What's my favorite mobile app? - Christopher S. Penn

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Laura Pezzotta asked:

For my favorite mobile app? There are so many to choose from, but if I had to pick the Swiss army knife I use more than most, it’d be Evernote.

Why Evernote? Versatility. It’s a document scanner, which comes in handy.

It’s a whiteboard capture utility.

It’s dictation software (especially when wired together with Do Button):

It’s a blogging and note taking platform.

It’s a filing system and a digital notebook.

The key to Evernote that makes it so versatile for me is syncing.

I can start a blog post on my laptop, sync, move to my smartphone to continue working, sync, and go back to my laptop for polishing and edits. Half of my blog posts I write while driving, using voice dictation and speech transcription. I’ll write a broad outline by voice (hands-free, of course), sync it, get to a desk, clean it up, and have content ready to go in minutes.

This is a key to high productivity. In your average day, there are a few blocks of uninterrupted time that you can do lots of work in. There are also dozens of time fragments, periods of 5-10 minutes when you’re between meetings, standing in line, etc. You can waste those fragments playing Candy Crush or Trivia Crack, or you can use mobile apps designed to help you maximize them. Evernote is that app for me – it lets me make the most of small slivers of time. At the end of the day, a dozen slivers of 5 minute blocks add up to an extra hour of productivity.

Whatever mobile apps you use, consider how you can leverage them to soak up those time slivers and make them work for you.

As for the second part of Laura’s question, on social analytics… that’ll have to wait for a future post. I’ll give you a hint, though: Google makes it.

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