Being productive & organized on day to day basis building websites with Tara Claeys – SWC 22
February 4, 2019 February 4, 2019 /
We all strive for more being more organized and productive in the online world, while building client websites. Which online places you should spend more and less time for better overall work productivity?
Tara Cosacchi Claeys shares about her focused approach for being more productive by identifying tasks that drain time and tasks that need more attention. Also, the set of tools she uses to stay more organized and stay at the top of important work tasks.
01. Work Routine
- How is the work routine for your Mondays with regard to working with clients, building websites and doing associated work things?
- How does this routine change as you move ahead in the week beyond Monday?
- What about working on weekends? Is that your thing or strict no?
02. Work Planning
- Do you plan on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis for the work that needs to be scheduled, progressed and completed?
- Where do you write your plans, paper planner, an online tool, on a whiteboard in your workroom?
03. Planning for Website Projects
- So, you have got lead and client is interested in your website development service. From this point onward, how do you plan for client communication and get started with the process of gathering website content, possible design layout ideas and so on?
- How do you do self-plan for website design and development, like do you keep milestones for yourself or follow some secret routine?
- Which tools do you use for website project planning and progress tracking?
- Which is your preferred method of client communication?
04. Handling multiple projects
- Majority of us have multiple web projects running in parallel, how do you keep focus in finishing those that require maximum attention and keep sanity in the process?
- Do you have a self-imposed limit on the maximum number of web projects you will handle at a given time? If yes, have there been any misses in this regard?
05. Things that drain time
- We all have web things that can be a big time drain, be it social media time, helping someone in the community and so on. Over a period of a few years, have you attempted to identify where your online time drain happens and taken any steps to reduce it?
- What about time drain in the offline world like meeting clients “face to face”, going to events, irregular visits to co-working spaces and so on?
06. Changes for being more productive
- Ever since you started building websites, do you recall making any substantial work style changes that have increased your productivity with regard to building client websites?
- Lot of us struggle to deal with “Shiny Object Syndrome”, a new tool or feature is here and we forget the work and start exploring that new shiny thing. Are you in the same boat in this regard?
07. Productivity Tools and Services
- Which tools and service have helped you be more productive and organized?
- On the contrary, which tools or services or platforms have you stopped using now as they were turning into a big productivity drain?
Tara’s ToolBox
- Love using Alfred productivity app on Mac (alfredapp.com).
- Boomerang for Gmail (boomeranggmail.com) for more organized email inbox.
- Love using Chrome inspector and visual inspector for web styles code.
- Use Beaver Builder for all client website development work.
- Sketch, Quickbooks, Stripe, and Zapier are an important part of the tool stack.
About Tara Claeys
I started my career in advertising and marketing before the online world and the internet! After I had my first child, I decided to stay home and be a full-time Mom.
I had an artistic and entrepreneurial spirit and started making illustrations for baby gifts, which then grew into a stationery business over the years. As computers and software advanced, I used tools like Photoshop and Microsoft Publisher to create notecards and Christmas cards.
I acquired a large industrial printer and a paper cutter and had reams of card stock and boxes of envelopes. I would have “shows” at people’s homes and take orders for custom designs, and also attended some craft shows. Eventually, I had someone help me build a website using MS FrontPage.
From there, I started building websites for some of my stationery clients who had businesses, until I made the decision in 2010 to stop creating paper products, and focus on graphic and web design. By then, FrontPage was no longer going to be supported, so I looked at options and chose WordPress. It took me about 3 years to discover the WP community, and since that time, my skills and knowledge, and my business have expanded greatly!
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