July 2019 Summaries

Wrike is a flexible project management tool that allows users to adapt their workflow style, offering boards, simple lists, spreadsheets, and other options for organizing tasks. The tool provides standard project management terminology but with some distinct features, such as the use of workspaces, projects, folders, and tasks. Creating a new project or task in Wrike involves selecting the desired view - list, board, table, or Kanban - and assigning owners, start dates, and sharing settings. Users can also create tasks out of context by clicking on a button near the top of the web app. The tool offers search functionality to help users find specific projects, folders, and tasks. Wrike allows users to add, remove, and manage other users in their account, with options for different user types and access roles. Users can also change task status in various views, including list, board, and table views. The beauty of Wrike lies in its adaptability to different project management styles, making it suitable for various workflows and development processes.

A long commute can have severe impacts on a person's productivity, job satisfaction, mental health, and overall well-being. Research has shown that every extra minute of commute time reduces job satisfaction, leisure time satisfaction, and mental health. A 50-minute round-trip commute may not be worth the cost of a higher salary, with some studies suggesting that adding an additional 20 minutes per day to your commute has the same effect on your job satisfaction as taking a 19% pay cut. However, there are ways to combat the stress of a long commute, such as using your commute to mentally prepare for work, finding alternative transportation methods like biking or walking, making your commute more social by carpooling or striking up conversations with strangers, developing a morning routine, and considering flexible working arrangements as an employer. Ultimately, if you can't improve your commute, abandoning it altogether by finding a job that allows remote work may be the best option.

Trello and Google Calendar are two popular tools used for task management and time planning respectively, but they don't integrate seamlessly out of the box. To bridge this gap, users can set up a one-way integration that shows Trello cards with due dates in Google Calendar or use Zapier to create customizable integrations, allowing users to add Google Calendar appointments to Trello or control which Trello cards show up in Google Calendar. The iCal subscription feature in Trello allows for automatic syncing of calendar data with Google Calendar, but this is a static subscription that only works one way. Users can also build their own workflows using Zapier's automation tools to send information from one app to the other in various ways, such as creating new Trello cards from new Google Calendar events or deleting Trello cards when corresponding Google Calendar events are archived.

You can sell products on Amazon.com using Amazon Seller Central, a virtual store's office that manages listing products, tracking purchases, issuing refunds, and receiving payments. To get started, sign up for an account, provide required information such as business address and tax ID number, and verify your identity with documents like government IDs and bank statements. You can list individual products or upload them in bulk through the app's inventory management features. Amazon Seller Central also tracks sales metrics, customer feedback, and performance across key indicators, allowing you to manage orders, returns, and advertising campaigns from a central dashboard. The platform offers various integrations with other apps, including Zapier, which enables automation of workflows such as creating invoices or sending handwritten notes for new orders.

When promoting a business, product, or content on social media, it's crucial to carefully consider which platforms to use, as using the wrong ones can lead to wasted effort and mediocre results. To choose the best platform(s) for your business, you need to ask yourself several questions: What social media apps does your audience use? Is the app designed for the type of content you create? Where are your competitors focusing their attention? What is the likely organic reach of each platform? How much time can you allocate to social media consistently? After answering these questions, you'll be able to select the platforms that cater best to your business goals and audience preferences. By using the right platforms, you can increase visibility, awareness, and engagement for your business, ultimately driving more traffic to your site and boosting sales.

This article discusses the author's strategy for using procrastination as a tool to stay productive. The author explains that structured procrastination involves doing marginally useful tasks instead of doing nothing, and provides several techniques for turning procrastination into productivity, including planning the rest of your day, breaking large projects into smaller pieces, cleaning something, tackling simple tasks, taking a walk or doing exercise, talking to co-workers, automating repetitive tasks, and learning about why people procrastinate. The author shares their own experiences with these strategies and invites readers to try them out for themselves.

The platform is GitHub, an online service for hosting code and collaborating with others. It uses version control technology called Git, which allows for incremental changes (commits) and branching for separate work on parts of a project. GitHub combines this with a software-as-a-service model, making it one of the most-used platforms for collaborative development projects. The platform is free to use, with some paid plans offering additional features such as unlimited collaborators and advanced tracking tools. It provides tools for searching, contributing, managing repositories, pull requests, issues, and releases, as well as integration with other apps and services via Zapier. GitHub also offers a user-friendly interface for developers who are not pros at Git or version control, while still catering to seasoned developers. The platform has become a crucial part of the developer job market, allowing users to showcase their contributions and work on open-source projects.

Squarespace is a website builder that allows users to design websites without coding or design skills, using pre-existing or custom elements by dragging and dropping them into the desired space. The platform offers four different plans, starting at $12/month, with varying features and pricing depending on the level of customization and functionality required. Users can choose from various templates, edit text and images, add blocks to customize their site, and preview their site in a live environment before publishing it. Additionally, Squarespace allows users to integrate their website with thousands of apps through Zapier's integrations, enabling automation and synchronization of data between different applications.

MeisterTask is a flexible project management app that uses the Kanban task management system and can be customized based on project or company needs. It offers a free plan with unlimited projects, tasks, and collaborators, as well as a paid Pro plan for $9.99/month. The app has various features such as power-ups, sections, tasks, statistics, and reports that can be used to track progress and manage workflows. MeisterTask allows users to create projects, invite team members, assign tasks, and use automation features to streamline their workflow. It also integrates with thousands of apps using Zapier's integrations. The app has a customizable dashboard, search function, and reporting capabilities to help teams evaluate their progress and make data-driven decisions.

Pocket is a web-based service that allows users to save articles and videos from the internet for later reading. It can be accessed through a desktop application, mobile apps, or by using browser extensions. Users can sign up for a free account and set up their devices to start saving articles. The app offers features such as font choices, unlimited highlights, and organization tools like archiving and tagging. Pocket also integrates with thousands of other apps through Zapier, allowing users to automate tasks and create custom workflows.

Asana is a robust project management app that allows users to create and assign tasks, attach relevant documentation, leave notes, set notifications for deadlines, and visualize their data. It offers various pricing plans, including a free Basic plan with limited features, and more advanced paid plans with additional customization options and features. Asana's dashboard provides easy navigation and access to key features such as task management, templates, collaboration tools, and analytics. Users can personalize their notifications, create projects with customizable templates, organize tasks in different views, assign and track tasks, attach files, create subtasks, and mark tasks as complete. Additionally, users can integrate Asana with 1,500+ other apps using Zapier to automate workflows and streamline project management processes.

Creating pivot tables in Excel Online can help draw conclusions from large datasets by summarizing and filtering data based on user-defined criteria. Pivot tables are particularly useful for analyzing flat data, such as expenses or project information, to gain insights into trends and patterns. The process of creating a pivot table involves selecting the relevant data, adding fields to the rows and columns, values section, and filters, and then using drag-and-drop functionality to build the desired report. By mastering pivot tables in Excel Online, users can create dynamic reports that provide actionable insights into their data, making it easier to make informed decisions and drive business growth.