7 Daylite Power-User Tools For Ultra-Productive People

Quick Tips / November 3, 2015 / Kristie

Everybody is given the same number of hours in a day, yet some people seem to get so much more done with their time. Do they have a secret stash of extra hours up their sleeves? Do they work harder than everyone else, powering through tasks like Arnold powers through a workout? Do they work non-stop and never eat or sleep? Possibly. But what’s more likely, is that they’re working smarter and making better use of their time. Being ultra-productive means being disciplined to organizing yourself and your time so you can make the most out of both.

Travis Bradberry wrote an article on Entrepreneur about the 11 Things Ultra-Productive People Do Differently and the last thing listed is leveraging technology. Daylite is designed to improve organization and productivity, which go hand in hand. While everybody has different processes and different things they need to do, there’s tools in Daylite that are flexible enough to incorporate into almost anybody’s workflow to give you an extra productivity boost.

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1. Keywords

Keywords are a way of virtually tagging things in Daylite. The Keywords you’ll use will vary depending on your business, but the benefits are the same. Keywords help you save loads of time because you can use them to quickly search for things or filter items together. For example, you could use Keywords for products and/or services you offer and tag people that have bought each of these products or services from you. Then if you wanted to send out an email blast about a promotion to people that have bought that product/service all you have to do is filter all customers that have that Keyword.

You can also use Keywords for tagging appointments, notes, and more. Let’s say you’re working on an event and you’ve had multiple notes and appointments, all linked to this event. You can use Keywords to tag notes about specific things to virtually group those notes together. For example, you could use the Keyword “catering” and tag all the notes and appointments specifically about catering. This way if you’re trying to remember some of the details in a note you took but you can’t remember the title, you could quickly search “Catering” and filter for notes with that Keyword tagged to it.

Watch this video on customizing Categories & Keywords to learn how to create Keywords in Daylite.

2. Filtering & Smart Lists

Filtering and Smart Lists let you create your own dashboard of what you want to quickly jump to and see in Daylite. They save you time because they point you to exactly where you need to focus your attention instead of having to dig into your information to pull out what you need to do today, or who you need to contact. For example, you can set up filters for customers that have contracts about to expire that need to be renewed, or companies that you have an open Opportunity for but haven’t had contact within the last 2 weeks. You can even set up filters for tasks if you’re very task-oriented so you know what to start on, or use Smart Lists for a calendar view. For example, if you have a meeting room that your team often needs to check the availability on, you can book it as a resource and create a calendar view where you filter appointments that have this meeting room booked. Then you can share it with you team so everyone can quickly jump to this calendar view to check if the meeting room is available before booking appointments.

The filtering options in Daylite are quite advanced so you can filtering for things that match this, but not that, or things that match information within a specific range. And you can add multiple layers to your filter to really hone in on what it is you need to focus on.

Watch this video on Filtering & Smart Lists to learn how to use these in Daylite.

3. Activity Sets

Most businesses have certain processes or steps that are repeated throughout the sales process, projects, or when dealing with customers. For example, maybe there’s a checklist of things that need to be done leading up to a case. Or a series of follow ups when contacting new prospects, or even bi-monthly touch-base emails to stay engaged with your clients. Activity Sets save you time by setting up what these tasks and/or appointments are in sequence so you don’t have to re-create them each time or waste time figuring out what to do next. You can apply an Activity Set to a person or company for things like automating a series of follow ups so you’re reminded when you need to touch base. Or you can use Activity Sets in a Project to trigger a series of tasks and/or appointments that need to happen in order so you don’t miss a step. You can have Activity Sets separated by a number of days in between the tasks and/or appointments after the start date, or leading up to an end date (for example a Project due date).

Watch this video on Activity Sets to learn more about when and how to use this feature in Daylite.

4. Daylite Mail Assistant

For most small businesses, the majority of your work comes from your inbox. Daylite Mail Assistant helps you to be smarter about the time spent in your inbox by allowing you to action your emails. One of the things on Travis Bradberry’s list of things ultra-productive people do is never touch things twice. A common area where people are tempted to touch things twice is in their inbox. You get an email, read it, and if you don’t take action right away, it sits in your inbox where you keep looking at it and wasting time reading it. Stop. Get it out of your inbox. Daylite Mail Assistant helps you process your inbox so it’s out of there and into a system that you can do something with it. If the email doesn’t need a response, link it to the relevant person it’s from or project it’s for so you have a record of it saved in Daylite, then delete it. If the email requires a response, respond to it right away, link it to whatever you need to keep a record in Daylite and then delete it. If it’s for someone else, create a task in Daylite and delegate it to the appropriate person. If it’s something you need to do that you can’t do right now, create a task for yourself in Daylite. All these things can be done right in your Apple Mail window with Daylite Mail Assistant. You don’t have to keep looking at the email because it’s saved in Daylite. And you don’t have to switch applications to create an appointment in your calendar, or write a task on your to-do list because it’s all done right in Mail.

Watch this video on Achieving Inbox Zero to learn how to manage your emails efficiently with Daylite Mail Assistant.

5. Task Shortcuts

You can setup hotkeys for quick task entry so that while you’re working in another application or browsing the web, and you think of something you need to do, you can quickly enter it in Daylite without having to actually go into Daylite to do it. This is great for when you’re working on something and an idea or to-do pops into your head but you’re not able to get to it yet. Just use a shortcut to pull up a new task window, enter in the task, then get back to whatever you were working on.

6. Letter Templates

Letter Templates save you time from having to write the same email a bunch of times. Let’s say you have a basic email that you send to prospects after your first meeting with them. Or a contract that you send to clients after confirming a new business deal. Or even an email about a new promotion that you want to send to a bunch of customers. You can use Letter Templates to set up a basic template of an email so you don’t have to re-write the same email each time. And if it’s an email that you want to send to multiple people at the same time, you can use Letter Templates along with the Mail Merge feature. Letter Templates let you pull specific information such as name, date, project info, and more. If you want to make each one more personal but still save time, use Letter Templates for the basic outline of the email, then before the email is sent out you can quickly add extra details to the email for that specific client.

Watch this video on Letter Templates and Mail Merge to learn how to setup and use this in Daylite.

7. The Worklist

Some people make the mistake of using the Worklist as just a regular to-do list. To achieve maximum productivity, use the Worklist should be used as a focus list. The Worklist should be the top three or four most important things for you to accomplish today. You should consciously be taking the time to really think about what these are. If there’s more than four, you’re treating this like another plain old to-do list. Travis Bradberry explains that ultra-productive people take time at the end of each day to plan out what they need to do tomorrow. You can do this in Daylite by going through your task list at the end of each day, choosing the top most important things, and adding them to your Worklist. That way when you open Daylite the next morning, you’ll have a focused list of what you want to accomplish. Instead of an overbearing list of to-dos that gives you an immediate feeling of panic, you have a short, focused list of what you can bite off and actually chew today.

Watch this video on Working with Tasks to learn how to filter and sort your tasks, as well as dragging them onto your Worklist.

Want to learn more about how to get the most out of Daylite so your productivity levels shoot through the roof? Check out our free Daylite Training Courses. The videos are broken down into bite-sized chunks so you can learn at your own pace.

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