Optimizing Your Computer Use to Save Time
It’s hard to remember what we did before computers – they’ve come a long way in helping us to organize our lives and stay organized. They might help us save time, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to use technology to increase our efficiency even further, and for caregivers like us, those are key words! To take back more time in your day, there are some simple things that you can do to make technology do even more for you than it already does!
1. Manage your email – sorting through your email to determine what’s total junk, what needs your attention immediately and what can wait until later can be a laborious and long task. Take advantage of software programs like Outlook or even Gmail that allow you to filter your email by sender, by subject and priority so every time you open your email, it’s well-organized and your priorities are in place! Spam filters on these programs can also help you save time by eliminating the amount of junk email you receive; if these aren’t doing a good enough job try a program like Cloudmark’s Spam Blocker.
2. Use software that make repetitive tasks efficient – how often do you find yourself providing directions to your care recipient’s home when you require respite care? Every time you send them, you waste precious moments typing them out. Instead, you can try a program like Activewords that allows you to create a shortcut to frequently used data so it’s automatically inserted into a file or email!
3. Sign up for RSS feeds – if there are blogs or news pages that you frequent for your career or role as a caregiver, sign up for an RSS feed that will send relevant stories to your email (which can then be sorted and filtered) or use a blog reader like GoogleReader so you don’t have to sort through irrelevant data every time you try to catch up on your resources
Sources: Gaia
Home Instead Senior Care in Rhode Island provides non medical home care services for seniors and the elderly who choose to live at home instead. Please call us for more information on our in-home care services at 401-667-2923.
