The satisfaction of being organised - pt. II
Disclaimer: Apertis Verbis is in no way related to the different products listed in the article, nor is their promotion rewarded by compensation. This list represents a series of tools used by the author in a personal capacity.
We’ve already established that getting organised is not a piece of cake, and it requires more strategical thinking than it may seem: we have to understand our business, with its needs and peculiarities, ourselves and how we work best, and most of all we have to identify where the possibility of making a mistake in our workflow lies. We have also established that being organised requires discipline and a certain methodicalness.
Now that we have learnt more about who we are and what we do as professionals, we can start shopping around for tools that suit our needs. If you’re one of the lucky few, you will encounter a single tool that ticks all the boxes and in this case, you’ll be pretty much sorted. However, it is not uncommon to have to rely on different tools to get everything done, and when you get past the “adaptation period” in which you’re juggling 2 o 3 tools simultaneously you’ll be more than fine.
I have come up with a pretty little list of software and tools which I think can be useful to professionals like us, some have only been a minor fling on the way, but some have stayed with me up until the present day for various reasons. I hope you’ll find the perfect match for your business and your workflow system!
Diaries and to do lists
I don’t know about you, but every time I see the diary section in a shop that’s 30 minutes of my life gone right there. Although I know exactly what types of agendas, to do lists and organisers I can find I will always browse through all of them like I am under some kind of spell, hypnotised by boxes to tick, urgent sections and cute designs for the reminder boxes.
My slightly worrying obsessions aside, the most important thing with diaries is to get the right one for you: are you a day-to-day view kind of person? Maybe you prefer a weekly planner type? What size do you want, A5 or a bigger one? It all depends on your needs, for example if you carry your diary everywhere you might want to consider buying a compact agenda rather than a big one to promote portability. If the diary is going to stay on your desk all day then sizes don’t really matter. I want to stress how important it is to select the right type of view: if you have very busy long days then maybe you want to go with a day to day one, whilst if you prefer to keep the bigger picture under control with a glance, the weekly planner is the best option. Get this one right or you’d be better off without one in the first place, as the wrong diary for your needs will definitely slow you down in getting organised.
PROS: portable, handy.
CONS: low adaptability, messy to change plans around.
Google docs and sheets
Old but gold. This slightly more modern cloud version of the Microsoft Office suite that we know and love (and let’s admit, hate) allows you to build your own online folder of working documents, always remotely accessible and shareable. Although Excel has its limitations, knowledge of the spreadsheet combined with 2 or 3 notions of coding and functions can go a long way in building a comprehensive and quite cool spreadsheet with dates, deadlines, profit calculators, pie charts to help us analyse our business trends and so on.
PROS: familiar, always accessible, can be shared with other people, great functions can be created.
CONS: if not an expert user, very limited options; sometimes annoying to use.
Meistertask
This is a good tool to keep up, as the name suggests, with tasks. It basically acts as a fancy virtual to do list, with the possibility of creating various projects and the related list of tasks to perform. Certainly not a one-stop shop, but it is pretty handy to combine with, say, Google sheets, or Excel for that matter.
PROS: Nice visuals, App available, great as a complementary tool.
CONS: Limited to task management.
Airtable
I’ll try not to fangirl too much, but that’s going to be extremely hard. This is the most comprehensive and most adaptable tool I’ve found so far: it is based on the Excel grid visual, but it’s much more than that. Starting from pre-designed layouts you can create the one that suits you best, with the possibility of inserting different values in your column, such as dates, status, checkboxes, and wait for it…document previews! I’ve found this revolutionary, as I can create an entry for a translation project with all the information I need displayed on just one screen: client, deadline, word count, any comments and the relative invoice with the deadline, which saves me so much time in checking that I’m being paid on time and the right amount. Another two awesome features I love are the option of quickly and easily set filters to display or hide projects based on criteria I chose, and the automatic calculation of numeric-value columns, which gives you a real-time estimate of translated words, hours worked and money earned. I prefer to create a separate tab for each month for translation projects, whilst for the interpreting side of the business I have a unique one for interpreting assignments and a separate one for interpreting invoices. In this way, I can keep my earnings under control on one page and the details of the assignments (i.e. hours worked in which language in which modality and for whom) in the other. A great feature of this tool is that you can create different “sections”, which you can think of as different folders that then open up as different tabs, and you can adapt each section for your different needs: I have one for clients (subdivided in contacted, to contact, already working with) and one for the publishing schedule of blogs and pages I run. As you can see this tool is my life-saver. In this case, do believe the hype.
PROS: All of them.
CONS: Trends and graphs need to be extrapolated and analysed separately.
Dapulse
This is a bonus one that I suggest as an alternative to Airtable. They’re very similar in what they offer, and at the end of the day it boils down to which type of visual graphic you prefer. Worth giving it a try if you’re still looking for the one.
Needless to say, it is not going to happen overnight. All these tools need an initial time investment in order for you to play around with them, discover the various features available and adapt them to your style and workflow. To give you a rough idea, it took me more or less an afternoon to get Airtable set up as I liked it and wanted it, and the ROI was immediate. If you go in with a clear idea in mind you’ll be able to create something that will help you stay on top of all you have to do, and that will look nice, too.
How about you, what tools do you use? Which ones can’t you do without?
