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Hello there and Happy holiday week! You’re listening to episode 186 of the Piano Pantry Podcast. I’m Amy Chaplin a piano teacher from Indiana who has been sharing with you in this medium since 2022.
America will soon be celebrating 250 years and the week is already turning out to be a sweltering one. I’m looking forward to visit a couple of good friends in Michigan over the holiday and plan on bringing you another episode again next.
Today is a replay – and only the second replay I’ve done believe it or not – since I moved the podcast away from weekly into a more manageable twice a month format. It’s a replay from year #2 of this podcast – episode 76 originally titled 5 Productivity Hacks for Your Digital Workspace.
I wanted to replay this one because even with changing technology, these tips are timeless and ones I believe are still important today. Plus, I have one more fresh tip I’m going to add so stay tuned until the end!
Whether you’ve been around since day one or are listening in for the first time – welcome! My goal is that you will find this podcast to be full of practical and sustainable rhythms for your teacher life.
If you’ve never visited PianoPantry.com, the sister blog to this podcast and my home base since 2016, head over there and check out all I have for you.
You’ll find all kinds of useful freebies to support your work, recipes – including the newest post which is my moms perfectly soft chocolate chip cookies – the cookies I grew up on, support on staying organized, and more.
I’ve been working over the past year or more to update the site to a more modern and useful design and just finished this past month. One of the most recent updates is adding in a mini-consult service.
I tested this service out early last year through those on my email list and was super pleased with the results. It felt like the perfect setup for my brain, was a way to offer you a lending ear and brainstorming at an easy and affordable price point, and doesn’t play out like a formal consult or coaching with follow up and deliverables. It’s a totally unique format that no one else is doing and I’m excited to now be formally offering it to you.
The 25-30 minute Zoom call is $45 but in celebration of the formal launch, anyone booking one in the month of July can get 10% off. My Patreon Partners will get 20%. The consult must be scheduled and paid for in the month of July. Visit https://pianopantry.com/mini-consults/ to schedule yours today. I’ll post the link in the show notes at PianoPantry.com/podcast/episode186
Do you perk up when you hear the word productivity or does it make you cringe a bit? Even for someone who enjoys organization and efficiency, when it comes to being more productive, it can be easy for it to bring on feelings of angst. The act of trying to be more productive can feel like we’re creating more work for ourselves in order to figure out how we can do more work.
Really this is more about mindset than anything. What’s your reason for wanting to be more productive? It doesn’t always have to be about creating time to complete more work. I like thinking about productivity as streamlining for the sake of making things feel easier and smoother. It’s almost more about creating breath and space than room for opportunity, if that makes sense.
Since being productive is something that can be considered from many angles in life, I wanted to hone in specifically on some of my best productivity tips related to managing your digital life and workspace. I think you’ll find today’s tips to be ones that are easy to consider and implement.
While the cloud and devices of today have created a wonderfully useful and convenient way for us to access everything from anywhere, it has also created a less productive setup. I can’t believe how much I see people doing from an iPhone these days!
Yes, it’s possible to email and do things from our phones, but I work much quicker when I’m on a computer with a keyboard and mouse. Working from a phone has its perks, but it can also be a slower way of doing things.
At a minimum, if you don’t have a computer, at least use an iPad that has a keyboard so you’re not always using a touch screen.
Are you someone who works a lot from your device? Start paying attention. If you feel like you don’t work as fast from a computer it may simply be because you’re not doing it regularly enough. Pay attention when you’re on your device. Are you trying to do something that would be much faster from a computer?
In episode #75 which was a teacher talk with 4 ladies who attended the piano pantry retreat, Florence shared that one of the big things she took away from all the digital organization work we did was finally realizing that not all work was created equal on each of our devices. Just because, for example, you CAN reply to emails from your iPhone doesn’t mean it should be making that the place you spend your time in email.
We have so much more control in managing system settings, layouts, and more from our computers than our devices. Make an effort to do the bulk of your work form an actual computer or laptop and save the iPhone or iPad for portable convenience.
I do have to tell you though that this first hack has a disclaimer, because working from a desktop computer or laptop may not be any easier for you IF you don’t do a few other things, which brings me to my second productivity hack.
This may sound obvious, but not everyone has learned how to type properly on a keyboard. Certain keystrokes make the flow of typing much quicker. I remember teaching myself to type on my mom’s electric typewriter in middle school. By the time I took computer classes in early high school, I was already typing at 100 words per minute or more.
If you have to, find an online course and work to undo some of your bad typing habits – even if it takes a little time upfront. Faster and more accurate typing skills will be a much more productive use of your time in the end.
While one of the perks of using a computer is that you HAVE a mouse, relying on it too much can slow down your work – especially if you have one of those trackpads and struggle to use it well.
Back about….oh….maybe 8 or 10 years ago, I used an application called KeyRocket to help me learn keyboard shortcuts on my Windows PC. I had heard about it from Michael Hyatt on his original podcast – I can’t remember what it was even called – nor can I remember the Mac version but it acted as kind of an interactive – helping you learn and repeat certain keyboard actions.
If I can imprint anything on the mind of teachers, I coach today, it’s to just GOOGLE IT. Do a quick Google search of the top keyboard shortcuts for certain actions on your Mac or PC, and then focus on just those few shortcuts until they become second nature. Whether it’s toggling between open windows, deleting, cutting and pasting, selecting all, or whatever it may be, learn how to use at least one new shortcut each week and be persistent about it.
You might even consider creating a little document for yourself where you write down those you learn – and I’m serious when I say just do one per week. They will start to add up quickly. You could even just have a folder in your bookmarks bar where you save web pages that share shortcuts you’ve googled.
I can’t tell you how many times I have used an app or program only to discover an easier way of doing things or a useful tool that would have made my life a whole lot easier if only I had taken the time to learn how the program really worked.
I wish I could give you lots of examples here but I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences where you suddenly learn how to do something new in an app you’ve had for ages to the point it makes you almost want to kick yourself for not taking the time years ago to really learn how to use it.
I remember when I first started using Evernote years ago – I spent tons of time watching videos and reading blog posts by – once again – Michael Hyatt on how to maximize and properly use the tool. Honestly, unless you’re a naturally curious person, most of us just aren’t going to go digging ourselves.
My husband is really good at this. He has to investigate and know how everything works and runs. Case in point, in January, we drove several hours down to Cincinnati to a car dealership and ended up trading in our old 2010 Ford Focus for a 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It’s a model that has all kinds of fun off-road bells and whistles. I drove home so he could spend the entire 3-4 hours reading the car’s manual and learning how all the bells and whistles worked. No joke.
That is not my natural inclination believe it or not, so I am preaching to myself here. I know it’s hard to take the time to do these things but ugh! Our future selves will thank us!!!
Watch tutorial videos. Learn how to use that app or program to it’s fullest.
A few months ago, I went over to my parents house to help my dad set up a new Google and email accounts after he retired and sold his business. I about died when he pulled out a half dozen recipe cards with passwords written all over them, front and back.
We are WAY TO ACTIVE on the internet these days people – you run a business – there is no reason why we need to use one password anymore, and it’s so dangerous these days! Password managers are there to help you create and implement strong passwords on all of your accounts – and not the same one for everything. All you have to do is remember your 1 password.
We use and love Last Pass. You add the extension to your internet browser, which will automatically fill in passwords. It will also recognize when you update or create new passwords and ask if you want to update said password in your main Vault.
Not only that but it has tools for saving credit cards. We autofill all of our payment information using Last Pass as well. It was only just a few years ago that I was still pulling out the hard copy credit card to purchase stuff online. No more! It’s so easy.
By the way – if you use a 3rd party password manager like last pass, be sure and turn off the password tool on Google Chrome – go into the settings, and under AutoFill information, you can turn off the setting – that way, you’re not saving things in two places.
The new bonus tip I want to add to this replay episode is that productivity is not about a one and done. While there are times that we need to spend large chunks of intentional time on a project or on organizing our digital workspace, the most important part is the everyday – the slow and steady.
One of my teacher friends who attended my Digital Organization Retreat mentioned going into your photos app every day and looking up just that date and deleting old photos only from that date. This is the perfect example of slow and steady – a little every day.
I started doing this practice but I’ll admit, I don’t think to do it every day. I just do it when I think of it and that’s OK – it’s just a small practice.
What is is one little thing that you can do while you’re waiting to pick up your kid or waiting for your oven to preheat or when you just need a little brain break from the hard email you just wrote.
We need both the small moments like this and the the large chunks of time sometimes. If you’re struggling to find those large chunks, I invite you to join the the upcoming retreat – Organize Your Digital Life – which will be held at my home in Indiana August 12 – 15.
This event is a time of small group coaching, where I’ll walk you through a step-by-step process for gaining control of your digital life. Together we’ll clean up and reorganize our devices, computers, document management systems, media storage, email, and more.
The early bird deadline ends July 1, but the extended discount for $20 off is good through July 15. Visit PianoPantry.com/digital for more details and to register. Hope to see you there!
Thanks to my Patreon friends for supporting this work. If you would like to join them for as little as $4 a month and to get that 20% off a mini consult this month, visit PianoPantry.com/Patreon for details.
