An Entrepreneur’s Tools: Part 4
My Favourite Tools for Work and Wellness at Work
In my job I wear a lot of hats, mostly all digital. I also have a burning desire to stay creative, focussed and in good health throughout my day. I tend to gravitate towards tools that inspire me, while not having a huge learning curve - and with the current DIY culture online there’s a lot of that.
For Websites
Squarespace. With its 7.1 upgrade that means no more templates – you just drag and drop anywhere on the page – Squarespace is by far and hands down the best builder that I have ever worked with. And, if you are not techy and have no interest in being techy, you can hire a Squarespace designer and they can easily code and customise your site using CSS.
For Art
Canva. I absolutely love Canva for all it can do and all the things I have not yet discovered that it can do! It’s great for folks like me who never learned Photoshop and now don’t have time to. Canva lets you easily create social media posts, business cards, logos and even video intros. You can set up your brand palette, upload custom fonts and your own imagery or choose from their extensive library of artwork elements. You can even animate elements of your design. It’s super fun and all I’ve ever needed.
For Social Media
Tailwind. Just discovering this application this week and loving it for Instagram. It has a grid layout of your feed that allows you to drag and drop upcoming posts in. This gives you a birds eye view of the design of your IG feed. Then, you can schedule them all! This is a great way to be sure you are getting specific posts done (like holidays and special events), while allowing space for spontaneous and live posts. Super cool. It works for Pinterest too but I have not explored this yet. Looking forward to it.
News Feed Eradicator for Facebook – on Chrome
Just as it says, this little add-on will blur out your FB feed so that it’s not distracting you from business, like checking in on your groups and pages, and allow you to get out of there without time sinking in your feed.
For the Desktop
f.lux. There’s a lot of discovery lately about how staring at a computer screen impairs vision and can cause permanent damage to the eyes. Specifically it’s the blue light in the spectrum that can damage light-sensitive cells in the retina, causing macular degeneration. Also studies show that excessive light in the evening can disrupt the circadian rhythm and exacerbate sleep disorders. f.lux addresses this. You can set it to have your screen mimic the sun’s light, getting brighter in the mornings and dimming and going red in the evenings. Much easier on the eyes and the mind.
Project Management
I really love Slack for project collaboration with clients. We used to use Basecamp and invite clients in, but I prefer having a totally separate space for team meetings. Also its super convenient to be able to drop in any docs, images or other files right into the conversation. It keeps track of everything by date and the ability to thread conversations for reference, and the search function is stellar. This really gets everything to do with any project all in one place and out of your email inbox. Yay!
We use Clickup at work here at Goodwin Creative and it’s a serious platform. But I think Jude already went over it in her article so I’ll tell you about the platform I use for all of my personal, family and creative projects – and that is Evernote. Evernote is like a blank canvas. It has two main functions: the Notebook and the Note. Notes live inside of Notebooks. Each Note is blank, with a ton of different functions and a full editor. You can drag and drop in any file type – even video (with an upgrade from the free plan). You can set Evernote up in millions of different ways to suit your needs and organisational style or system. And, with the app on your phone, you can even snap images of anything in the outside world and file it away anywhere inside of Evernote. I use it for keeping receipts, brainstorming, keeping track of all of our records and important information, writing journals, saving webpages with the built in web clipper and more.
On My Phone
Seek. I’m a web developer but I’m also a wellness blogger and I talk about plants a lot. Open this app and hover it over any plant and it will tell you what species it is! Amazing!
Chordify. In my spare time (does that actually happen?) I’m in a band. This app will tell you the chords in any song you want to learn, as long as it’s on the internet somewhere. You can even select guitar, piano or ukulele – my current favourite instrument.
Relaxing. This app has a ton of different background and ambient noise for you to choose from when you need to out your headphones on and bliss out, or focus, but you find music too distracting at work – which, being a musician, I do (it just makes me want to sing and dance!). Choose from Heavy Rain, Serene waterfall, Birdsong, Calming Fireplace and more. Tip for moms: it has a lot of different white noise options too. I use this whenever we’re away on holiday to help my son get to sleep.
Duolingo. This little language app is so cute it’s almost too cute. Want to easily learn almost any language? You have to check it out. I’m working on Gaelic right now. My son learned a lot of Japanese through Covid – but maybe you’d prefer Klingon! Learning a language is a great way to keep the mind optimised. Also there’s this little green owl who chirps at you when you’ve forgotten your lesson. Did I mention cute?
Fitness
An absolute must in my busy life for wellness and stress relief is my fitness regimen. And since gyms are closed it has all moved home and online. Also I prefer having a coach or videos to run with in the mornings as it’s easier to just not think and work out at 6am. I’ve tried a lot of different programs. These are my most used ones:
Betty Rocker. Bree Argetsinger is a really fantastic fitness and nutrition coach. She’s put together a ton of different programs for you to choose from with the caveat that all can be done at home with little to no equipment and in under an hour a day. The programs have full videos of each workout so you can work alongside them. And she has an app so you can take it anywhere! Check out her free 30 day program to start.
My Fitness Pal. I use this app to track my calories when I want to slim down a bit or am undergoing intermittent fasting and want to be sure to get enough calories in my day. You just enter your food and your exercise each day to get your results. The app tells you if you are under or over.
For After Work
And last but not least I have to mention podcasts. Podcasts are hands down my favourite way to consume media these days. I get oodles of inspiration, ideas and warm fuzzies from my favourites across a spectrum of topics from entrepreneurship to women’s issues to meditation and magic to literature and pop culture. I love to break from work at the end of the day, pour a glass of wine and turn one on while I cook dinner. So relaxing. And informative!
