Productivity Hacks For Millennials & Entrepreneurs (Post Bilingüe)

As millennials and entrepreneurs, making the best use of our time would often be impossible without the tips, tricks & gadgets we depend on. These things make the everyday hustle and bustle a little easier and allow us to get more done in less time, stay aligned with our long term vision and manage our professional and personal goals.

That’s why when I was invited to share my "Herramientas de Productividad para Millenials y Emprendedores" on this weeks Latino Radio segment Mujeres Y Yo with hostess Cecilia Mota, I was excited to share. And in case you haven’t guessed, the show was en Español!

Before we get started, this is a multimedia + multilingual article. Here’s what that means:

This article contains video and text.
The video interview was recorded LIVE for a Spanish Language Radio Station and is in Spanish (with maybe just a bit of Spanglish)!
The text aspect is a supplemental list of resources and productivity apps that serve me in my day-to-day grind, as well as those preferred by some of my amazing fellow mujeres poderosas Dariana Cruz, Sarai Garret and our lovely hostess Cecilia Mota and is primarily in English.

My co-guests and I had a blast on the show, but I’ll admit, as my first LIVE broadcast en Español , I was a little nervous and definitely vibing my inner Selena! “Me siento muy excited!”

Latino Radio Inc. is an online radio station with programming produced for Latinos around the world. The segment Mujeres Y Yo features various women and is hosted by the amazing Cecilia Mota, Women’s Empowerment Expert & Coach, Executive Director at LatinaVIDA and Motivational Speaker!

This episode was part of a series on Millennials and covers “Productivity Hacks For Millennials & Entrepreneurs”.

The Live Broadcast Footage

Tips, Tricks, Apps & Gadgets

We each put together a list of our favorite tips, tricks, apps & gadgets, some of which were discussed on the show. Hope you enjoy!

My Hacks

Carta De Amor - One of my favorite strategies/rituals that I do on an annual basis is writing myself what I like to call my Love Letter. It’s the practice of envisioning my life one year from now and writing from the perspective of my future self, focusing on 5 areas of my life: Family & Relationships, Professional/Financial, Health, Personal Development and Spiritual. The reason it works is because our brain is a very powerful filter. Reflecting on my goals weekly keeps them front of mind and gives my brain the task of filtering and taking opportunities that will help move me closer to making those things a reality.

Strides App - The Strides app is a goal tracking app which works on both phone and web browser. I use is to record and track my daily, weekly and monthly goals directly from my phone and it sends me reminders to record my progress. It’s also highly visual and turns red when I’m behind. As an added measure of productivity, I also send screenshots of my goal progress to an accountability partner daily.

A Tomorrow List - Each night, I email myself the top 3 priorities I MUST get done the next day. Planning my day ahead of time guarantees that I will tackle and complete the most important things and maximize my productivity early in the day.

Boomerang For Gmail - This is one of my favorites! Ever gotten an email you can’t deal with right this moment and then forgotten all about it? Instead of digging through your inbox, you can simply Boomerang it and have it return to the top of your inbox at a later date. You can also Boomerang emails that need a response if the person doesn’t actually respond by a certain date. But my fave feature is the ability to schedule emails. I’m sometimes up VERY late working and Boomerang allows me to schedule the emails to go out at a later time. If you’ve ever gotten an email from me at 6am, this is probably why!

Contactually - Contactually is a CRM or Customer Relationship Management system, but I like to think of it as more of a Connection tool. It reminds me to follow up with people based on time frames I set, syncs with my Google Account and I can even send emails from within the software. I can also create pipelines to manage clients, link a transaction to them and link connections, such as spouses, together.

Deep Work - In life, there are things that are important and there are things that are urgent and all too often, those urgent items take precedent and can cause us to delay the important things. That’s why once a week, I set aside a chunk of time for Deep Work. This is when I create free resources for my clients, like Homebuyer’s Guides, write content for my blog and The Huffington, and do any bigger tasks that need a high level of focus.

Audible - Audible is an amazing subscription service which gives you access to thousands of Audio Books and is one of my favorite in-car apps. I have about a 25 minute commute to work each day and use this time to consume books instead of listening to the radio.

Dariana’s Favorite Hacks

Dariana Cruz, Coach & Co-Founder Dari Design Studio

Unrollme - This is a great app that helps you manage your email subscriptions (aka newsletters). When you subscribe to unrollme, you grant the app access to your email to identify all your subscriptions. Then the app walks you through a re-selecting stage where you choose which subscription you want to keep. If you choose to roll it, that means it will be included in the daily roll – one daily email which includes all of your subscriptions. The daily roll makes things visual and so much easier to view!

Trello - If you’re a planner, you need Trello. Trello lets you make infinite numbers of boards which hold an infinite numbers of lists. Each list holds cards and in those cards, you can add all sorts of information. Trello is full of infinite possibilities for personal planning, for team planning, for project managing and for scheduling. It will be easier if you start using it than me trying to explain it. All I can say is that I have almost 30 boards at the present moment. Oh, and it’s addicting and free.

Feed eradicator - This is a Chrome extension that goes into your Facebook and substitutes the main timeline for a productivity quote. It allows you to do everything else on Facebook, except see the timeline. You can post on your timeline, write and respond to messages, go to your groups and even chat. After I started using this app, I was blown away about how many times I would click on the “home” button almost by inertia. With this app I can go in there and use my social media time wisely without getting hooked into the endless timeline scrolling. (Monica here, and I can’t believe I haven’t heard of this app before! Amazing!)

Keeper - I’ve used a number of password manager apps and this one is my favorite. They have a free version, but I’m now into my 4th year of using the paid version (because I want to have the app on 3 devices) and I love it. Logging into websites has never been so easy and smooth. This app also allows you to keep an import file and you can have shared passwords or files with someone else. If you have your passwords covered you might skip this one, but if you don’t, I recommend it 100%. Also make sure you change your main passwords often. I like using phrases that remind me of my short term goals.

OmmWriter - This is a writing environment that separates you from all other applications opened in your computer. You can use it with a calming background music or no music if you want. It helps you concentrate on the writing, so there is nothing else to format. You can leave all your applications opened but this writer acts like you went to another room in your same computer and shut the door! Very helpful!

Sarai’s Hacks

Sarai Garrett Marketing, Branding, Social Media Maven & CEO at The Marketing Millennial

Todoist.com - Is a To Do list where you can break up your to-do’s by project as you gain karma points for every task completed.

#Slack - Communication with your team is everything! Making sure you communicate and most importantly have a platform where you can assign team members by project means that you don’t have to waste time going back and forth through emails, you have your whole team in one place and that means- more productivity, accountability and no excuses!

Streak - In sales, Pipelines are very well understood. They’re more than a customer management platform- it’s a streamlined system that allows you to create your client data as you go! Tracking what products or services make the most revenue, what clients have paid you and even who has viewed your emails!

Google Docs/ Sheets/ Slides/ Drive (online cloud, you can access anywhere) - They are a cloud based, easy to use and easy to access data management which makes me feel at ease! Sharing, printing, updating and everything that makes life easier always at the tip of your fingers! (**Another second for Google Docs! I too use this system all the time! - Monica)

Grammarly - Because grammar is EVERYTHING! Social Media posts, Articles, Press-releases you name it- Grammarly’s got you covered!

Animoto - Communicating with your audience in a fun way with a plethora of background music to choose from and video templates to meet your mood has got me all over ANIMOTO! A video suite with everything you need to make your videos SWEEET!

Pexels - This stite provides you with free stock photos. Because pictures in the tech age are life! Need I say more?

Bonus Hack From Cecilia

Just Not Sorry - Is a Google Chrome Extension which strives to eliminate the use of undermining language in emails sent by businesswomen by cross-checking your emails. Check it out!