Organization Archives - Page 3 of 18

The Busy Woman’s Guide to Using Evernote and Other Note-Keeping Apps

07/21/2016 by Corporette Staff 11 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen a zillion tips on how to use Evernote and other note-keeping apps — but all seem geared at freelancers or entrepreneurs. So we thought we’d do a roundup of some top tips for busy working women, but we want to hear from you guys: DO you use Evernote or a similar system? HOW do you use it, and what are your favorite tips?

A bit of background: Evernote is a web/app-based program that is billed as being a digital brain. You can use it for almost anything: project planning; note-taking; storing and organizing things that can include to-do lists, travel details, grocery lists, and gift lists; and much more. You can organize your notes and other content into notebooks (with or without tags), clip content from ebooks and webpages, send designated types of emails to your account, create checklists and reminders, save images, save PDFs and other files (which become searchable), share content with other people, record audio, take photos and scan documents (e.g., business cards, whiteboard notes, takeout menus, product warranties, receipts), add hand-drawn pictures or handwritten notes, and sync across your devices. Evernote also works with many other applications, like Google Drive (beta), Scanner Pro, IFTTT, Pocket, and DocuSign. You can use Evernote for free (several features plus 60 MB new uploads each month) or choose one of the paid plans.

Of course, other programs are similar to Evernote — and considering the recently-announced price increase, if you want your info synced on more than two devices, now is a great time to be aware of Evernote alternatives as well, such as:

OneNote – Lifehacker just did a showdown comparing Evernote and OneNote.
Google Keep and Google Drive – Tech Republic recently discussed how to ditch Evernote in favor of Google apps.
Some of the functionality but not everything:
- B-Folders – not very easy to save articles beyond copy/paste, but: very secure, includes contacts, syncs across desktops and Androids; Kat’s written of her love for it for keeping track of various lists.
- Pinterest – nice way to save articles or recipes for later. Con: it often only works if there’s a picture in the article to pin (since it’s a graphic search engine). Also, you can’t make to-do lists or save things like emails.
- To-do list apps like Remember the Milk, Wunderlist, Teuxdeux, Todoist, and more.
- iPhone Notes app – allows you to make buying lists, recipes, and more; can access on your PC through iCloud.
- Meal planning apps like Pepperplate or Cozi (family scheduling, grocery shopping, recipe keeper and more).

Here are some of our best tips for using Evernote and other similar apps — readers, what are yours?

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Filed Under: Career, Organization, Productivity, Tech Tagged With: apps, OneNote, posts

How to Prepare for Law School

07/12/2016 by Kat 63 Comments

Lawyers: how did you prepare for law school? Law students, what do you wish you’d done to prepare? Ladies with an MBA or other graduate degree, what did you do to prepare for grad school? Were you more concerned with substance (such as trying to get ahead on class reading, or better educated on the topics you’d be studying), networking (such as researching the professors and adjuncts you’d be studying with), or another side of things, such as financially preparing for grad school, or emotionally preparing yourself? What are your top tips for readers heading back in a few months?

Kate and I are working on a massive update of our last post on the best work clothing brands for different body shapes, and it’s taking too long (stay tuned!) so I thought we’d have a fun open thread instead today. For my own experience with law school, I was glad that I spent the summer beforehand doing some light reading of one or two of Glannon’s Examples and Explanations series (as recommended by another book I read that hasn’t been revised in many years), which taught me various lessons such as that a tort is NOT a dessert. Super dorky! One of the other things that I was happy I did was to take to lunch a number of different lawyers I knew who were working in the field I thought I wanted to be in — they gave me great advice for law school itself as well as identified general opportunities to help my career path (such as clerking, law firms to work for, nonprofits to check out, etc).

In terms of what I wish I had done — I wish I had spent more time learning about different Georgetown professors and opportunities, as well. Once you get in the mix of law school it can be a little all-consuming, so doing prep work beforehand would have been a good thing.

Ladies, let’s hear from you! How did you prepare for law school, business school, or another graduate degree program? (If you went straight through, please note that; if you had a year or more between undergrad and grad, please note how long.)

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Filed Under: Organization, Productivity, School Tagged With: law school, posts

Stressed About Filing Taxes?

03/09/2016 by Kat

Ladies, we have a bit more than a month before (dunh dunh dunh) Tax Day. Are you done with filing taxes? (And, who is doing them?) Are you stressed about them? Are you looking forward to a refund? Are you nervous about how much you’re going to have to pay?

For my $.02, I’m just starting to get stressed. I’ve used an accountant for as long as I can remember, but this is the first year I’m trying to use a bookkeeper as well. (I’ve never actually used TurboTax or similar software for filing taxes — my father may have used that when he “helped” / did my taxes for me my first year or two out of college.) But after law school, a friend recommended an accountant to me — this wonderful, older gentleman who I really liked. I had a simple tax situation at the time, and his services were, perhaps accordingly, pretty affordable. When we bought the apartment in 2009, though, he nearly missed a major tax credit; thankfully we caught the mistake before we signed our taxes. When we started looking for a new accountant, we knew income from Corporette was making our tax situation more complicated, so we were ok to sign on with a fancier accountant who cost 4-5 times what my former accountant charged. (Something else I learned when I switched accountants: estimated taxes aren’t optional for business owners, which was something I understood after talking with my first accountant. Fortunately it wasn’t a big problem since the extra income was so small back then, but it really drove home how much the first guy was hurting more than helping.)

Every year since signing on with my new accountant, he’s sent us a huge “Tax Planner” PDF as part of filing taxes. It’s about 50 pages long in tiny print and asks a zillion questions, and it’s always taken me hours and hours to complete. This is the first year I’m trying to outsource the tax planner to a bookkeeper; my hope is that my reviewing it will take a lot less time than my doing it. (Gotta delegate, right?)

In terms of actual taxes, April 15 is usually pretty rough as a self-employed business owner because my retirement savings are due, to be invested in one huge chunk, usually; final taxes for 2015 will be due, which may be higher than what I paid the previous year in estimated taxes; and the first chunk of estimated taxes for 2016 will be due, using new numbers based on my 2015 taxes. Those are three unknown numbers — and in the past we’ve had some nasty surprises where I needed a lot more in cash on April 15 than I had set aside. (Hooray for the emergency fund!) Now, after paying work-related bills, I earmark about 40¢ of every dollar I earn for month-to-month living expenses, and save the rest in Ally accounts that get 1% interest for taxes and retirement. I’ll breathe a happy sigh of relief should April 15 come and go without too many surprises.

Ladies, how about you — do you do your taxes by yourself? Do you consider them complicated or easy? How did you find your accountant?

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Filed Under: Investing, Lifestyle, Money, Organization Tagged With: entrepreneurs, posts, taxes

How to Delegate: How to Start Delegating Work To Your Assistant

03/03/2016 by Kat

Ladies: let’s talk about the art of delegating work to your secretary, assistant, or another third party. More and more I feel like knowing how to delegate is key to success in work and life — you can’t micromanage everything. Besides, if you bill by the hour, remember that your client doesn’t want to pay, say, $500 an hour for someone to photocopy something! So: what tasks do you delegate? How did you learn how to delegate, and what are your best tips for women thinking about what they should assign to others? (Previously: we’ve talked about how to show your appreciation to a great assistant, and when to fire a bad assistant, as well as apps like Fiverr that let you delegate some things to third parties.)

For my $.02, for working women with an assistant, I’d seriously look at delegating tasks like:

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Filed Under: Being a Boss, Career, No Time, Organization, Productivity Tagged With: assistants, delegating, posts

Cute Office Supplies: When To Use Them

11/19/2015 by Kat

2017 Update: We still think this is a really interesting discussion of when to use cute office supplies — but you may also want to check out our most recent roundup of the best places to get cute office decor.

Our post the other day about the cute file folders got me thinking: When should a professional woman actually use cute office supplies? Should you use them only in a home office? Only for presentations? As part of a cohesive system for all of your office work? (Pictured: Smiley Face Binder Clips, $4 for 40 at Amazon.)

For my $.02, I’ve always loved cute office supplies — something about going to Staples or Kate’s Paperie or the like takes me back to the happy feelings of back-to-school shopping. (Yeah, I was that kid.) But once I got to my law firm, this is how I actually used them: for personal things in my office only. I had a nice folder for keeping track of my CLE credits, and a nice folder for holding my old timesheets and the like — things that I filed myself and didn’t need to hand off to someone else. They sat on my desk (as part of my organized office system) and made me happy — but they were but a small pop of color amidst the seas of red Redwelds, brown Bankers Boxes, and beige manila folders. It was still worth it to me to seek out pretty things and buy them, but it was just for a bit of silliness to cheer me up at the office.

Ladies, when do you use cute office supplies? Do you have a place for them in your life?

Filed Under: Being Girly, Business Etiquette, Career, Nostalgia, Office Culture, Office Supplies, Organization, Professionalism, School, Shopping Tagged With: posts

Tales from the Wallet: Tips for Open Enrollment

10/28/2015 by Corporette Staff

As we’re coming up on the end of the year, I thought it might be interesting to talk about benefits — and specifically tips for the open enrollment period. (One of our guest posters got into this a few years ago when she talked about using your benefits package at work to save $10K.) Interestingly, studies have found that people spend less than two minutes on benefit selection — but it really can make a difference (particularly if you’re thinking about getting pregnant or otherwise planning some health changes). (Pictured: the extremely well-reviewed Hobo’Sadie’ Wallet, $108-$118 at Nordstrom.)

To get some expert tips for navigating open enrollment, Kate talked to Shannon McLay, a financial planner and the founder and president of The Financial Gym, a company that offers classes on personal finance as well as one-on-one conversations with financial trainers. (Shannon previously gave us advice on finding a financial planner.) Here’s what she suggests: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Career, Money, Organization, Tales from the Wallet Tagged With: posts