Remote Working Tools 🛠
Remote work these days is just known as "work" for a lot of us!
We want to hear about what makes your remote working situation successful. What are your essential tools for remote work?
Sound off on your WFH tech stack! and if you have any gadgets for your physical remote working space, we want to hear about those, too!
I'll start! I started working remotely in 2018 and I had NO IDEA how helpful the following things would be to my career, and my sanity.
- Google Calendar - to manage my time so that I hit that perfect work-life balance ☯
- A Password Management Tool - 1Password and LastPass are 👍
- A laptop stand 👩🏼💻
And now I am so happy to add MURAL to that list! It's quickly becoming my favorite.
Your turn! Reply below so we can share and compare!
Comments
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OOooOOOohHhh 🤩 love this discussion ♥️ and can't wait to hear everyone's 2 cents 👂
✅ Crucial for me:
- MURAL 🎨- Of course! I'm always a fan of more people collaborating. The outline also makes it so easy to walk through a MURAL async.
- Pomegranate Chrome extension 🧠 - This helps me focus, keeps me on track, and ensures I take breaks!
- Fresh Air Chrome extension ☮️ - A breathing exercise for every time you open a new tab.
- Rocket 🚀 - This rad Mac app makes it so easy to include emojis wherever you're typing ⌨️
Also a big Asana fan myself 😃
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Oh, awesome! Just downloaded Rocket, thank you!
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Ooh I snagged pomegranate. I use the bear timer app on my phone. It keeps my phone down during the day and I get to look at cute bear pictures when it's break!
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Working at MURAL this may go without saying, but LOOM is a lifesaver working asynchronously.
Sometimes, when you're feeling like your fingers are about to fall off, but you've still got a lot to say, record a short Loom and let mitts rest.
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LastPass I will swear by!
Trello/Microsoft Planner to organise and manage my workload
ColorZilla - Chrome extension - grab colours from web pages/images. Can't live without it!
Video Popout - Chrome extension - watch those videos whilst working productively! What a life saver
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@lorna182 checking out Last Pass right now! I've been looking for a good password manager for my home system 🎆✨ Trello is my first love of project management tools. We use Asana here, and I am quickly becoming enamored with in.
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- The Clock - For working with global teams. I can rapidly see what time it is for each person. I can even label the time zone with their names!
- Presentify - Must have for facilitating online workshops. It highlights my mouse cursor with a customizable color circle
- Rad Ball - I put one of these on the floor, and roll it under the sole of my foot. It is a great self massage tool!
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@Chris_W Thank you for the Rad Ball idea, I will def. look into that a.s.a.p.! My go-to's for this are all about gems for your visual library.
One of the things I love most about working with Mural is the way you can combine images with words so easily. I try to include a supporting, often fun image next to every instruction box, and encourage my students to strengthen their visual as well as verbal communication skills whenever they do visual collaborations. They really enjoy the challenge of finding a picture that is the perfect match for their ideas, and learning about all the places they can get awesome free images while they're at it, since I don't allow them to use things straight from anywhere on the Internet for formal presentations, but only sources they would be legally allowed to use without their parents' credit cards if they were putting it on a website.
Our murals are exactly that, and making "Thought Art" triggers more parts of the brain than words alone. I think their favorite aspect of assignments is the "now let's make it look cool" part. Last semester they were all over Unsplash, Pixabay and Pexels for photos. But now...
Deep love to Ouch! by icons8 for that plethora of funny, clever illustrations (https://icons8.com/illustrations) and to my hero, illustrative genius Pablo Stanley at https://blush.design/collections.
Kudos also to my first love, https://designs.ai/graphicmaker as well as the awesome Great Outdoors and Office Life downloadable sets at https://www.blackillustrations.com/ , the rare beauties at https://mixkit.co/free-stock-art/ and gorgeous sets at LS Graphics: https://www.ls.graphics/illustrations, all with lots of free as well as paid options.
But there are so many more great free illustration resources too that I had my students explore several in a mural. Here is the blank revised template: https://app.mural.co/t/universityofeurope4294/m/universityofeurope4294/1621890781417/2fdc72b84ee7fb05c628eb92ccdff4e97bbe7ec1?sender=u2c88bef0badf9627d4357761
...and here is the one a group got nice and messy: https://app.mural.co/t/universityofeurope4294/m/universityofeurope4294/1621890680429/d7b633487a65c9d354676a25df1cb063012622af?sender=u2c88bef0badf9627d4357761.
They had a ton of fun with this, and their work thereafter has become so much more aesthetically powerful. Plus, they are reading less and speaking freely more, without even realizing it, when they are speaking about something that is represented with an image instead of words, which makes for better presentations. If you have just been working with words or photos, I implore you to experiment with illustrations - they add joy to your day, and to everything you and your clients/students/users create :-).
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I really enjoy Shuffleboard for gathering written feedback during virtual presentations.
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Great question!
So in my remote work really helpful are these widgets/apps/tools:
- Slack (for team communication) + Podio (for project management
- Google Meet (all online meetings and workshop)
- mmhmm to create a great video materials (in very interesting formats!)
- Loom to record a short audio responds/tutorials for my team or clients
- Calendly to easy book all meetings
- Coda to collect all important news and create an interactive docs
- Mentimeter engage my workshops' users :)
- ... and of course last but not least MURAL to have everything in one place :)
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Love this! Here are my favs:
- Slack
- Teams
- MURAL - of course - literally couldn't do my job without this tool
- Azure
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⏩ I really dig using Shift, which collects all the various web apps I use for my business into an app-based interface, rather than having to juggle 50 open tabs all the time.
✅ I use Trello for all sorts of projects, side-projects, lists, people to follow up, tasks... you name it! So versatile.
📕 I use booky.io for bookmarks; I just like the way it visually arranges groups of bookmarks (and I have A LOT of bookmarks! for all sorts of things).
✨ I'm a total playbook/workshop activity junkie, and I often dig into resources like toolboxtoolbox, SessionLab, Liberating Structures, and Hyper Island Toolbox. I'm also an icebreaker junkie, and I collect a lot here: Remote-Friendly Icebreakers!
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@bencrothers, these are great. I'm checking out shift and booky! Also that remote-friendly Icebreakers is amazing. I snagged a copy on Amazon!
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@Amanda ah thank you very much! Much appreciated.
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This isnt necessarily for remote work only, but I found Dot Focus and am really liking it. Check it out!
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Depends on what the tool is being used for but happy to share some of my faves! (:
- Airtable for beautiful spreadsheets/ databases
- Google Meet for Video Meetings
- Swit for team chat + task management
- Bookmark Folders on browsers for most visited page pages
- Google Drive for all the documents
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Want to add my cents: https://calendly-alternatives.org/ for appointments scheduling.
Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, Setmore, 10to8 are the top ones I can think of.
As for me, I'm just starting the get setup with Acuity Scheduling and have been impressed with its functionality.0
![[Deleted User]](https://community.mural.co/applications/dashboard/design/images/defaulticon.png)
