WHAT’S THE SCENARIO?

PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS FOR MAXIMIZING THE WORKDAY

HOW MANY OF YOUR 540 WORKDAY MINUTES ARE WASTED?

About half of the workday is spent on tasks unrelated to your primary job duties, according to a study by Workfront. So what exactly is taking up so much of your time? How can you take control of your day to be more productive?

Here are a few common scenarios you may run into during a typical workday:

Scenario 1: Where’s your team?

You need your colleague to send you a presentation ASAP, but you notice he isn’t at his desk. You’re forced to sit around and wait until he gets back.

Solution: An internal messaging program with file exchange capabilities allows colleagues to get in touch with each other on the device they’re with the most — their cell phones.

Scenario 2: Email in limbo. You send an intro email to a prospective client, but all you get are crickets. You spend the next week or two following up, but still no response.

Email takes up a huge amount of time throughout the workday, and it’s often a mystery whether or not your message was read. Luckily, there are tools available that give you insight into what happens after you click “send.”

Solution: Intelliverse’s email tracker allows senders to see the status of sent emails, including when they’re opened, how many times they’re opened and on what type of device.

Scenario 3: Password peril. You try logging into your Dropbox account, but you can’t remember your password. You try a variety of different combinations, numbers, figures — but you get locked out. You then have to wait to reset your password.

Solution: You have a ton of passwords to keep track of for both personal and professional uses. Tracking down password information, then sometimes having to reset your password, can be a huge headache.

A password manager like LastPass stores login credentials and automatically fills in login information for passwordprotected sites.