Review: Why Clariti is the Ultimate Productivity Hack Clariti gave me the peace of mind that nothing would fall through the cracks on even the busiest day.
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As someone who juggles multiple projects on a daily basis, the very act of organizing deadlines, communications and works-in-progress in various clients can eat into the time it takes to do the actual work. Navigating my calendar and my inbox, plus dedicating time to deliverables, has become increasingly challenging over the past six months or so. The pandemic-prompted work lull has officially ended, and client asks are back in full force.
As anyone working for themselves or with a small team knows, there's really no time to waste searching for a specific email or trying to recall a client's notes on a project. I have a couple of tech platforms I rely on to stay on top of things, mostly for keeping to-do lists, but hadn't ever found any helpful technology that didn't add an extra step to my already busy schedule.
I checked out the Clariti web app for exactly that reason: the promise of streamlining my communications and content by topic seemed pretty game-changing, and I'm all about working smarter, not harder. More on the app – and my experience with it – below.
How Clariti helps productivity, even if you're already organized.
First things first: Clariti is a one-stop-shop for communications and workstream organization. Getting set up was easy (something that I've found to be unnecessarily complicated on other platforms in the past). With a few clicks, I integrated my email, and my full inbox populated into the web app. You can use all the usual email functions (compose, reply, forward, print, etc.) as well as some more innovative actions. You can pin emails, share them with colleagues on the app (more on that later) and also schedule a calendar event based on the email with one click.
As far as email capabilities go, no complaints here. I will say that when my entire inbox populated onto the app, I was a little overwhelmed – until I started to explore TopicFolders, one of Clariti's big claims to fame.
Like desktop folders, but better.
As the name suggests, TopicFolders are virtual folders organized by specific subjects. I created several right off the bat for each project I'm currently working on. It's very easy to use, whether you're a techie or not. When you're working within a TopicFolder, you can start a chat specific to the subject, upload documents, set reminders, schedule calls and so on. You can file emails from your general inbox into the TopicFolder and start fresh email threads from within the folder as well.
This was a big time saver for me. Each TopicFolder becomes your hub for all things related to the topic at hand, so you have a birdseye view of the client or project without getting distracted by other emails or deadlines. If you're a visual learner, this is extremely helpful; I'd even call it a major productivity hack.
A smart tool for small teams.
It was also easy to onboard my small team while trying Clariti out for a week. As soon as I added a team member as a contact, they got a notification and joined the app. What I found helpful was that when I clicked on the person's name in my contacts, all the communications between myself and that person were organized, whether it was just an email between us or a message with more people on it. This was helpful in the sense that I work with different colleagues on different projects, so I could easily tap into a specific client project just by clicking that person's name. Clariti pulls up the emails quickly, so I don't even have to navigate to the handy TopicFolder if I just need a quick refresher on an email.
It was also great to be able to have an organized to-do list in every TopicFolder, so any time I wasn't available to answer a colleague or intern's call, they could work on their own assignments independently. Another time-saver: being able to upload documents here saved us from having to go through emails or Google Drive folders to find what we were looking for.
Expert-level organization is a few clicks away.
As someone who is always thinking about how to scale business in the future, I can see how Clariti can play an important role in eliminating tedious tasks and time spent simply getting organized. Despite the fact that it's only available on desktop, I didn't find this to be a con. Quite the opposite: it helped me stay so on track during the day that I was more comfortable doing less work after hours or on the go via mobile.
Clariti put me on a more efficient workstream, and as someone who was already very organized, I enjoyed the peace of mind that nothing would fall through the cracks on even the busiest day. If you're interested in trying out this browser-based tech, sign up for the Freemium model and start streamlining your work life without any commitment.
