, scope, setting goals, site, social networks, strong point, tangible products, tea, time, twitter, Website, work
The majority of websites and blogs revolve around one thing—making money—whether it’s directly or indirectly. An example of a website trying to make money directly is one that sells products (tangible products, informational products, etc.) An example of a site being used to make money indirectly would be sites like writer’s portfolios—most sites on writing are a way to make money indirectly by building your online presence and attracting more clients or selling your published works.
First let me say that I’m no expert. I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts on anything I share in this post—your tips, tricks, or even if you think I’m wrong. After several years of half-heartedly thinking about creating a real online money making site, I’ve finally decided to take the plunge—and I’m probably just as lost as I was the first time I read my first report many years ago. With that being said, my site is not just about money but about my passion (health and wellness) and sharing that passion and knowledge with others.
This article, however, is about setting your goals and taking action steps to build your website and get it launched—something I am currently in the process of myself.
This is an outline of some basic steps for getting your site ready:
- Decide topic – scope of website
- Purchase domain and hosting
- Choose platform – I suggest Wordpress
- Set platform up on domain
- Start Planning
- Content
- Email marketing
- Newsletter ideas and frequency
- Twitter and Facebook accounts- other social networks
- Affiliates and Ads
- Sign up
- Place on website during site build
- Build Site
- Implement above steps from Planning
- Launch
Setting Goals
Setting daily, small action steps is not my strong point. I see the big picture very well, but breaking it down into smaller chunks is sometimes a major task for me.
The first thing you need to do is define your goals—see the big picture. What do you want from this venture; now and in the future?
Once you decide on your long term goal for this site you’ll need to break it down into smaller goals and action steps. I suggest SMART goals.
S – Specific. Your goals must be specific or you won’t know what you’re working towards.
M – Measureable. Your goals must be measureable, you need guidance. Having measureable goals will keep you from setting yourself up for failure.
A – Achievable. Your goals must be achievable. This also helps you avoid feeling like you’ve failed.
R – Realistic. Set realistic goals. This will help you from feeling overwhelmed if you can’t get everything done in one day.
T – Timed. Your goals should have a time limit on them—a due date. Don’t set it too far in advance or you may end up procrastinating. Also don’t set it too soon either because then you’ll feel overwhelmed if you miss the deadline.
Try not to do too much too soon. Set a steady work pace for yourself so your work is done proficiently and with as little effort as possible. That’s not saying you won’t work hard, but hard work can be effortless when you’re enjoying the work.
Once you have your goals broken down into daily, weekly or monthly action steps you can and should start using daily intentions and affirmations.
Setting an intention is simply “intending” what you want to get done during any given time frame. Affirmations are positive reinforcements to assure yourself that the work is worthwhile.
Action Steps
Action steps are the small tasks you do each day to help you reach your bigger goal. Action steps could include:
- Write one awesome piece of content each day.
- Work on informational product each day (an ebook or podcast).
- Spend time each day with promotions on social networks.
- Look for new affiliates to market on your site.
- Research in your niche.
- Create your own products to sell on your site.
A rather silly example of doing action steps towards a goal is to make a cup of tea. The goal is to have a cup of tea.
The steps would include:
- Put water on to heat.
- Add teabag to cup.
- Pour hot water over teabag.
- Steep teabag for 3 minutes.
- Remove teabag.
- Add sugar or milk if desired.
- Enjoy!
Making a cup of tea is not something you have to think about, you just do it. But you can see how this analogy breaks it down into action steps to reach the goal of enjoying a nice cup of tea. (I suggest a cup of Earl Grey.)
In doing (more) research for my own site launch I found some good information at StartUpNation.
Building a Website – http://www.startupnation.com/Building-a-Web-Site/58/7/
7 Secrets to Compelling Content – podcast – http://www.startupnation.com/media/episodes/9398/7-secrets-web-content.htm
Please share your comments, thoughts or how you set goals and take Action Steps.
Image courtesy: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3118/2853827999_5164b20ff7.jpg
Copyright © 2010
Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please
contact us so we can take legal action immediately.
Start Up, Action Plans & Getting Where You’re Going
A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger.
Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/
