This blog post has grown out of a talk I did for the group SME Force For Good on the 27th of November. The group runs informative and fascinating talks on alternate Friday mornings, with a round of networking afterwards. If you have a small business and want to get involved then check out the Facebook group and come along to the next meeting. https://www.facebook.com/groups/smeforceforgood/
If you would like to view the talk as well you will find this at the end of the blog.
MANAGING PASSWORDS WITH NO STRESS
(PASSWORD MANAGER)
Creating secure unique passwords for every website or account that you want to use can be difficult to keep track of. Writing them down in a book is not only inconvenient it is not always secure, and using the same password multiple times is not a good idea. Using a password manager is a great way to get round all of these issues.
With a password manager you can:
• Keep your password, address and credit card details safely.
• Cross platform compatibility, work on phones, tablets and computers.
• Stop saving personal details on individual websites.
• Autogenerate passwords so you don’t have to come up with them yourself.
• Easily look up the passwords and see what websites you use.
I use LastPass, but there are other options available:
• LastPass – www.lastpass.com
• 1password – www.1password.com
• Apple icloud keychain (inbuilt in Safari) – Apple only
• Google Password Manager – inbuilt into Chrome
ORGANISE YOUR THOUGHTS
(TASK LIST AND PLANNER)
I have always been obsessed with keeping lists and planning things, but I have done this on paper until very recently. I have tried sorts of different web based and app based tools to try and replicate what I am happy with on paper, but I haven’t found anything that did the job half as well. That was until I used Google Keep, the flexibility and ease of moving things around is great and being able to have different notes shown on the same page works very well for me. I’ve recently been introduced to Notion, which I’m currently testing to see if I like it better. This allows you to track your tasks as well, so if that is something that you are looking for then Notion might be the tool for you.
With an online task manager you can:
• Keep all your tasks in one place and access them on your phone, tablet or computer.
• Share tasks with other people.
• Easily create tick lists.
• Easy to re-arrange and categorise your task.
• Save web pages and articles to lists and categories to look at later.
• Create Kanban boards from your tasks.
• Time scheduling of your task.
• Use Chrome extensions for quick website integrations.
• Automatically backed up so you don’t lose information.
I use Google Keep and am currently testing Notion, but depending on how you like to keep your notes you may prefer other to do lists:
• Google Keep – https://www.google.com/keep/
• Notion – www.notion.so
• Evernote – www.evernote.com
TRACK YOUR TIME WITH A CLICK
(ONLINE TIME TRACKER)
As a freelance consultant I work on different projects for different people in a normal week, so having an easy way to accurately track my time is very important. Having a computer based time tracking app makes things very easy, I set it off when I start work and stop it when I stop working. But if you forget to stop it don’t worry, you come back to a pop up notification asking you how you want to record your time since you were last at your computer. Some of the apps also let you produce reports and invoices automatically for all the different projects you have registered.
With a time tracker you can:
• Automatically track your time with a click.
• Get reminders if you forget to stop your tracker so you can track your time accurately.
• Track on both phone and computer.
• Easily find out how much time spent on each project.
• Produce reports and billing for customers automatically.
I use Toggle, but there are many different time trackers out there to choose from:
• Toggle – www.usetoggle.com
• Harvest – www.getharvest.com
• HourStack – www.hourstack.com
RUN CAMPAIGNS IN YOUR BODY CLOCK RHYTHM
(SCHEDULE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA)
There are theories that there are best times to post your information on social media, but these times might not be very suitable for you. Or you might want to post something every day, but find it really disjointed to write one post a day. To get round this you can use a scheduler for your social media so you can write when you want and post when you want and have the best of both worlds.
A social media scheduler will let you:
• Choose when you write your social media posts.
• Choose when you post on social media.
• Post to Instagram from a laptop.
• Concentrate your efforts in one block of time and write all your social posts in one go.
I use both Later and Hootsuite, but there are other options available:
• Later – www.later.com
• Hootsuite – www.hootsuite.com
• Loomly – www.loomly.com
MANAGE YOUR EMAILS LIKE A PRO
(EMAIL LIST MANAGER)
If you want to send smart looking on brand emails, then using an email list manager is a good place to start. It also lets you keep your email list or lists safely in one place.
Using an email list manager you can:
• Automatically create email lists.
• Safely store email addresses in one place.
• Easily produce better looking emails.
• Easily brand emails.
• Schedule when you send your emails.
I use Mailchimp, but there are other options available:
• Mailchimp – www.mailchimp.com
• Drip – www.drip.com
• Constant Contact – www.constantcontact.com
• Some website hosting offer this service
JUST GET THE RESULTS
(SURVEYS AND FORMS)
If you want to get feedback, or ask questions then you will want to ask people to complete a survey. These can be time consuming to produce and time consuming to analyse the data from if you do everything manually. Using an online tool to create a survey is not only easy for people to access, but also makes the analysis of the results easier to do.
Using an online survey form allows you to:
• Write an online form accessed from a link.
• Get the results in a useful and useable form.
• Analyse the results easily.
I have used both Google Forms and SurveyMonkey successfully:
• Google Forms – google.co.uk/forms/about
• SurveyMonkey – www.surveymonkey.co.uk
STORE AND EASILY ACCESS DATA
(DATA BASE)
If you need to store large amounts of data then Excel may not be the right way to store it, we all now know how easy it is to loose data from large Excel sheets. Instead, you will probably want to store your data in a data base. Not only will all of your data actually be saved safely you can access and manipulate it more easily.
Data bases allow you to:
• Efficiently integrate data into a coherent storage space.
• Store consistent and compliant data.
• Store your data securely.
• Back up and recover data.
• More than one person can access the data.
• To remove the main source of error which is manual data entry.
• Easily get good Data Analytics.
I have used AWS and Azure with the companies I have worked with:
• Amazon AWS - www.aws.amazon.com
• Microsoft Azure – www.azure.Microsoft.com
• Oracle – www.oracle.com
CODE SOMETHING PERFECT FOR YOU
(WRITE YOUR OWN)
As a programmer, this is clearly my preferred option to dealing with data analysis and the basis of the work that I do for companies. I normally work with data that is complex and doesn’t fit in with a pre-existing analysis system, so I write my own to get the best results.
Writing your own analysis system allows you:
• To remove the main source of error which is manual data entry.
• Create something that actually does what you want it to do.
• Create something that gives results in the format you want them.
• Successfully work with non-standard data.
• Combine reading in data and data analysis in one step.
I work in MATLAB and Python now, but have coded in over 11 languages over the years. You can write code in various languages to analyse data and write websites, but the most common are:
• Python
• HTML
• Java
• MATLAB
KEEP YOUR SANITY
(BACK YOUR WORK UP AND SET UP)
This is a lesson best learnt from someone else’s misfortune. When I started my postgrad studies in Astrophysics a third year student told me to back up my work regularly. She had just lost 6 months of work when her computer stopped working. Her computer was unsavable and her last back up had been months previously, so she was trying to do 12 months of work in 6 months to catch up. Not a good situation to be in. History repeated itself, and in my third year a remote computer I was using went up in smoke in a heat wave. However, I had listened and had a backup safely stored elsewhere so I only lost 1 days’ worth of work. Learn from her as well, so her plight was not in vein, and back up your work regularly.
Ideally you want to keep at least 2 backups of your work on separate devises and keep them in different places to make sure your data is safe. One back up to the cloud is good, but cloud storage can still get corrupted and not all data can be saved to the cloud. For this reason, I would recommend using external hard drives as well, if not exclusively.
As well as backing up you data you can back up all the apps and programmes you have installed on your computer. This means if you need to set up a new computer this is a trivial process, and not a painful one.
A good back up consists of:
• At least two copies on different devices (cloud and or external hard drive).
• Copies kept in different places.
• A backup of your files.
• A backup of your whole computer, including set up of programs and applications installed and all your files.
• A backup made regularly, ideally every hour with an automatic system.
• Peace of mind for computer or office malfunctions.
I work on a Windows machine, where the backup situation is more complex than a Mac. If you have a Mac, then Time Machine does everything you could want and you can do a backup every hour whilst still working on your machine if your external hard drive is plugged in. The Windows inbuilt back up system, which backs up your whole computer will only work on one external drive and has known bugs in it where some files are not always copied. To get round this I have one external hard drive which has the inbuilt back up on it and a copy of all my files, and a second external hard drive that has a copy of all my files on it. This means my computer back up can be a bit out of date, but my file backup is always up to date and this is the most important piece. I back up every night to make sure I don’t lose the days work, and when I’m coding I also commit to version control many times day so that work is backed up even more frequently (see the next section for more information).
To create a backup you can:
• Take a copy of all your files. This doesn’t back up the programmes and apps on your computer, but it does get your files.
• Windows inbuilt back up system.
• Time Machine (mac specific) takes a fully copy of your computer, can easily be run every hour
If you are looking for a good external hard drive I would recommend the ones I use:
KNOW ALL THE CHANGES YOU HAVE EVER MADE TO YOUR CODE
(VERSION CONTROL)
I really wish there was version control for all documents, as it would be really useful sometimes to go back in time and see different versions of the document. However, sadly, it is really only a coding thing. Whatever language you code in you can commit your code to a repository and use version control. When you make a change that does something useful, you commit the work again, so on and so forth. The version control builds up a full history of all the changes that have been made to your document and allows you to see them as a timeline. You can also go back to a previous version of your code with a click of a button. Version control is a bit like an enhanced back up of your code, as it is stored securely on line and accessible from different places, with the addition of being able to see everything you have altered in the code. It was a revelation when I started to use version control on my coding projects, and it is something that I always use now.
This version control ecosystem is made up of 3 different pieces:
· Repository - A system for holding the information. Can be a local repository if on your computer, or an online repository if in cloud storage.
· Host - A service that holds your repositories. Can be a local host or an online host depending on where it is stored.
· Client - A service for accessing repositories. Again, can be a local client or an online client.
A version control system consists of:
· Optional cloud storage of your code that can be accessed by multiple invited people.
· All of your code stored safely in one place as a backup.
· The history of all alterations to your code is stored with comments about what the alterations were and why they were done.
· Multiple people can work on the code in different branches, and the changes merged together. All changes will be stored in history.
· You can go back to a historic version of the code if required.
Again, working with different companies means I work with different code repositories and version control software. I use Source Tree as my client, which interfaces with everything I need it to and so far have only used Git as a repository. I have used GitHub and GitLab. All of them I have used have been good and it comes down to personal preference:
· Repository - Git – https://git-scm.com/
· Repository - Mercurial - https://www.mercurial-scm.org/
· Host - GitHub – online service that holds Git repositories - https://github.com/
· Host - GitLab - https://about.gitlab.com/
· Client - Source Tree – https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/
· Client - Tortoise Git - https://tortoisegit.org/
· Client - GitHub Desktop - https://desktop.github.com/
· Client - GitKraken - https://www.gitkraken.com/
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