Feature: Working More Efficiently Online

For most of us, the working day starts with the ON button of the computer. The next hours are easily swallowed by reading email, updating social media platforms and generally keeping up to date with the world. While important, is this the best use of your time?

Most time-management experts actually advocate doing your hardest work in the morning. Or as Mark Twain elegantly puts it: 'Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.' Front-loading your week will ensure that what’s most important gets done with the least stress. You can use a free list software like Wunderlist to keep tracks of all that you got to do.

If you find yourself writing the same emails again and again, make sure you take the time to write your own templates for proposals, contracts, sales and invoices. Get inspiration from these templates for artist relationships and these for business management. Make sure you use free resources like MailChimp for professional looking emails. 

It is tempting to spend hours on social media developing your contacts. But having a strategy in place will prevent you wasting time. Free or cheap management tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck will allow you to line up your tweets in advance. And if you have a suspicion that you might still be spending more time that you want to admit browsing online, try the free app Rescue Time.

The digital world can be a distraction, but it also offers solutions. There are many free tools aimed at increasing your efficiency, from accountancy software like Quickfile to task management platforms like Trello or Flow. And if you are going to do research online, make sure that you keep track of it by using Evernote.

Finally, it is worth reminding ourselves that technology, new and old, is only a mean to an end and that we still can- and should- control it.