14 Tips to Tidy Up the Busy #Eventprofs Life
From Netflix to Instagram, you don’t have to look far to see Marie Kondo’s smiling face. Her new Netflix show, “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” is the reason everyone is talking RN about the KonMari Method™ decluttering approach. According to Kondo, if something doesn’t spark joy, it’s time to toss it.
In her new show, when you see the tears of those she helps, you can’t help but feel emotional too because we can all relate. Life is messy, especially for #eventprofs. Files and notes and photos and data just pile up. And before you know it, our lives are overflowing with proverbial event baggage.
With spring in the air and Marie Kondo on our minds, now is the perfect time for #eventprofs to declutter in the quest to spark a little joy.
Here is a list of our favorite tech and apps to transform your cluttered phones, tablets, computers, and task lists!
Tidy Up the Email Inbox
Hack your way to Inbox Zero with this email organization tool. Mailstrom (a play on “Maelstrom”), identifies bundles of related mail and makes it easy to act on them as a group.
Mailstrom’s one-click Block function and Unsubscribe feature makes it easy to stop unwanted senders or subjects from cluttering up your Inbox. It easy to get started with a one-click free trial, and Mailstrom’s industry-leading encryption for Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo means they never have your password.
SaneBox offers many different ways to organize and filter your email to help you distinguish between crucial & unimportant messages. For example, important emails stay in your Inbox, while distractions are moved to your SaneLater folder. You can also snooze a non-urgent email for later or set your Inbox to Do Not Disturb to avoid interruptions.
And Sanebox also tracks and notifies you when someone hasn’t replied. Start with a free two-week trial and if your life becomes so joyful you can’t live without Sanebox any longer, Appetizer, Snack, Lunch and Dinner plans make it easy and affordable to continue.
Working right inside of Gmail, Sorted brings emails, tasks, and priorities together in one intuitive workspace. Features include the ability to transform your Inbox into simple organized lists with easy drag and drop, email tracking, snoozing and renaming of subject lines.
Sortd offers a free forever basic plan, with low-cost monthly subscription plans that add-on extra features.
Curb the Photo Madness
Keep your photos and videos safe, secure and always with you with Google Photos as your backup. In addition to backing up unlimited photos and videos for free (up to 16MP and 1080p HD), photos are organized and searchable by the places and things in them with no tagging required.
Do you know how sometimes you take several event pics of the same thing to pick the perfect show later? Inevitably, those extra photos never get deleted and just sit cluttering up your phone.
This iOS app uses an algorithm to analyze your photos and suggests ones you should consider deleting – freeing up space and cutting clutter. As a bonus feature, you can delete your entire library if you need to (to that otherwise, you’d have to select every pic manually in Photos).
Put Order to Data
If you’re like us, one of the biggest clutter-inducing tasks is keeping track of passwords. LastPass makes it easy to manage all of your passwords so once a password is saved, logging in is fast and easy. Plus, the built-in password creates long, randomized passwords that protect against hacking.
Multiple paid plans work make it easy to use LastPass personally and professionally.
A group of former event industry and tech experts came together to develop a desktop and mobile platform designed to help organizers better harness event data.
Through data synchronization services that combine data from multiple sources—including attendee databases, registration, housing, mobile app, event website, session attendance, exhibitor guide, lead retrieval, and more—as well as automated, personalized emails, the Nexus Data Group helps eventprofs increase attendance and attendee engagement.
Streamline Your Event Documents
Just like Google Photos, Google Drive can store photos, stories, designs, drawings, recordings, videos and more that are accessible from any smartphone, tablet or computer. Definitely a must-have for busy #eventprofs on the go!
With a special folder on your computers, Dropbox’s servers synchronize contents to any computer or device that has Dropbox installed so all files are up-to-date on all devices.
Dropbox offers a free account with 2GB storage, with additional paid plans for more storage or for teams of users.
Like the above, Box is a cloud content management and file sharing service. One difference compared to the other two: Box is more focused on enterprise customers so they offer more robust encryption and integration options with other enterprise applications.
Make collaborating with your entire event team easy by keeping all of your floorplans, guest lists and seating arrangements, timelines and more all in one place, updated in real-time.
Achieve Social Media Zen
Tokimeki is the original word that was translated to ‘spark joy’ in English. And while it isn’t affiliated with the KonMari Method or Marie Kondo, this plug-in helps clean your Twitter feed.
The Tokimeki tool presents each account you follow one by one with a feed of their recent tweets. The tool asks: “Do the tweets still spark joy or feel important to you?” You get three options: keep following the account, unfollow it, or add the account to a Twitter list. While it can be hard to make decision one-by-one, the idea is to give you better control over what you see in your feed.
These two social media management platforms provide tools for engaging, publishing and collaborating across all the major social media platforms. Both offer different paid options tailor-made for individual eventprofs, small groups of planning team or large organizations.
In the comments below, let us know your favorite tips and tricks for keeping #eventprofs’ lives tidy!
