This is a guest post by Travis Taborek. Travis is a content marketer and copywriter based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a graduate of General Assembly’s Digital Marketing Bootcamp and has done SEO and content work for business ranging from small tech startups to corporations like TiVo. Read his work here.

Content marketers have their work cut out for them.

They’re tasked with generating fresh ideas for content that stimulates interest in a brand and demonstrates thought leadership consistently, frequently, and at scale.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of productivity apps out there to help keep your mind focused, your writing clear, your headlines eye-grabbing, and your calls-to-action compelling.

To help you do your best work possible, I’ll show you the 10 best productivity apps you need in your digital toolbox.

Specifically, after explaining what productivity apps are, I’ll break each app down into one of four categories – brainstorming, focus, creation, and general productivity – then highlight their features, use cases, and pricing plans.

Just read through the following sections in this guest post for Process Street:

• What is a productivity app?
• The best productivity apps for brainstorming
• The best productivity apps for focus
• The best productivity apps for creation
• The best productivity apps for general productivity
• Put the pro in productivity with Process Street!

Let’s get started!

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In 1836, Edward Bulwer-Lytton came up with the adage “the pen is mightier than the sword“.

Bulwer-Lytton was referring to good writing and effective communication being the most powerful tool of all. So powerful that it could win wars.

In business’ modern-day war against tough deadlines, seemingly never-ending workloads, and stiff business competition, Bulwer-Lytton’s adage still rings true.

Particularly when it comes to penning checklists.

Here at Process Street, we’d go far as to say that checklists are something of a secret weapon hidden in plain sight. They maximize productivity, minimize stress and anxiety, and can keep perilous human error at bay.

But the rewards can only be reaped if checklists are well-written.

Not sure how to write checklists properly? Confused whether you’re penning checklists the right way or not?

I’ve got you covered in the following sections where you’ll learn what checklists are used for, why they’re so useful, on top of being given tips and tricks for writing checklists from 15 thriving companies:

• What are checklists?
• Why are checklists so useful?
• Tips & tricks for writing checklists from 15 thriving businesses
• Writing checklists: The key takeaways
• Use Process Street for writing checklists efficiently and effectively!

Now, it’s time to march onwards!

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Modern technology is extraordinary.

After all, without the advancements that have been made over the last 50 years, you wouldn’t be reading this post!

This is exactly why, when asked what has brought the biggest improvements to our lives, four-in-ten Americans said “technology”.

But we’ve reached a critical juncture.

There’s so much technology now. I would dare to say there’s even too many apps, pieces of software, and gadgets we’re using.

From different teams in an organization all using varying project management software, to spreading important information that really should be hosted in one place across a multitude of platforms, using too much software in the workplace can make things incredibly confusing. Not to mention overwhelming.

In reality, we could all do with a digital declutter, using only the essential applications, and ensure we’re utilizing those applications (such as Process Street!) intelligently.

This, in a nutshell, is digital minimalism – and it’s what I’ll deep dive into during the following sections:

• What is digital minimalism?
• The authority on digital minimalism: Cal Newport
• The benefits of being a digital minimalist
• How to become a digital minimalist yourself
• Best practices for the digital declutter process
• Use Process Street – your all-in-one BPM solution

Ready to take back control of your work and life with digital minimalism, feel less like a robot, and even find a little zen along the way?

Let’s go.

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Hospitals have developed something of a reputation for being rife with bad processes. When processes aren’t adequate, the result is an abundance of “workarounds”.

For example, when equipment or supplies are missing, a nurse might waste time running around searching for what is needed, and once the item is found, return to their previous duties.

One study indicates that nurses spend 33 minutes of a 7.5-hour shift completing workarounds that are not part of their job description.

This may well “put out the fire” so-to-speak, but really it is just a hastily applied band-aid that does nothing to treat the root cause of the problem.

More time is wasted and more problems will arise in the future because nothing has been done to prevent the initial problem from happening again.

Individual nurses are not at fault here; workplace culture often values expertise in the form of those who “get the job done”, which tends to pull against the notion of spending time building good processes (time in which the job is perhaps not “getting done”).

So how to approach the problem of problem solving?

In a lean context, problem solving can be distilled into two simple questions:

• What is the problem and how did it happen?
• How can we make sure that it doesn’t happen again?

The 8D, or eight disciplines methodology, is a problem solving process – most likely one of the most widely used problem solving processes out there. It is used by many different countries, in many different industries, and many different organizations.

8D is designed to help you put out those fires, and make sure they don’t happen again.

In this article, I’ll introduce you to the 8D problem solving methodology and provide you with an outline of the basic process that you can hopefully apply in your own business, plus how you can enhance 8D with other tools and methodologies like Six Sigma, FMEA, and Process Street.

Here’s what I hope you’ll take away after reading:

• An understanding of the basics of 8D
• Advantages of using 8D
• The purpose and objectives of each phase of the 8D process
• An understanding of how to use 8D for problem solving
• How 8D works with other problem solving tools
• How you can use Process Street to maximize the potential of the 8D framework

Let’s begin with the origins of 8D – what is it, and where did it come from? Continue Reading

Marie Kondo has managed the impossible. She’s rallied a large chunk of the population into getting excited about tidying up.

That’s right. Tidying up.

And there are clear benefits to decluttering – from being able to donate to thrift stores more to having improved mental health, to having better financial management and even boosted rates of productivity.

But how did Marie Kondo revolutionize the act of tidying?

With a simple process called the “KonMari Method”.

In this post, you’ll find out who Marie Kondo is, the science behind the lauded KonMari Method, why the method is beneficial for everybody, and you’ll even get your hands on a (free) KonMari Method checklist!

Read through the following sections to get the complete rundown on Marie Kondo:

• Who is Marie Kondo?
• What the KonMari Method is and how it helps with tidying
• Rules of the KonMari Method checklist
• Benefits of following the KonMari Method
• Use the KonMari checklist yourself to spark joy!

Now, let’s spark some joy.

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The following is a guest post by Eric Lawton. Eric has been part of the Human Resources sector for most of his career. During this period, he has learnt how to create and tweak hiring strategies to choose specific industries and companies. These days, he prefers to share his experience and knowledge with other people in the business.

The main goal of any workplace is to be as efficient as possible. The more efficient employees are, the more productive they become. This, in the end, leads to greater profits.

Therefore, it stands to reason that you should eliminate any obstacles hindering this process. If you feel that this is easier said than done, though, you are not alone. Most employers have a tough time identifying what the real productivity killers are.

Fortunately, there is quite a lot of research conducted on this topic. As a result, this article contains the relevant statistics and details you need to be aware of. This will make it a lot easier for you to make some real changes in your own workplace.

So, without further ado, here are the efficiency destroyers that you must watch out for:

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The following is a guest post by Jay Lieu who runs Great Big Minds. In his blog, he shares life-changing inspirational content with the world. He lives to empower, inspire and motivate others to live life great and go after their passion. You can connect and learn more about him here.

We live in a hyper-connected digital world that glorifies multitasking – it’s the only way to get everything done when there are so many things to tick off our seemingly endless to-do-list. Keeping ourselves busy means we are being productive, right?

In many cases, the answer is a big, fat no.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but keeping a to-do-list and focusing your sole effort in knocking as many items off that list can actually hold yourself back from achieving your bigger, more meaningful goals.

How so?

Let’s dig a little bit deeper, and provide you with some to-do list tips that will get you on the right track.

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We’ve all been baited into those lists of recycled tips where the author lists 10,000 excruciating content creation tips, all of which you’ve heard over and over again.

I’m pretty sick of it, so thought I’d compile something from my personal experience from a year of writing.

This is stuff I’ve had to learn pretty quick since I ‘fell into’ control of the Process Street blog. I think it’s time to give the marketing community something new that they can use and ditch the typical list post content we’ve all seen trotted out over and over.

Whichever part of the content creation process you’re at, there’s a nugget of wisdom for you here.

Let’s get started.

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You click the ‘Contact Us’ page. Nothing happens. First, confusion, then familiar frustration. It was a mailto link. Your computer slows to a grinding halt as a huge, archaic desktop mail app rises from the depths of your hard drive. Checking that the date on your computer isn’t 15 years out, you wonder why mail integration isn’t standard… and what year is it exactly?

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I read an interesting post the other day by Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy about how he has been training his son to have a “growth­ mindset”.

Here is a quote from the post:

Researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle; that the more you use it, the more it grows. They’ve found that neural connections form and deepen most when we make mistakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones.

What this means is that our intelligence is not fixed, and the best way that we can grow our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle and fail.

However, not everyone realizes this. Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University has been studying people’s mindsets towards learning for decades. She has found that most people adhere to one of two mindsets: fixed or growth. Fixed mindsets mistakenly believe that people are either smart or not, that intelligence is fixed by genes. People with growth mindsets correctly believe that capability and intelligence can be grown through effort, struggle and failure. Dweck found that those with a fixed mindset tended to focus their effort on tasks where they had a high likelihood of success and avoided tasks where they may have had to struggle, which limited their learning. People with a growth mindset, however, embraced challenges, and understood that tenacity and effort could change their learning outcomes. As you can imagine, this correlated with the latter group more actively pushing themselves and growing intellectually.

In short someone with a growth mindset will embrace challenges and be willing to fail multiple times before reaching their goal, whereas someone with a fixed mindset will not even try.

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