Tip: Productivity Tools 3.0
A NEW look at tech tools to keep organized in your work as a professor...
I have put together a couple lists of productivity tools I use regularly (here’s tools 1.0 and 2.0) for my teaching, scholarship, and service work. This list is a second update, with lots of changes since version 2.0 in 2021!
COLLABORATIVE WRITING/STORAGE APPLICATIONS
Although I’m at a Microsoft campus, I do still use Google Drive for some of my collaborations. I often feel like Microsoft products get maybe 85% of the way to a good experience, and then they fall short. This definitely holds true for SharePoint. At this point I probably do 60% of my work in Microsoft and 40% in Google, and I don’t really see that shifting. Even if I’m working solo, I may go back and forth: Word is far superior for inserting and formatting citations (with my Zotero add-on) but applying styles is faster in Google Docs. If I need to create docs/slides that I use when teaching for student collaboration, it’s Google 100%. I do still use Dropbox (but not DropboxPaper) for holding my personal files, but I find it incredibly frustrating that it doesn’t integrate well into the file finder in Mac the way it did on my Windows machine.
If you use the new search function on the Tips homepage, you can search for all the posts about using Google Suite - there have been many!
COMMUNICATION TOOLS
Last time I called out Slack and Teams as collaboration spaces that I used sparingly and didn’t love - well, I am now in a Teams-based team, and while I might not love Teams, I am a much bigger fan now. I really appreciate having a non-email space for asynchronous collaboration, especially when just file sharing (Google Drive) won’t meet all our needs.
EMAIL MANAGEMENT SERVICES
This is probably the biggest change I’ve made - my email program. There are a couple of reasons for the change, including increased buggy-ness in later versions of Mailbird, but the nail in the coffin was when I switched from a Windows laptop to a Mac. The Mac version of Mailbird has almost none of the features that I really loved, and so I have reluctantly said goodbye.
So, where have I ended up? I still hate Outlook, so that was an easy no. I still needed to be able to manage multiple accounts from one place. My only new requirement was keyboard shortcuts - I had gotten very used to using the shortcuts within Mailbird, and wanted a program where I could use custom shortcuts for the things I really wanted to do. I used Apple Mail for a while, liking the portability across laptop, iPad, and phone, but the keyboard shortcuts just wouldn’t let me assign what I really wanted (granted, this might very well be user error). And - ideally - whatever I picked would have a desktop and phone/iPad app. I tried SparkMail, and now I’m with Edison Mail. I like it just fine - I mostly want to be able to archive and flag emails for later easily and quickly (hence the need for keyboard shortcuts). I do miss how with Mailbird I could have an “all inboxes” space that could be only the email accounts I select - letting me, for example, keep my work email separate from my multiple personal email address - but I’m learning to live without that feature.
NOTES APPLICATIONS
The last time I shared my favorite productivity tools, my advice was to:
Pick a tool that will do what you need without too many bells and whistles. There’s a time for beautiful docs, and there’s a time for plain text. If the fancy options for organizing and formatting are a distraction, rather than an enhancement, perhaps it’s time to find a simpler option.
I think this still holds true - the best tool is one that is easy to use and quick to have at hand. On my laptop, I’ve started taking short-term notes in Apple’s Notes app because it’s fast to open when I’m in a meeting and realize I need to take some notes. I use my iPad for most on-the-go work (in-person meetings, observations, workshops/conferences) and have tried a number of note taking apps (Notability, OneNote, EverNote) before settling on Nebo. I picked this one 3-4 years ago because it was far and away the best at converting handwriting to typed text. I suspect others might be catching up, but I love Nebo’s ease of use and features - they have an excellent balance of not too little, not too much going on. (Here’s a nice overview article if you want to learn more about note-taking options.)
RESEARCH & REFERENCE MANAGEMENT
Although I still really like PowerNotes, I use it less now and rely on Zotero at lot more - more because my needs have shifted than anything else, since the two tools really do different things.
As a reminder, PowerNotes works within your browser to let you highlight clips of what you’re reading, saving the clip with the citation information and an annotation. I think it’s an excellent tool for students and continue to recommend it to mine.
SCHEDULING SERVICES
Nothing new to add here, although I have experimented with MS Bookings and it’s fine - but not great, and not fine enough to make me switch from the free version of Calendly!
Calendly is still by far the winner here. I do wish they had a cheaper paid version - the jump from free to $8.00 a month is too much, so I stick with the (somewhat limited) free version.
SCREENCASTING APPLICATIONS
I use this extensively, even in a “normal” semester. My 100% go-to used to be ScreenPal (was Screencast-O-Matic) and frequently audio-only recordings - now, however, I use Zoom for all my recording needs.
TASK MANAGERS
Once I switched to using a Mac, I tested out several different to-do lists. This is my perennial struggle, and I am still not sure I have the absolute best solution. I had been using Todoist because it integrated with Mailbird nicely - I have learned that if the task list isn’t in front of my eyes at all times, I don’t use it. Now I use widgets on my screen to keep that task list floating, and that’s really the only reason I left Todoist for TickTick. Again, it’s fine. It floats on my second monitor screen and I use it to enter and check off daily/weekly tasks, and that’s all I need from a to-do list right now.
As a life-long Windows user, making the switch to a Mac at <cough> my age has been quite the shift. Some things are working great, some things are fine, and others…I feel like there’s a lot I don’t know that I would find helpful! So, Mac users, hit me with all your best advice on anything a newbie should learn about!
There’s my list of tech tools I find helpful - I would love to hear about others I’ve not tried or “low-tech” solutions to managing the professor workflow! I’m particularly interested in hearing from And I would be totally remiss if I didn’t put in a plug for
‘s awesome newsletter, - highly recommend checking it out for so many great posts about tools.
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Love seeing how your toolset’s evolved since 2.0—especially that shift from Mailbird to Edison Mail.
I’m also a sucker for Calendly’s simplicity, though I feel you on that pricing jump. For anyone hunting more productivity gems like these, I’ve found https://productivity.directory super useful—it’s got great roundups and tips that vibe with this kind of workflow tweak!