“The more productive I am, the more money I make.” —Dara Sklar
This month’s training “Getting Digitally Organized” featured Dara Sklar, Google tools expert and founder of Synced with Dara. She also has an online course “Get Productive with G Suite,” which one of our SOWBO members declared, “The best course I’ve ever taken!”
Here are some highlights from the training session with Dara.
Getting Digitally Organized with LastPass
Why should you prioritize a good password management system? No doubt you have lots of apps and logins to keep track of both personally and professionally. And, you want to be secure in your work and in your client work. LastPass is great for saving, receiving, and sharing passwords. It also gives you access that allows you to help clients who aren’t as tech savvy as you.
While the free version is robust, the paid LastPass Family version is great, too. If you ever decide to switch to another password manager, you can export your entire vault to a CSV file.
A few tips from Dara:
- You can keep your logins and passwords organized by key words (like by client name).
- Don’t save your master password in your browser. Let that be the secret key that unlocks everything else.
- Select the setting that requires you to log out each time. This makes sure your LastPass vault is secure.
“A little work at the beginning means lots of payoff over time.” —Dara Sklar
Organizing Files and Folders
When you are naming files and folders, think about the use, intended audience, and future searchability. Are you sharing? If the files and folders are leaving your computer, be sure to add your name/company. This is especially important for lead magnets and resumes. The title needs to explain what the item is and who sent it.
If someone shares files and folders with you, remember the owner can delete at any time, so go ahead and make a copy for yourself. Then, use your copy going forward.
A couple of tips from Dara:
- Label your documents with year-month-day (YYYY-MM-DD). This way, they will be listed in chronological order, and you can keep up with the most recent version of documents, spreadsheets, training, etc.
- If you want a quick start, type “doc.new” (or “sheet.new” or “slide.new”) to open up a new doc in just one step. It will be housed in the Google drive folder of your primary login.
“Do the right thing in the moment to save yourself time later.” —Dara Sklar
Making the Most of Google Chrome
In Dara’s professional opinion, Google Chrome is the most overlooked and underestimated tool for getting digitally organized! You probably use Google products, but are you using them to their full capacity? Let’s look at four (amazing!) ways you can better take advantage of Google Chrome.
#1 Create a separate Google profile for each “hat” you wear under its own Google account: business, personal, clients, team members. Then, each profile has its own email access, Drive, docs, bookmarks, etc. This is very helpful if the account has a 2FA; you won’t have to keep logging in and requesting access.
#2 Rename bookmarks with a name that makes sense to you. You can also bookmark specific places like Google docs, Facebook groups, online courses, gmail, and your calendar. Just go to the place you want to bookmark, and click and drag the lock from the browser to the bookmark bar.
#3 Set up Chrome to start up where you left off by going to Chrome > Settings/Preferences > On Starting > toggle “Continue where you left off.” This way you can pick right back up without reopening all your tabs.
#4 How often do you lose a file you’ve downloaded? Set Chrome to ask where you want to send each download. Go to Chrome > Settings/Preferences > Downloads > toggle “Ask where to save each file before downloading.” In Dara’s words, this prevents a “I’ll get to that later” pile up.
Want More? Join SOWBO!
If you want more of this kind of insight and information, become a SOWBO member. You will have access to all our upcoming member-exclusive training sessions:
April 6: Beth Kocol, Automation Magic with Zapier
May 4: Maria Spear Ollis, Protecting Your Creative Output, Brand, & Relationships
June 1: Kaitlyn Carlson, The Fundamentals of Wealth Creation
Find out more about SOWBO membership and join today!
