Doodle
Doodle is a popular free service for scheduling meetings and events. Once you’ve set up a Doodle account, you can invite people to share their availability with you by ‘voting’ on a range of dates that you’ve offered. When all of your attendees have voted you’ll be able to see which dates are viable for your meeting.
- Select a list of dates and times you want to offer and let Doodle automatically generate a link to the poll. Just email the link to your group and they can start responding.
- Those responding to the poll don’t have to set up their own accounts; this means it’s fairly easy to get a quick response, as there are no complicated signups for your attendees to manage.
- Doodle can integrate with a wide variety of online calendar services, (Google, Office365, Outlook.com and iCloud), and can even work with desktop applications such as iCal and Outlook. So you can view responses directly in your calendar.
- Doodle generates you a MeetMe page, which allows other people to view a version of your calendar online which only shows whether you are busy or available. Clients, team-mates or friends can request appointments with you directly through this page.
- Android and iOS apps are available for Doodle, which automatically link into your calendar as well.
Doodle is super easy to use and makes the job of trying to coordinate busy people much simpler! As well as trying to find mutually convenient times for groups of people, it can also be used to allow individual participants to select convenient appointments for themselves, eg. interview slots. This can cut out a lot of emailing back and forth and make the process more accessible for the candidate.
Google Calendar
Google Calendar is part of the Google suite which runs in the Cloud, so you can access your diary anywhere, anytime and from any device. You need to set up a free Google account to use it, but then have access to the calendar and many other useful Google apps, making getting organised a doddle.
- Visually plan and organise your time effectively
- Plan ahead using the visual month or week view
- Use it to map out different commitments, workload, downtime, events and meetings etc
- Synchronise with your task lists and Google Keep notes
- Set up automatic event reminders including FREE mobile phone notifications
- Access your calendar using any computer or mobile device
- Personalise each ‘event’ with colour coding and add as much information as you like including attachments and hyperlinks
Google Calendar is simple and intuitive to use, and makes keeping track of commitments so much easier. I love that everything across my Google account is synchronised, with all the different apps working seamlessly together.
Strict Workflow
Based on the ‘pomodoro technique’ Strict Workflow is a Google Chrome extension that helps increase concentration by temporarily blocking social and other time-wasting websites. This web extension runs in the background blocking your chosen list of ‘black-listed’ websites for 25 minutes to allow you to work without distraction. After 25 minutes it allows you a five minute break.
- Super easy to use- once it’s installed it just runs in the background. With just one click you can start the timer
- Handy pre-configured list of ‘black-listed’ sites to block popular distracting websites
- Really easy to personalise, so you can add or remove whichever sites you want to block
- You can also change the timer durations if your ideal work spurts are shorter or longer than the pre-set ones
Strict workflow is great as it just works in the background, so every time you find yourself starting to procrastinate Strict Workflow steps in, helping enforce a bit of self-discipline.
Strict Workflow (Chrome web store)
Need an app blocker for your smartphone? Try ‘Flipd’ Android/iOS app