We all hear those stories of super successful entrepreneurs who get a crazy amount done before the sun rises. They shared with us their morning routine tips on how they can meditate, exercise, and get work done while most of us are still sleeping.

And yet, entrepreneurs have some of most hectic and erratic schedules around. They often don’t work your typical 9-5 in an office, and their calendars involve a ton of meetings, managing employees, lots of travel, and working on the weekends. Because they’re not necessarily doing the same thing every day, it can be hard to establish a daily routine.

We interviewed ten top SaaS entrepreneurs to hear about how they’ve developed a routine in the midst of a chaotic life, and where it’s gotten them. What’s more, it’s not particularly easy to stick to a routine—even if you know it works. A lot of founders often struggle to do their ideal morning routine and they fall short of this idealized entrepreneur.

But that doesn’t stop them from trying. Here are some of their morning routines, and the tips and tricks they use to adhere to them and gear up for a successful day.

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I’ve had something of a battle with to-do list apps recently which has shown me that it’s as much about the app as it is about the way you interact with it.

Your productivity really depends on the environment you manage your tasks in and the way your tasks are presented to you. With this in mind, I’m going to look at three options I’ve tested against each other over the past few months and report on what I’ve learned, both from the perspective of the features and from the perspective of the psychology of productivity. So, it’s Todoist vs. Wunderlist vs. Any.Do.

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The following is a guest post by Linda Craig. Linda is a content specialist at Assignment Masters writing service. She is currently working on her PhD project and writing articles for pleasure. Feel free to reach her by Twitter.

When you take a look at the records for freelance writing hourly rates, you realize that some writers make over $60 for a single hour. If they work only 4 hours a day with that rate, they can easily make $6000 in a month without sacrificing their hobbies and social life.

You, on the other hand, might find yourself writing many hours a day to handle that content overload. Maybe you made some progress in terms of getting more money for your work, but you’re still not making anywhere near $60 per hour.

Many freelance writers find themselves in such situation. This is a very competitive industry. It’s open to writers from any country, and its flexibility is part of the problem. Beginners are willing to accept lower offers because otherwise they don’t stand a chance against all that competition. As a result, the average rates that clients are willing to pay are getting lower by the day, and you’re forced to accept huge volumes of work to make enough money to get you through the month.

Relax; the situation is not as hopeless as it seems. In the continuation, you’ll find tips that will help you handle the workload and become a more efficient content writer.

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[ Download our Free Ebook ] – Click here to download our free 111 page ebook on “How to automate the tasks you hate at work using Zapier“.

The Essential Secrets of Automation Software

Last week, we treated you to the first post in our Zapier series. “What is Zapier?“ covered the basics, but in this post we are going to go deeper into the advanced workings of the most useful automation software to have ever graced your computer screen.

If you still haven’t tried out Zapier yet, don’t sweat it! Considering how long it takes myself to come around to the idea of new technology (Windows 8 was a true shock to the system), you can’t be blamed for not going all-out straight away. So, to put any remaining doubts at rest, allow us to prove why Zapier truly is your dream automation software.

‘I wasn’t really sure what Zapier was for until I started digging around in the web application. Eventually I was able to come up with ideas to problems I didn’t even know I had.’ – Matthew W., Product Manager at SafetySync

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[ Download our Free Ebook ] – Click here to download our free 111 page ebook on “How to automate the tasks you hate at work using Zapier“.

Unless you’ve recently come back from a ten-year vacation in the wilderness, you probably have a computer, laptop, or smartphone that you use on a daily basis.

But even with all the modern technologies and products available to us in this 21st century, the daily struggles of organization and productivity remain.

Thankfully, there’s an app for that (quite a few, actually). At Modernize, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best and most efficient smartphone and tablet apps to help you organize your life. Take a look and get downloading!

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How often do you manage to read everything you save for later? I mean email, bookmarks, PDFs… everything.

When I first started working as a Process Street content writer, I had to improve my content creation process instantly or start falling behind deadlines.

I don’t want to remember how slow and disorganized I used to be before Pocket. It’s only been a few months, but I’ve already repressed memories of my sluggish content creation process. For the purposes of this post, I racked my brain and dredged up the process for you all to laugh at. Here’s what it looked like:

My day-to-day tasks include research, reading, writing, and keeping our social platforms updated with fresh, relevant content. As far as research goes, I lost most of it or had no way of organizing it properly. PDFs got lost in my overflowing and overlooked Downloads folder, and anything pasted from Gmail to Notepad wasn’t worth looking at because of the formatting issues.

If I wasn’t using a combination of Twitter, Pocket, Evernote and Trello for content creation, I might as well be shoving a load of links into Untitled.txt and forgetting about them forever.

Here’s how I make sense of the research process I go through when creating new content for the Process Street blog.

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Life before Evernote

When my husband told me I should use Evernote (for the millionth time), I stubbornly refused and argued that it’s confusing and wouldn’t help one bit.

Why would it? How can doing extra tasks improve my writing workflow?

And, to be fair – English isn’t my first language, nor is tech talk. I was scared I wouldn’t understand what it tells me to do, I would probably end up breaking the internet and using Word again.

The last push was joining Process Street. Compared to my fast, techy co-workers I was the slowest. So, once again, I was advised to give Evernote a try. Who am I to argue? … Right?

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The Problem Small Businesses Don’t Want to Admit

Every small business owner is an entrepreneur and a technician, but not everyone’s a manager.

Most people start a small business after working a job that involves ‘making’. Programming, graphic design, SEO, you name it – small business owners usually get their idea when they realize that they could be doing the same thing as they’re doing now and getting rid of their boss.

Motivated by the mythical entrepreneurial drive and true technical experts in their field, founders don’t realize that they can’t just get rid of the boss — they have to be the boss.

Being the boss involves management of time, people and money. While this can be possible if it’s your only responsibility, on top of everything else it will be overwhelming.

Unfortunately, in starting a small business, suddenly you have a boss again – your customers, the amount of hours in the day and your revenue.

This idea, from Michael E. Gerber‘s The E-Myth is key to understanding why small businesses face the problems they do, especially when growing fast.

Don’t worry: that’s where productivity tools come in.

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Hooray! We’re pleased to announce a major integration for Process Street. This time, it’s Zapier. At launch, it connected Process Street with more than 400 services, including Salesforce, Mailchimp, Wufoo, and the Google Apps suite. With over 1,000 apps, announcing our Zapier integration opened far more ways to connect recurring work.

If Zapier were a physical object, it would look a bit like a universal remote connected to an unmanageable tangle of wires, with ends that slot into every kind of machine. Thankfully, it’s a clean-cut, user-friendly SaaS app with huge potential for creativity and workflow streamlining. It makes it easy for non-developers to connect web services together, saving time and improving productivity.

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I was a busy guy.

Between work, family, trying to keep fit, and fitting in a little relaxation, there never seemed to be enough hours in the day to get things done. I’d get to the office at 7am, wouldn’t leave until 6pm, ate lunch while processing email, and rushed home to eat dinner with my family so my son had at least a small chance to remember who I was.

That was life until I got serious about managing my time more effectively.

Like a lot of people, I was trapped in a mentality that equated more work with more productivity. I believed the more time I spent at my desk, the greater the rewards would be. I was also sure that sacrificing some things in the short-term — family time, fitness, even health in general — would pay off in the long-term with a higher salary and more free time to do the things I wanted to do instead of the things I had to do.

Boy, was I wrong.

I managed to break out of that mental state and today I am more relaxed than ever, fitter than ever, have a great work/life balance, and spend more time with my family.

How did I do it?

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