Technology

Lunchtime Links: A Recipe for Improved Productivity—On Your Smartphone

The social media management tool IFTTT gets an iPhone app. Also: Design the way you make decisions. It’ll create more room for mindfulness.

Given the dozens of social media tools available for associations and others to share content with stakeholders, it’s no wonder most communications professionals have a hard time keeping up. Now a new smartphone app aims to automate that process.

Since we only have so much energy to spend on decision-making, we’d be more spacious—and effective—if we were mindful of what we were doing with our deciding.

That, and more, in today’s Lunchtime Links:

Automation station: Web-based social media management service If This Then That (IFTTT) has always focused on helping social media users better integrate and automate their various social media stations—from Facebook to Foursquare to Instagram. Until recently, its services were available via the web on computers only. Now, the provider is making its automation and scheduling tools available on the iPhone as a standalone app. Apple iOS users can coordinate RSS feeds or schedule tweets directly from their mobile device. GigaOm writer Dave Greenbaum says the app makes social media recipe-making easy. “IFTTT for the iPhone not only makes the IFTTT experience mobile but adds some powerful iOS-specific channels to create more powerful recipes and extend the capabilities of Siri, at least until iOS 7 makes her more intelligent,” he writes.

Don’t delay: The more you put off making tough decisions, the harder those choices become. That’s why David Cain, blogger and creator of Raptitude, says you should manage your decision-making by creating a routine, not unlike making breakfast every morning. “From what Cain argues, the key is to exercise some discernment about how you manage your decision-making itself,” writes Drake Baer for Fast Company. “Since we only have so much energy to spend on decision-making, we’d be more spacious—and effective—if we were mindful of what we were doing with our deciding.” What tactics guide your decision-making process?

Ignore the skeptics: No one ever got anywhere by giving in to doubt. Famed online marketing and content strategy expert Seth Godin says skeptics can diminish your motivation and distract you from your goals. Rather than cave to the whims of your detractors, Godin suggests you redirect your attention to the people who root for you to succeed. “Instead of working so hard to prove the skeptics wrong, it makes a lot more sense to delight the true believers,” he writes on his blog. “They deserve it, after all, and they’re the ones that are going to spread the word for you.”

What’s are you reading today? Share your links in the comment section below.

(courtesy IFTTT)

Anita Ferrer

By Anita Ferrer

Anita Ferrer is a contributor to Associations Now. MORE

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