Lockdown has added many new challenges including stretching our “home office” to its limits. In an effort to be more organised, I’ve been looking at apps. It’s either that or apply for a £10k home office fund like the MPs.
Scanning apps
My home printer is soooooooo slow, and drinks ink like an alcoholic. Plus it doesn’t understand the concept of scanning, and that is really annoying.
1. TinyScan
This is an absolute lifesaver. Instead of trying to persuade my printer to scan a document, I just photograph it and it magically converts to pdf. I can even email direct from the app. Love, love, love it.
2. Office Lens
A bit whizzier than TinyScan and oh so good.
Task apps
In place of my towering in-tray, I started with a simple “To Do” list on my phone, and I can safely say that was a disaster. I couldn’t sort or prioritise things, and I dropped a few balls. So I then added calendar reminders. What could possibly go wrong now? Except when you “dismiss” because the pop-up is annoying while you work then it vanishes from your life forever. More balls dropped. Nothing critical thankfully – just emails that I should have replied to.
1. Trello
This is the one I’ve opted for – the cork board style appeals to my visual sense (i.e. it mirrors my usual mess of yellow stickies, but “visual sense” sounds cooler). You can have a cork board for every project and drag things around easily. Love it!
2. MyLifeOrganised 3
This badges itself as the most flexible “To-do” list”. It’s a classic list based design and ticking everything off is super satisfying.
3. Wunderlist
I love the sharing function on this so you can split things across your team/ colleagues. Top tip – don’t share a shopping list with your partner – they won’t thank you for it!
Time management apps
I’m usually ultra focussed – chaos can break loose around me in the office and I will completely miss it – but in the current environment, I find I’m much more easily distracted. I think it’s partly the unsettling times, but partly every day feels like Sunday. My niece suggested I get an “anti-distraction” app. She uses “Forest” where you plant a tree and it grows if you stay off Snapchat. It’s super cute, and I’m trying to persuade my son to use it, but not quite what I had in mind.
1. Hold
Earn 10 points for not using your phone for 20 minutes which you can then spend on rewards … How hard can that be? Can’t say the rewards appeal got. me personally, but I love a challenge. Turns out 20 minutes away from your phone is really hard. Oh dear.
2. Focus Keeper
Can’t see the difference between this and simply setting a timer on my phone.
Anyway, let me know which home-office apps you’ve been relying on. And take care.
IR-connect 