As bloggers and social media lovers we are kind of (definitely) always connected to technology*. We embrace it! We love that we can keep in touch with family, friends, Merrymaker followers AND each other!
*We are conscious to always TRY and switch off for part of our day… sometimes this is hard… but we are learning!
PLUS technology makes us sooo much more efficient in every day life. We can literally thank our digital tools for keeping our lives organised, on time and stress-free.
If you’re after an organised, on time and stress-free life (aren’t we all?) then check out the 10 Digital Tools We Use To make Our Lives More Efficient!
Google calendar
Seriously… how did we function without Google Calendar?! The crazy thing, this is only a very new addition to our lives! We used to use a paper calendar, then copy it into our phone calendar (because that’s efficient… not!).
It helps us create a much more smooth running and automated business.
We’d rely on our memories to remember every lunch date, meeting or podcast we’d said yes to! Seriously?
Google Calendar is our new best friend because we update it on our desktop… and it syncs directly to our iPhone App! Genius… and oh so organised! You can even colour coordinate, so it looks pretty!
We travel A LOT around Australia. Lugging our big desktop computer around with us everywhere we go wouldn’t really be too life efficient. BUT we still need easy access to every single photo, file, recipe or blog post we’ve ever written.
We keep all of our files on Dropbox! Dropbox is a service that keeps all our files safe, synced, and easy to share.
This means we can access all our files EVERYWHERE we go… because you can log in from any computer! There’s a phone app for it too! Seriously… Dropbox… so in love.
Optus Family Sharing
We love being connected all the time. It makes our life more efficient… oh AND fun. And that’s totally important.
As odd as it sounds… as bloggers and avid social media users we’re happy when we’re connected! When we’re out and about café hopping and travelling around Australia we use way too much phone data and have super expensive bills (this makes us sad).
Connecting to available wi-fi while travelling within Australia also proves a hard task when the only available spot is McDonalds… this doesn’t really work for our healthy lifestyle approach! We can imagine the Instagram posts: ‘Merrymakers SPOTTED!’ Oh no!
We now use Optus Family Sharing in Merrymaker Land.
Basically it combines both of our mobile data plans so we can SHARE the data! Uhh, yes please! Some months Em will be away from wi-fi more than Carla… so being able to share our data means that if Em uses more one month… it’s not a big deal! NO ONE goes over the plan which means we don’t get those monthly extra costs (yay for that… we used to go over our plans… ALL. THE. TIME!).
PLUS we can monitor all of our data usage so we know when we’re close to reaching our limit… this is especially good to keep track of when we go Periscope cray cray (more on that obsession below!).
Oh, AND! Our phone and data bills are now streamlined in to one! No more paying separate accounts… talk about efficient time use and easy bill paying (who else high fives when they pay bills? We do!)… better and smarter living at its best!
Pandora
We love music and we LOVE to dance. It makes life better, funner, merrier. We always have ‘songs of the moment.’ Like right now, we are totally digging anything by Roxette or that Fight Song by that Rachel girl. Anything that gets us inspired and excited for life!
We have Pandora on 24/7… ok more like 12/7. Pandora is a music streaming site where you can customize radio stations to play music YOU like! It’s like creating a soundtrack to your life… and this is fun.
Our favourite channels are the Disney channel (we are serious) and the Taylor Swift channel (TSwift rocks!).
Again, there’s a mobile app, so you can access your life soundtrack wherever… whenever!
TagsDock
The best efficiency app since… well we were going to say sliced bread… but we’re not huge fans of bread… unless it’s of the paleo kind! Anyway! If you’re an instagrammer, which we know so many of you are… you NEED to get on TagsDock.
Basically it makes all that hashtagging business ridiculously easy. Hashtags at your finger tips. It’s #amazing #lifechanging #bestthingever #youprobablyneedit
Evernote
Is this the death of the Post-it? Nah, we still dig Post-its… but seriously, Evernote will change your life. Basically, it’s a place you can write all your notes and keep them organised in notebooks (not real life ones… like virtual notebooks!).
Again, you can download the phone app and it syncs directly to your computer! Yes this deserves another #amazing
We use our Evernote for brainstorms, writing down phone convo notes, to do lists and pretty much anything you ever need a note book for… if you’re a real life notebook user… meet your new best friend: Evernote.
OmHarmonics
We’re all about getting our mindful on and we LOVE to meditate. But sometimes (ok, all the time) it slips to the bottom of our to do list. And plus, we find it kinda hard to sit still and focus on our breath for long periods of time.
OmHarmonics is an amazing meditation program that is supposed to fast track the benefits of meditation!
Seriously, sounds wacko! But we think it’s working! We try to listen to the 15 minute music tracks daily and we want to try and do it twice daily! Watch out!
We even make sure we meditate when we travel, the whole sharing of data thing makes this even easier (and we don’t blow our data limits!).
Although meditation takes up time in our day we KNOW that when we meditate, we are 100% more productive and efficient.
SO! OmHarmonics gets a double tick from us because it makes us more efficient meditators and more efficient life livers in general.
Facebook Messenger
Need to connect with friends/family/who ever?
Facebook Messenger makes communicating SO easy! Except, we need EVERYONE to jump on this band wagon.
Sometimes we’ll be like “Oh! We Facebook messaged you!” and the friend will be like “Oh, I don’t check Facebook!”
Like, seriously? Really? Get on that!
PLUS! Carla’s boyfriend lives in America… so she can literally thank Mark Zuckerberg for keeping the romance alive 😉
Plus… did you know you can call people through it now? That’s cool.
Netflix
Ok… so we’re going to put it out there that Netflix doesn’t really make our lives more efficient. HOWEVER, downtime is a part of life (and an important one!) and Netflix definitely makes our downtime more efficient!
Goodbye downloading movies from iTunes… Netflix is where it’s at! Currently binging (only on weekends) on Vampire Diaries and replaying Frozen… yep. Let it go.
Periscope
Again with kind of making our lives inefficient BUT we are in love with Periscope. It’s LIVE STREAMING YO! LIVE. STREAMING! You should definitely follow us on Periscope (we’re @themmsisters), download the free app and get on that!
Basically, it’s an amazing way to show the world who you truly are! It’s way too fun!
Heck yeah for technology tools and making our lives more efficient! It’s all about
Share them in the comment section below because we wanna get our efficiency on! Efficiency and business automation is where it’s at!
Always merrymaking,
Emma + Carla