In this video, we’re going to talk about ways to get the most out of your brand-new productivity app or software.
So you’ve got a brand-new productivity app for your phone or software for your desktop. It’s gonna solve all your problems, right? It’s going to be fantastic.
Most people fail for the first time when they try to use a new productivity app or new productivity software for their computer. The problem is not usually the fault of the productivity software app – it’s usually us.
So here’s some tips on how to successfully shift to a brand-new productivity app.
- Stop Using Your Old Systems: The first tip is to stop using your old systems Most of us want to transition – we’ll kind of go lightly into the new productivity app. But we still keep using our old systems. We use our old systems because we’ve used those for months or years so it’s pretty hard to just give them up. But when we do this, we’re not fully committing to our new app. We’re not testing its full power, we’re not really learning it. It’s just dipping your toe in the water instead of diving right in. So you need to fully commit. Dive right into your new app. Stop using the old one.
- Documentation and Help: The next tip is to use the documentation and help screens that come with the app. I have tons of clients that pay me money to figure out how to do things on their new productivity app or software that they could have easily figured out just by trying the help screen or by going through the documentation. The documentation and help areas are your friends. They’ve got lots of great ways to show you how to use your new app successfully.
- Search “How To ______”: My next tip is to search for how-to’s on Google and YouTube using the name of your software app. So you might search for “How to assign a task in Asana” or “How to assign a task in Teamwork Projects.” So whatever your tool is search for that in both YouTube and in Google. YouTube is great because you’ll get how-to videos that will show you often exactly how to do something. YouTube has saved me a lot of time when I’m trying to learn how to do something whether it’s for myself or for a client.
- Annoy Support – My next suggestion is to annoy support people and I don’t mean by being annoying and sending them nasty messages, I’m saying ask them tons of questions. Ask them everything. This shows you how much support you’re going to receive for the software and it also helps you learn while you’re using it. So every time you wonder how to do something, check documentation first, then put in a support ticket if the documentation didn’t cover it. If support is poor, this is good to know and may be an indication to look elsewhere for a different app.
- Join Communities: The next step is to join the communities related to the app. Most apps that are popular have communities around them. These are usually found on Facebook or Reddit so look for a subreddit on that topic or a Facebook group on that topic. I use a tool called Notion and the Notion Facebook community is just amazingly vibrant and helpful and they are really quick to give me ideas, to send me their examples and share their templates it’s just a great helpful community. If you can’t find a good community for a tool that’s another sign that maybe it’s not the right tool.
- Access Training. Lastly, access training. If you’re still struggling with an app and you know it’s the right app for you and you just need to learn it better, find a trainer on the app. I regularly train people on the apps that I use and working with me often saves them weeks of time that it would have taken them to find out these things in other ways.
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