Top 10 tools I use for work daily

Our work and personal life are now majorly impacted by technology. You probably, just like me, can’t imagine a day without using apps either on your phones or laptops. And I love it! All this technology helps me be on top of my game without fail! Here are my top 10 tools I use running English For IT, Annglish, and Hiretool on a daily basis:

1. Slack API & Telegram Messenger for chatting & community building. I grouped the two together because while Slack is a go-to business communication tool in North America and I always use it with my US contacts & communities, Telegram is more popular among Russian-speaking folks. At English For IT, we use Telegram as a supporting tool for our cohorts. We create private channels where students can ask questions, share information, get mentor support and learn from one another. Unlike Slack which is strictly business-oriented, Telegram is also a handy tool for personal communication.
2. Zoom is another one of my favorite edupreneur-friendly tools. I teach classes and webinars via Zoom. I also use it to hold meetings with clients and partners.
3. Loom.com is another video tool. You may be surprised that you can use it for business meetings as well. I use it to chat with one of my clients every so often! But also, it is a great tool to record a quick video lesson. I like that you can focus on the content that you are broadcasting on your screen while still seeing the smaller version of yourself in the corner of the screen.
4. Google Meets is the tool I use for daily work meetings. I love that the link is automatically attached to your calendar event and does not require a third-party app or registration. This makes setting up quick ad hoc meetings a breeze!
5. Calendly.com is a must-have tool for scheduling meetings outside of your organization. It gives whoever you want to have a meeting with an opportunity to choose the date and time that would be convenient to them. Plus, you can pre-determine your availability for a particular person/project/case/etc. It is synced with your Zoom & Google calendar, so there’s no need to follow up with the link once the meeting is booked.
6. Google Drive. I hope you, just like myself, never use Microsoft Office, do you? Using Google docs, spreadsheets, and slides is so much more convenient. For one, it is all in the cloud and you get access to all your documents whenever you want, from any device. Just log into your email and voila! Also, the UI is so much more welcoming and modern compared to Office. Besides, team collaboration is a lot easier with docs. They can comment, edit, and leave suggestions in the docs. I’m absolutely in love with the simplicity and convenience of Google Drive. The only downside is that I store a lot of data there which means I have to pay a monthly fee for 2T of storage space.
7. Miro.com helps me create interactive boards, canvases, mind maps, etc, I use it for team collaboration, team activities, meetings, and project planning. It’s a really neat tool with sleek UI and intuitive UX.
8. Sketch.com (for Mac only) & Canva.com. One of the skills that I am proud to have learned as an entrepreneur is graphic design. I highly recommend that you take a graphic design course if you haven’t yet (I did one on Sketch since I use Mac. To my surprise back then 50% of course participants were product people & founders, the other 50% — UI/UX designers) or simply start using Canva. As a founder and entrepreneur, you just have to have basic design skills so that you don’t depend on graphic designers every time you need to put together a quick blog post or presentation. I believe that graphic design skills are a must for any modern professional as are social media skills.
9. Pitch.com is a tool I started using a few months ago when preparing a pitch deck. An awesome tool with tons of dope templates. Makes it very easy to create things on the slide. You can move objects around, resize and edit them, share & collaborate with others on your presentation. If you are a startup or if you have to create presentations on a daily basis, this will be your go-to tool.
10. Notion.so is my recent discovery that I use as a notebook to take notes during my Spanish lessons for example. I also plan to use it for sharing public memos and articles. This tool seems a bit confusing at first but in reality, it’s just extremely smart :) Besides, all new things take some getting used to. As I am writing this post, it’s beginning to dawn on me just how convenient this app is. You gotta work smart as they say!

What are your go-to tools that you use for work? Drop your list in the comments.