Work smarter: Apps to free up time in your day

“How many of you are busy professionals?” asked Shannon DeSouza, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 2019 National Conference and Exhibition in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Hands shot up across the room, along with several groans of agreement.

Ms. DeSouza, a sales and marketing strategist for Dahlia Plus, discussed several apps that can help you automate your workflow and free up some time in your day at the session, “Connections Corner: Life Hacks for Busy Professionals.”

Below are 5 apps that inspired the most questions from session attendees:

Streamline Emails

“Do you have way too many emails?” Ms. DeSouza asked. “Are you ‘CCd’ on way too many emails?” Slack helps you work more efficiently in groups. It allows a channel for every conversation. Channels can be divvied up by team, project, client, or whatever else is relevant. Team members can join and leave channels as needed - unlike lengthy email chains. Threads keep side conversations from derailing the topic or project at hand.

For a HIPAA compliant version, see Slack Enterprise.

Create Video Tutorials

Have you ever had to teach somebody something online, when you’re not in the same room as that person? Create a video tutorial in Loom that gets the message across through instantly shareable video.

“I'm using this right now for a client [who] doesn't understand how to upload a blog on her website,” said Ms. DeSouza. “I went to her site and uploaded it as I talked through it – with Loom recording my screen as I did this. Then I sent it over to her.”

Transcribe in Real Time

Otter.ai gives you an artificial intelligence-powered assistant. You can use Otter.ai to record and take notes at meetings (like in this AAP session), capture your thoughts as you’re driving or transcribe existing recordings and podcasts. Using the default Otter Free plan, you get 600 minutes of transcription every month. If you need more minutes, other plans are also available.

Choose Your Words Carefully

If you’ve ever been accused of being too direct, Just Not Sorry is for you, said Ms. DeSouza. This Chrome extension for Gmail warns you when you’re using words in an email that undermine the message, and it makes suggestions so the message will be better received.

Capture & Transcribe Whiteboards

Office Lens is a camera built into OneNote for iPad or iPhone that lets you take pictures of whiteboards or printed documents (like all of the business cards you collected from AAP 2019). It then enhances your photo so it looks almost like a scanned image, and it also transcribes the writing on the whiteboard or printed document so it becomes editable.