5 Digital Resources You Need to Embed Into Your Life Now Travel? Meeting scheduling? An alternative to coding your own platform? There's an app for that.
By Jess Ekstrom
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Call me "millennial-fashioned," but I believe that the right technology can simplify your life. You may very well share that view; as an entrepreneur, after all, you typically work with a lot of moving parts.
Related: The 5 Best Productivity Apps for Entrepreneurs
But perhaps you haven't yet put in the time and effort to figure out what technology will work for you. So, if 2016 is the year you want to dive in, here are some apps and sites I myself use daily and swear by:
1. Tripit, to help with your travels
I travel a lot as a motivational speaker. There are so many parts to my travel plans that it's easy to get them confused or not remember what city you're in or what your confirmation number was. Tripit creates your travel itinerary, just by forwarding your confirmation email. Even better, it categorizes information by trip. When you pull up your app, you can click on your destination and the app pulls up your flight, hotel, rental car and even directions. Tripit is a must-have if you're on the road a lot.
2. Assistant.to help you schedule meetings
How many emails do you exchange trying to schedule a meeting? What day works best for you? What time? Instead of playing email ping-pong trying to find a mutual time, I use Assistant.to. It connects to your Gmail calendar and allows you to pick times that work for you, and to send them in an email to the person you're meeting with. That person can then click on the time that works for him or her; the app will create an invite and add it to your calendar. Simple and easy.
3. Todoist
There are a ton of checklist and productivity apps out there, but Todoist is my hands-down favorite. It's simple and to the point. It allows you to create different categorized lists and then make tasks pertaining to them. For example, I have a tradeshow checklist I use whenever I'm traveling to a show. I also have a list of future product ideas, movies I want to watch and a general work to-do list.
Todoist allows you to set a deadline for each task, assign a task to someone else and set a priority level. It's also fun when you get a "pat on the back" sent to your email from Todoist for being productive. We can all use a pat on the back . . . even if it's from a robot.
Related: 20 Productivity Apps to Keep You On Task (Infographic)
4. Shopify
As an ecommerce business owner, I've found Shopify to be my favorite web platform. I started with Shopify initially to get out of hiring a web designer or learning how to code myself. But I've stuck with it because of the ease of use, integration capabilities and detailed analytics it provides, but most of all, its customer service. The customer service is outstanding. Staffers are quick, helpful and best of all, super nice. Plus, Shopify's blog is always filled with helpful content.
5. Canva.com
If you've purchased Photoshop and it makes your head spin when you're just trying to make simple edits, you're not alone. There are thousands of things you can do on Photoshop, but when I just need quick and simple graphics done, I go to Canva.com. On Canva, you can make a graphic by uploading your own pictures and adding typography, filters, borders, or whatever you need. Another perk is you can also share edit-able designs with your team so members can make changes without sending the document back and forth.
Related: The 15 Best Productivity Apps for Getting Things Done
