Every week, a majority of the DesignWorks digital team gets together on Friday morning to talk about news they found important or interesting that week, tips & tricks we think can be helpful to clients and prospects, a couple jokes, and enjoy a cup of whatever feels right for a Friday morning. We can linger on certain topics for a while, so "Drinks & Thinks" is a boiled down version for you to enjoy.

On My Mind This Week:

There's a lot of stuff to do on my plate every day. While that is far from a problem and definitely not unique to me, it'd be nice if my plate wasn't so full all the time. So, I brought automation into my life. I have templated emails that are common responses or notifications that I can quickly edit and send out. I schedule almost everything out ahead of time with notifications before they send so that if I get pulled away, I still get everything done. If there are multiple steps to something I do, I work to automate as many of those steps as possible; leaving only the final step for me to look over, approve, and send. Does all of this automation really save me a ton of time? I'm sure it does, but I've never actually done the math. What I can attest to is that it does allow for my schedule to run incredibly smooth throughout the week and reduce my stress level as I work toward Friday. Very few things on my "to-do" list get derailed by a surprise afternoon meeting (...or four ...or five). This means my team and our clients get a better version of of me. They get a composed, in the moment version of me - not a frazzled, thinking of what's next, I hope I make that deadline version of me. 

To-Do: 

Track your week! What do you do, repeatedly, that can be handed off to the magic of automation (NOT just handed to another person)? Pay attention to everything: emails, phone calls, meetings, gathering data, etc. Mapping out what is siphoning away your time is the first step to integrating helpful automation. 

Once you've got your week mapped out and you can identify what can be handled by automation (Facebook had a good breakdown of this during their F8 Conference), it's time to look into automation software - a topic we'll tackle during the next DnT!

What's up with the team:

Me (Aaron)

drinking: Green Mountain Breakfast Blend

interesting article: Coca-Cola, Dell and PayPal Share Their Influencer Marketing Secrets from Entrepreneur

Favorite Youtuber/YTChannel: Mightyduck World

Caitlyn

drinking: water

article: TWITTER’S REFRESH AIMS TO CREATE A LESS CONFUSING USER EXPERIENCE from Digital Trends

Favorite Youtuber/YTChannel: wafflepwn

Taylor

drinking: 

article: Inside the surge of social good bots on Facebook Messenger from Mashable

Favorite Youtuber/YTChannel: TheEllenShow (surprise surprise...)

Kristen

drinking: Arnold Palmer with Mint

article: Snapchat launches location-sharing feature Snap Map from TechCrunch

Favorite Youtuber/YTChannel: Mitchell Davis (from back in the day)

Kelsey (one of our interns!) - her last DnT!

drinking: water

Favorite Youtuber/YTChannel: Ross Smith

Joanna (another one of our interns!)

drinking: office coffee

Favorite Youtuber/YTChannel: SciShow

(also - shout out to Jonathan Gartman)