I”m a sucker for posts with titles like, “How to be more productive” or “Applications to keep you more productive.” Even if I don’t necessarily incorporate the tips or applications into my life, I enjoy learning about how others keep themselves focused. You can never have too many ideas! So it was with great interest that I read about nine apps to make you super productive Monday at Mashable. Here are a few of my favorite highlights, and some links to past posts I’ve written with similar applications.

1. F.lux: Designed to change the lighting on your computer screen according to the time of day. Your computer screen will look warm at night and bluer during the day. The big perk for me is that it could possibly help you sleep better. We all know we should power down an hour or two before we hit the sack, but how many of us are guilty of using our laptops, tablets or smartphones in bed? (Yep, I’m raising my hand too.)

2. Dropbox: I already use Dropbox and I can vouch for how great it is. I prefer to work on my personal MacBook, so to keep my work files from taking up space on my hard drive, I can just store them in my Dropbox folder and access them from anywhere. This came in handy when my MacBook had to be shipped off for a few weeks to get the display fixed. All of my work files were easily accessed from my loaner laptop.

3. Lastpass: I will definitely be downloading this one asap. Obviously it’s extremely important to have unique passwords with numbers and special characters, but it can be so difficult to remember each and every one of them! Lastpass is a password management system that can be accessed from any computer as long as you provide one ultra-secure and hard-to-crack password. It will remember every other password, credit card info, etc. So useful!

4. KeyText: If you’re constantly typing the same phrases, addresses, boilerplates, what-have-you, KeyText is for you. Just enter a few keystrokes and the corresponding common phrase will be automatically inserted into whatever you’re typing. This is Windows-only, but TextExpander is a similar Mac app.

If you still want more productivity applications, be sure to check out a few of my past posts:

- Applications that can transform your organization’s communications and productivity
- Applications to boost your productivity

(I guess I could have been more creative with my post titles, huh?)

What are some of your favorite apps to help you stay productive?

Happy Friday! Who’s psyched for the weekend? I hope everyone is staying warm with all the crazy snow so much of the country has gotten so far this year. Anyway, as always, there were lots of great posts within the association blogosphere this week, so I’ve got five of my favorites below in case you missed any of them. Feel free to add your own in the comments!

1. Erik Schonher shared 25 universal secrets that could help drive your membership and non-dues revenue. And doesn’t every association want that? One of my favorites: make every customer believe they’re the only customer, even if they know it isn’t true. Isn’t that what providing a great member experience is all about?

2. Innovation is a hot topic in the association world, and Eric Lanke discusses Google’s 20% policy, which encourages Googlers to use 20 percent of their time to work on innovative projects of their own inspiration. Although it may be difficult to actually execute an innovative project with only 20 percent of your time, if you couple it with a good transparency policy about how ideas are selected, perhaps innovation could occur more often at your association.

3. Christina Stallings shared some great tips on how to stay focused. Although she geared the tips toward those who work from home, I think several of them could apply to everyone, no matter where you work. For one thing, she points out that maintaining a consistent schedule is key, and I know that’s definitely true in an office setting as well.

4. Jamie Notter discussed organizational culture and how we prefer for it to be stable. But just because you like your association’s culture a certain way doesn’t mean it can’t be better. It’s the whole “that’s the way we’ve always done it” mindset – but could it be holding you back?

5. David M. Patt shared some great statistics via Forbes Magazine – essentially, business executives overwhelmingly preferred face-to-face meetings for building deeper, more meaningful relationships. Although technology allows us to be more flexible and save money, face-to-face still has several advantages.

I want to direct our readers’ attentions to a great post at Associations Live called Managing Your Time. Time management is always important — especially for small staff association professionals, who have to juggle multiple priorities and departments — but I think the holiday season is a time to be especially cognizant of how our time is being spent. Between holiday shopping, parties and finishing up the new year at work, the holiday season seems to be even busier than the rest of the year.

The post linked above points out the usefulness of cleaning off your workspace at the end of each day and taking a few minutes to put together a to-do list for the next day. Personally, I like to write up my day’s to-do list each morning, and I get a huge amount of satisfaction from crossing each item off with my pink highlighter. (Nerd alert!)

One important point that I think may be difficult for small staff association professionals is don’t schedule more than two hours of your time each day. I realize the importance of this, but I think small staff professionals automatically get sequestered into many meetings and member engagement. Rather, what’s important is realizing what’s worth a meeting and what can be resolved via e-mail. If it’s a serious conflict or matter, try to meet face-to-face. But don’t think you need to have meetings for every little detail. Some small staffs work in such close quarters that this may not even apply to them!

I really want to hear from you, though. What is your best time management or productivity tip?

Image source

In case it wasn’t apparent, at MemberClicks, we’re all about using technology to simplify busy lives and schedules. Of course, we realize that small staff association professionals are often more overwhelmed than your typical association professional. It’s tough managing an entire organization with just four (or three, or two, or one) staff!

Therefore … I love highlighting awesome applications and sites that help save me time. Today, I’ve got two: Remember the Milk and Evernote.

Right off the bat, I love Remember the Milk — I can sign in with my Google account and sync my Google Cal, Tasks and Gmail. (As a self-proclaimed Google addict, I adore this.) Basically, RTM is fantastic for the list-lover in you. You can make any kind of list you want; set reminders to notify you however you’d like; easily manage your tasks; plot your to-dos on a map; collaborate with coworkers, friends and family; sync your lists with your mobile phone; easily search your tasks and schedule your time however you’d like.

Phew! What a list! For association execs managing multiple departments, members and their own busy lives, I’d definitely recommend checking this one out.

Evernote is similar in that it wants to help you “remember everything.” Online bookmarking tool, file collaboration tool and easily accessible on-the-go, Evernote would be great for small staff professionals to share files, save ideas and inspiration and organize their files. Your account is easily searchable and can sync to your work and home computers and mobile phones — and your account is also available in the cloud, from any computer with an Internet connection.

Evernote suggests several ways for users to use the service:

Do you use either one of these tools? What other tools do you use to stay productive and efficient?

Throughout the past year (and 310 posts!), I’ve highlighted tons of cool tools small staff associations can use, whether they’re social media-related or not. I thought today, I would compile those posts into one handy guide for future reference. Most of these tools are free (or very inexpensive), and many can help increase your productivity, become more active in the social Web or revamp the way your office runs.

1. Simplify your phone communications with Google Voice: Google has tons of free tools that are great for productivity. Google Voice allows you redirect as many numbers as you want to a single voicemail inbox, so all your calls can be directed to one phone number. Great for organizations with just one full-time staff member.

2. Applications to boost your productivity: I covered Google Reader, Tweetdeck, Evernote and Typinator. Of course, there are tons of RSS readers out there, and dozens of applications to manage Twitter (I’ve also used HootSuite and CoTweet).

3. All about podcasts: I shared a few different podcasts relevant to association professionals, and discussed using podcasts to communicate with your members. Subscribing is easy — anyone can do it straight from iTunes. And I recommended Audacity for editing your audio content.

4. Two options to improve your organization’s communications: TextMarks makes it easy for organizations to set up text messaging campaigns that members can subscribe to. This is a paid service, but it’s fairly inexpensive and has tons of benefits. And Phonebooth has both free and paid services that include a local number with up to five extensions, call forwarding and voicemail with transcription.

5. Create your own check-in application for conferences: With the popularity of location-based applications increasing, many associations may be wondering how they can participate in the trend. DoubleDutch allows organizations to create their own applications for events, distinguishing between different booths on the trade show floor and session rooms.

6. Have you heard about YouTube’s Nonprofit Program?: YouTube provides nonprofits with premium branding capabilities and allows them to raise funds with a Google “donate” program. Additionally, nonprofits will be listed on the Nonprofit channel’s page and have the option to add a “Call to Action” overlay on videos to drive campaigns.

7. Cloud computing now even more collaborative with Google’s changes: Google recently rolled out a slew of changes to its Docs, making them even more user-friendly and easy to use. With awesome chat features built in, collaboration is a snap for organizations — especially if you travel a lot.

8. PostRank: Social media stats and Google Analytics combined: PostRank combines stats from Google Analytics, your blog, Twitter and Facebook to give you a comprehensive “engagement score.” You don’t have to include every element, but the more you have, the more accurate your engagement score will be. Additionally, PostRank offers real-time social media monitoring so you’ll always be on top of your mentions and comments.

9. Looking for a tool to easily manage your organization’s social media presences?: Postling lets small businesses (or associations!) manage all of their social media outposts in one handy dashboard. Additionally, Postling can monitor mentions of your organization across the Web. You can allow multiple users or administrators access to your dashboard, and select which accounts they have access to.

I hope some of these tools benefit your organization, whether through increased productivity or better social media engagement!

Photo source