12 Morning and Evening Routines That Will Set Up Each Day for Success

You wake up an hour before work and rush to get ready. You shower at lightning speed and grab an energy bar and coffee before running out the door. Still, work leaves you feeling discombobulated and overwhelmed. Long before the week is over, you’re burned out and know you won't hit this week's goals.

How do you get out of this miserable rut? One word: Routines.

Morning and evening routines prime you for success. They help you achieve more, think clearly, and do work that actually matters. They keep you from stumbling through your day and make sure you get the most important things done.

All it takes is a bit of discipline, along with routines that will set you up for success. Here are the what and why of routines, along with 12 morning and evening routines you can implement to create more perfect days.

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• The Science of Habits and Creating Routines
• Morning Routines To Help You Start the Day Off Right
• Evening Routines That Set the Tone for the Next Day

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The Science of Habits and Creating Routines

First, let’s define what routine means: A routine is a sequence of actions that you do repeatedly.

Brushing your teeth nightly and getting ready for bed is a routine. Waking up at 6:00 AM and exercising every morning is a routine. Purchasing a bagel and reading the news before you head to work every morning is a routine. Even eating chips while watching Netflix is a routine. They’re all actions that happen again and again, a rhythm in your daily life.

That doesn't make them all good routines—they're simply routines by virtue of being done regularly. Helpful or not, every routine is powerful.

Routines Create High Achievers

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."- Aristotle

In his book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey writes about the habits, routines, and rituals of hundreds of artists, including Frederic Chopin, Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx, and Ernest Hemingway. Even though their routines varied wildly, each individual had steps they followed to put them in an optimal state of mind.

After studying the great artists, Currey came to this conclusion:

In the right hands, [a routine] can be a finely calibrated mechanism for taking advantage of a range of limited resources: time (the most limited resource of all) as well as willpower, self-discipline, optimism. A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.

Productivity guru and experimenter extraordinaire Tim Ferris has five morning rituals to get him into a productive state of mind: making his bed, meditating, exercise, drinking tea, and journaling. Performance coach Tony Robbins also uses a morning routine, which includes a cold shower, breathing exercises, and meditation to prepare him for each day.

High achievers tend to find routines that work for them and then stick to them—it's typically something they credit as a core to their success.

Habits vs. Routines vs. Rituals: Wondering what the difference is between habits, routines, and rituals? Habits are things that we do automatically–things like checking your email first thing in the morning or putting your keys in a specific spot when you get home. Routines are usually a collection of habits or actions you do on a regular basis to bring order to your day—checking your email, then writing your day's to-do list, then checking your team's project management tool as a way of getting the day started. Rituals are like routines. The main difference is the attitude behind the actions: Taking a walk everyday at lunch could be considered a routine if you think of it as something you need to do for your productivity. Or it could be a ritual if you think of it as a way to break out of the mundane and enjoy nature. While we're focusing on habits and routines here, most routines could be turned into rituals with a change of perspective.

Routines Put Our Brains on Autopilot

But what makes the routines of high achievers so powerful? As it turns out, we're creatures of habit and can use that to accomplish whatever we want. In The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business, Charles Duhigg details how habits put our brains into an automatic state where little or no willpower is required.

It works like this:

• Step 1: Something happens that serves as a cue to your brain, putting it into "automatic" mode. A simple example is waking up. When I wake up, my brain immediately knows that it’s time to turn on the coffee machine. This habit has been ingrained in my brain over years.
• Step 2: Execute the routine. This is where I actually turn on the coffee machine, wait for it to brew, pour it into my favorite mug, sit in a chair by the kitchen window, and finally drink the coffee.
• Step #3: Reap the rewards of the routine. The delicious flavor and high-octane caffeine reinforce the routine so that the next morning I repeat it again.

Making coffee is just one small routine, but the daily consistency of it helps keep me going. Imagine if other, more powerful tasks that can empower you to accomplish big things came as easy as making coffee?

This is the power of routines. The small repeated actions can have an exponential effect. By implementing routines in the morning and evening, you can prime yourself for maximum productivity each day.

Morning Routines to Help You Start the Day Off Right

If you win the morning, you win the day

Ferris's and Robbins's morning routines both include meditation, while the routines of many others include starting the day off with a fresh cup of coffee. Regardless of your morning schedule, here are some of the best ways to start your day and prepare for success.

Rise Early

There are exceptions, such as Winston Churchill who liked to say in bed until 11:00 AM, but many high achievers rise early in order to prepare for the day. In those early hours, they can execute their routines while the rest of the world is asleep.

Consider these examples:

• Square CEO Jack Dorsey rises at 5:30 so that he can go for a six-mile jog.
• Virgin Group founder Richard Branson wakes at 5:45 to exercise and eat a proper breakfast.
• GM CEO Dan Akerson rises between 4:30 and 5:00 so he can talk to GE Asia.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook gets up at 4:30 so he can send emails and be at the gym by 5:00.

Even if they aren't naturally morning larks–the opposite of night owls–they've trained themselves to wake up early for the many benefits an early rise can bring. Those include increased productivity with fewer distractions in the early morning, greater creativity because you can work when your mind is fresh, and less stress if you use that extra time for meditation or quiet contemplation.
It could make you happier, too: Researchers in one study found that morning-type individuals reported higher levels of positivity and well-being.

Tip: Even if you're a night owl, you can train yourself to become a morning person by waking up 20 minutes earlier every day and soaking in some sunlight as soon as you wake.

Make Your Bed

If there's one habit you should adopt to improve your life, it's making your bed every day. That, at least, is the advice from Navy Seal Admiral William H. McCraven:

If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.

Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

It's all about the small things.

Recite Affirmations

Affirmations are positive statements you can use to reframe how you think about yourself and the day to come. They are a way of visualizing the good things that will come to you that day and overcoming negative self-talk.

In his book The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM), Hal Elrod says:

When you actively design and write out your affirmations to be in alignment with what you want to accomplish and who you need to be to accomplish it—and commit to repeating them daily (ideally out loud)—they immediately make an impression on your subconscious mind. Your affirmations go to work to transform the way you think and feel so you can overcome your limiting beliefs and behaviors and replace them with those you need to succeed.

Some simple affirmations you could use are:

• I will do great things today
• I will make $XXX this year
• I am a highly respected [insert occupation]
• I am achieving [big goal]

Your aim is to affirm and visualize the things you want to happen. As you focus on these things, you begin to believe that you can and will achieve them, which then enables you to take action on them.

Although it might sound New-Age-y to some, affirmations are proven methods of self-improvement. As clinical psychologist Dr. Carmen Harra says. "Much like exercise, they raise the level of feel-good hormones and push our brains to form new clusters of 'positive thought' neurons."

Get some exercise

There are few things more transformative than exercise. Exercising in the morning increases blood flow, releases endorphins, and strengthens your body. It prepares you for the coming day, increases your overall energy levels, and helps you remain in optimal health. Numerous studies have shown that exercise is key in fighting depression and anxiety, and a Finnish study suggested that exercise is even correlated with increased wealth.

Implementing a daily routine of exercise will prepare you for maximum success through the day. And it doesn't even have to be a full gym workout to reap the benefits: A brisk walk in your neighborhood, a 7-minute workout, or a quick yoga session could get you going.

Need more motivation to get moving? Try tracking your activity automatically with Zapier, an app automation tool. With logs of your runs or workouts, you can see your progress and challenge yourself to keep at it.

Eat a proper breakfast

The fuel you consume in the morning has a significant effect on your ongoing performance—and thus, it should be the best fuel possible.

Dietician Lisa De Fazio recommends staying away from high-sugar, high-fat breakfasts and instead suggests a healthier choice, perhaps:

• Oatmeal
• Low-fat breakfast sandwich
• Smoothie
• Fruit and yogurt parfait

Think good carbs and fiber plus some protein. Those foods will give you energy and satisfy your food cravings while setting the stage for good decisions all day.

Take a cold shower

This one may seem a little extreme, but many people swear by taking cold showers each morning. It's similar to athletes who take ice baths, although slightly less frigid.

Why a cold shower? Because it can increase blood flow, burn away unhealthy fat, and release dopamine into the body. Like exercise, it kick starts your body.

This is why Tony Robbins plunges into 57 degree water every morning. He’s convinced that it is essential for maximum productivity.

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These might seem like minor things–waking up early, making your bed, saying your affirmations, exercising, eating a good breakfast, and taking a cold shower–but taken together into one consistent routine you do every day, you're well prepped to face anything that happens after. A morning routine takes the stress out of the start of the day and puts you on the best footing from the get-go.

Of course, customize your morning routine for your own preferences. The SAVERS graphic above from James Altucher's article and podcast with Hal Elrod can help you remember a few other things you can add to your morning routine: silence, visualization, reading, and scribbling. For more inspiration, My Morning Routine offers 200+ examples of morning routines you can adapt and adopt for yourself.

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Evening Routines That Set the Tone for the Next Day

The close of each day is just as important as the start. By implementing evening routines, you ready yourself for the next morning, recharge with a restful night, and minimize the resistance you encounter in getting things done.

Prepare goals for the next day

Determining your objectives for the coming day does two things. First, it allows you to identify your most important tasks in advance—before all the pressures of the day arrive on your doorstep. Ideally, the first few hours of each day should be spent conquering your most challenging task. This idea has been given various names, such as "eating the frog" and “slaying the dragon.”

Second, it allows your brain to begin thinking about those tasks as you fall asleep. In their book Organize Tomorrow Today: 8 Ways to Retrain Your Mind to Optimize Performance at Work and in Life, authors Jason Selk, Tom Bartow, and Rudy Matthew say:

Identifying daily priorities might seem like an obvious or insignificant step to take, but writing your most important tasks down the previous night turns your subconscious mind loose while you sleep and frees you from worrying about being unprepared. You’ll probably find that you wake up with great ideas related to the tasks or conversations that you hadn’t even considered!

Reflect on the day's achievements

It can be easy to lose sight of victories after a long day. Taking just a few moments at the end of the day to reflect on and celebrate your wins puts things into the proper perspective and gives you encouragement for the coming day. It helps you overcome the discouragement that often comes with setbacks.

In addition to asking at the start of his day "What good shall I do this day?", Benjamin Franklin asked every evening "What good have I done today?".

Benjamin Franklin's daily routine

Zen Habits author Leo Babauta puts it this way:

If you reflect on the things you did right, on your successes, that allows you to celebrate every little success. It allows you to realize how much you’ve done right, the good things you’ve done in your life.

You can do this in a variety of ways, including jotting things down in a blank Moleskine notebook, a gratitude journal, or an app on your phone. You can automatically track your productivity with RescueTime and Zapier as well:

Clear your head

It’s easy to take your work to bed, making it difficult to fall asleep as you mull over job-related problems. Clearing your head before sleep allows you to put aside the challenges of the day and ready your mind to shut down. There are numerous ways to do this, including:

• Meditation
• Light reading
• Playing Tetris (for productivity!)
• Watching a peaceful television show (The Walking Dead probably isn’t your best bet)
• Doing a "brain dump" of all the thoughts in your head in a journal before you go to bed

Buffer CEO Joel Gascoigne describes his disengagement this way:

For me, this is going for a 20-minute walk every evening at 9:30 p.m. This is a wind-down period, and allows me to evaluate the day’s work, think about the greater challenges, gradually stop thinking about work and reach a state of tiredness.

Your goal is to engage your mind in something completely non-work related.

Prepare for the next morning

In order to minimize the amount of thinking you need to do in the morning, take time to prepare things. Pick out the clothes you’ll wear, prepare the food you’ll eat, prep the coffeemaker, and organize any work related materials you need to bring. If you’ll be going to the gym, lay out your workout clothes and water.

The less time and mental energy you expend on inconsequential things, the more you’ll have for the things that matter.

Tidy up

Waking up to a messy home isn't the most motivating way to start your day. Without regular sessions cleaning up and putting things away, you'll find your place quickly in disarray.

Thankfully, spending just 10 to 20 minutes a night tidying up will help reduce stress in the mornings and help you avoid marathon cleaning sessions on the weekends. If there's only one thing you do,clean and shine your sink. Like making your bed in the morning, this one task will give you a sense of accomplishment. Housekeeping guru FlyLady says:

This is your first household chore. Many of you can’t understand why I want you to empty your sink of your dirty dishes and clean and shine it when there is so much more to do. It is so simple; I want you to have a sense of accomplishment! […] When you get up the next morning, your sink will greet you, and a smile will come across your lovely face. I can’t be there to give you a big hug, but I know how good it feels to see yourself in your kitchen sink. […]

Go shine your sink!

Also, if you have children, you know the importance of setting up solid routines with them. They can help out too!

Practice proper sleep hygiene

Very few people practice proper sleep hygiene and their sleep suffers as a result. Generally speaking, you should:

• Stick to the same sleep and wake schedule.
• Minimize blue light from screens (this can be done using F.lux on your computer and "Night Mode" on your mobile device).
• Set the temperature in your room to between 60-65°F (15-18°C).
• Make your room as dark as possible.

It can be easy to minimize the importance of sleep, but it’s absolutely essential for optimum performance. In fact, sleep is so crucial that Arianna Huffington devoted an entire Ted Talk to it.

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It can be really tough to build routines into your life. It takes intention and discipline. Sometimes it feels simpler to just get the day started and then after a long workday crash into bed.

But the good thing about routines and habits is that the more you do them, the easier they become. They become ingrained in your day to the point where you find it harder to not do them.

So stick with it. You may find it tedious at first, but you’ll find your days will flow much more smoothly when you've bookended them with quality morning and evening routines.

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To create your morning and evening routines, you can write up a checklist that you can walk through every day until it becomes ingrained in you or set up a schedule, a la Ben Franklin. For example:

6 am: wake, make the bed, get coffee started
6:15: drink coffee and read the news
6:30: exercise
7: eat breakfast
7:15: shower
8-5: work
6: dinner
7:30: tidy up
8: time with family, TV, or other form of relaxation and entertainment
9:30: journaling or meditation
10: bedtime

What's your daily routine like?

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Keep reading:

• Keystone Habits: How to Improve All Areas of Your Life with One Small Habit
• How Your Mood in the Morning Affects Your Productivity All Day
• 20+ Fitness Tools that Track Your Exercise, Meals, Sleep, and More

This post was originally published in February 2017 and updated in April 2019

Day and night graphic designed by Freepik. Morning SAVERS graphic from James Altucher. Running image by Chanan Greenblatt. Book photo by CC) Public Domain.

source https://zapier.com/blog/daily-routines/

How a Data & Analytics Manager at Pearson Uses a Simple Zap for Meeting Reminders

"With Zapier, I have a better work-life balance."Dina Yankelewitz, Manager, Data and Analytics at Pearson

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Sometimes, the smallest changes can yield the biggest results. Think about the butterfly that flaps its wings in Peking and in Central Park, you get rain instead of sunshine. For your work life, that can take the form of a simple reminder about upcoming meetings—one that cuts through even if you're not glued to a computer. Tasks add up throughout the day and projects pop up that need input, so it's not a surprise that a meeting could fall through the cracks.

But Dina Yankelewitz, a manager of data and analytics at Pearson, found a way to always get a meeting reminder, whether she's at her desk, on the road, or anywhere in between.

Her secret is Zapier, the app automation tool that makes connecting different applications a breeze. Dina created a Zap, Zapier's word for an automated workflow, that texts her phone one hour before each meeting. That means Dina gives herself plenty of time to prepare for the meeting and ensure her current availability.

About Pearson

Pearson was founded in the mid-1800s—1844, to be exact—in Yorkshire, England as a construction company. In the 1920s, the company's priority shifted to publishing, and it became one of the big names in the industry. Now, it's known as a leader in education, publishing everything from high school test prep materials to custom curriculum for professional training.

With over 35,000 employees across 70 countries, Pearson's education initiatives and supplies reach millions of people every year.

As a data and analytics manager at Pearson, Dina spends a lot of her time building dashboards that visualize the impact of key products on student performance. In this vein, she's interested in how effective Pearson's products are in improving both teacher and student performance at school; her research and analysis here has helped improve programs and learner outcomes.

The Tools Dina Uses at Pearson

Icon:	App:	Used For:
	Google Calendar	Calendar app
	SMS by Zapier	Zapier's built-in SMS app

Automatically Send an SMS Before Google Calendar Meetings

Missing a meeting can mean anything from wasting your coworkers' time to losing a huge sale. It's essential to have an airtight reminder system, so you're always there when you need to be. There are plenty of ways to accomplish this, from Slack reminders to Google Calendar's desktop notifications. But these notifications can pile up and pretty soon, they become background noise. And what happens if you snooze notifications or aren't always at your computer? These notifications can wind up missed, which defeats the whole point of a reminder.

Dina doesn't live at her desk. The data she compiles and the dashboards she creates are often customer and external facing. That means meeting customers and presenting the information she's researched. Because of that, she turned to the device that's always with her: her phone.

No matter where Dina is, an hour ahead of any meeting she has scheduled during the work week, Zapier sends her a text message reminding her of the start time, topic, other attendees, and if she needs to notify anyone else before it starts. This kind of personal notification cuts through the constant pings of a chat app or browser alert.

Her Zap is straightforward, connecting Google Calendar to SMS by Zapier:

The Workflow

You can customize this workflow however it works best for you. For example, you might want to have the text arrive 30 minutes before. Or maybe you use these reminders as a notification to start preparing for your meeting, and you prefer your reminders and entire day in advance. Whatever timing works for you, Zapier allows you to set the interval to meet your preferences.

Then, when the specified amount of time before a meeting arrives, the Zap triggers, sending an SMS to the number you enter with a message you write.

And that message is completely customizable too. If your phone is set to show preview of a text on the locked screen, you could simply have the meeting name and time it starts, like "Discuss data w/ Jon @ 2:00pm CT". If your smartphone is connected to a smartwatch, that concise message will get you all the information you need without having to unlock your phone.

If you think getting a text message every time you have a meeting might just add to your notification noise, you can trim down by filtering to only receive the messages when the meeting meets certain criteria. With a filter, you can specify that only meetings from particular hosts or participants get through, like your manager or biggest client.

This Zap is great if you often find yourself heads down on a project, ignoring pop-up notifications in Slack or from your browser, away from your computer often, or just like to have a little warning before a meeting starts.

Whether the company you work for has 35,000 employees, like Pearson, or just 35, an app like Zapier can help you spend time focusing on the job tasks that only you can do—while leaving the little things, like meeting reminders, to the machines.

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Want to find your own simple, game-changing workflow? Give Zapier a try for free.

Our stories explore how Zapier's users solve common problems. From marketers to CEOs, educators to real estate agents, millions use Zapier to automate their most tedious tasks. If you haven't yet, try Zapier for free to see what we're all about.

What's your story? Tell us how you use Zapier to do more. You can also read even more customer stories and find new ways to improve your workflow and productivity.

All images courtesy of Pearson.

source https://zapier.com/blog/pearson/

Survey Maker Showdown: Google Forms vs. Survey Monkey

Survey software helps you create surveys to collect data and gather feedback from a broad audience. You can ask questions in a variety of formats, solicit responses through multiple channels, and chart your data to get a big-picture view of all responses. Survey apps are often used for collecting customer or employee feedback, conducting data-based research studies, and even building quick polls.

Two of the most popular survey apps are Google Forms and SurveyMonkey. If you're in the market for a survey maker and are having trouble choosing between the two, this deep-dive comparison of each tool's features should make it easier to determine which one is right for your needs.

If neither tool fulfills your needs, you can find more options in our guides to the best form builder apps, best survey builder tools, and best online poll apps.

Common Features and What We Looked For

SurveyMonkey and Google Forms are both powerhouses in the survey field. And while both allow you to build surveys, forms, polls, and quizzes using a variety of question types, they cater to different needs and use cases.

To help you determine which tool is best for you, we looked at the features below. Click on any link to jump to the section that matters most to you, or skip to our feature comparison table.

• Pricing
• Design and Customization
• Collaboration Options
• Question Types, Rules, and Scoring
• Templates
• Branching and Conditional Logic
• Collecting Responses
• Analysis and Reporting

Pricing

While both apps have a free option, Google Forms' is much more robust.

Google Forms is 100% free for anyone with a Google account. You can use it to build as many surveys as you need, ask as many questions as you want, and collect responses from as many people as are willing to take your survey—all without ever paying a dime.

SurveyMonkey also has a free plan (called the Basic plan), but it's much more limited. While you can create unlimited surveys on the Basic plan, you can only ask a maximum of 10 questions per survey, and you can only see a maximum of 100 responses. To ask unlimited questions or collect unlimited responses using SurveyMonkey, you'll have to upgrade to a premium plan. SurveyMonkey's premium plans start at $32/month for individual plans and $25/user/month for team plans (with a minimum of three users).

So if price is a key consideration, and you think you'll need to ask more than 10 questions or expect to get more than 100 responses, Google Forms is the better tool for you. But if price isn't one of your top considerations, SurveyMonkey has many features you won't find in Google Forms that may make it worth paying a premium.

It's also worth mentioning that you'll have access to SurveyMonkey's premium features even if you select the free plan, but you won't be able to send a survey that uses premium features unless you upgrade. This gets confusing when you're building a survey. There's no indicator showing which features are free and which aren't, so you won't know that you've applied a premium feature until after you've made the change.

Design and Customization

Google Forms has limited customization options; SurveyMonkey is extremely customizable.

Google Forms doesn't really support customization, especially brand-specific. You have four options:

1. Pick a color template, which changes the color of the header and the margins.
2. Pick from pre-designed themes by category (e.g., workplace, food, nature), which adds a stock image to the header.
3. Upload a photo as the header image. In theory, you could upload your company logo to appear at the top of the form, but in our testing, we found that uploading an image rarely looked good on Google Forms. The dimensions have to be perfect or your image gets distorted.
4. Change the font of the survey questions. You only have four options to choose from, none of which look super professional.

Bottom line: Google Forms doesn't give you much wiggle room in terms of design customization.

SurveyMonkey's free plan is also fairly limited when it comes to customization options: You can choose among nine pre-designed themes and adjust your survey's layout. But with a premium plan, you can upload a logo, create a custom template, choose from dozens of fonts, change font colors and sizes, or add a background image.

And while Google Forms always displays its branding on your surveys, the SurveyMonkey Premier individual plan ($99/month) and Team Premier plan ($75/user/month) both give you the option to remove SurveyMonkey branding.

You can create multi-page surveys in both apps. But in Google Forms, multiple questions on a single page display in a long list you have to scroll through. In SurveyMonkey, you can turn on an option to have questions toggle: After answering a question, the next one appears automatically.

If customizing the design of your survey isn't terribly important for you, Google Forms should be sufficient. But if you need to create a branded survey or want to customize your survey's design in more detail, you'll want to invest in a premium SurveyMonkey plan.

Collaboration Options

SurveyMonkey offers more dynamic collaboration options than Google Forms.

Both Google Forms and SurveyMonkey let you create custom survey templates that you can share with your team. But beyond that, SurveyMonkey takes the cake.

SurveyMonkey users who subscribe to a team plan get a number of collaboration features. You can set granular permissions to give different users the ability to view, edit, or comment on surveys. Team members can leave comments on both survey previews and results, and you can send notifications to team members to let them know you made a change or left a comment.

Collaboration in Google Forms is less flexible. You can add collaborators, but the only permission you can set is Edit. There's no view-only option, and it doesn't support comments. It also doesn't send notifications when changes are made, and unlike some of Google's other tools like Docs and Sheets, Google Forms doesn't keep a history of changes that you can review.

If you're collaborating with a small team, Google Forms' collaboration tools are probably all you need. But if you're collaborating with a large team or external partners—or if you have complex review and approval workflows—SurveyMonkey's team plan is a better choice.

Question Types, Rules, and Scoring

Google Forms has more rules available and offers more robust automated scoring.

SurveyMonkey offers more options than Google Forms when it comes to question types. In addition to the basic question types you'll find in both tools—multiple choice, short answer, dropdowns, and checkboxes—SurveyMonkey offers sliders, payment-acceptance fields (via Stripe), and dropdown matrices.

Of course, most of SurveyMonkey's more advanced question types, including file uploads—which are available for free in Google Forms—are only available with a premium plan.

Both tools also have options for randomizing the order in which respondents see questions, which is helpful when using the tools to build quizzes. But Google Forms only offers an overall randomization option. SurveyMonkey provides more granular randomization options, letting you randomize only a specific page or certain questions. Again, this feature is only available with premium plans.

Google Forms lets you set up more specific validation rules for answers (i.e., requiring users to answer in a specific way) based on number, text, length, or regular expression. Answers that do not meet your rules will display customizable error messages. This is useful for things like validating that an inputted email address is actually formatted like an email address, ensuring cleaner data.

SurveyMonkey's validation rules don't allow for regular expressions, so you're limited to checking for date formatting, accurate email address formatting, and number formatting (e.g., allowing or disallowing the use of decimals). This is more accessible if you don't know how to write regular expressions, but it limits the types of responses you can validate.

If you're using the app to create a quiz and want to provide immediate feedback, both apps offer automated scoring. However, Google Forms' scoring is more robust because it can be used for more than just multiple choice questions and dropdowns. Short-answer questions can also be auto-graded by setting a number range (e.g., answer should be between 1 and 10) or setting text rules (e.g., answer must contain the word "oxygen").

If you need to collect payments through your form, SurveyMonkey offers a direct integration with Stripe that lets survey-takers make a payment. Google Forms doesn't offer this feature, though you can include a link to a PayPal or another payment processing tool.

Templates

SurveyMonkey offers pre-written questions and nearly 200 survey templates.

Google Forms only offers 16 basic templates that help you quickly build things like job applications, order forms, and assessments.

SurveyMonkey, on the other hand, offers nearly 200 survey templates—organized by industry and purpose—for everything from market research surveys to employee exit interviews. These templates each contain questions that are vetted by SurveyMonkey's experts, and the questions are presented in an order that maximizes response quantity and quality.

Free accounts can access 40 short survey templates, while the full library is available to users at the Advantage level and above.

If you want to mix and match, SurveyMonkey offers all users access to a question bank of 1,800+ pre-written questions. These questions have been written and reviewed by SurveyMonkey's survey methodologists and are certified to be methodologically sound, meaning that the question should provide accurate results with minimal bias.

Branching and Conditional Logic

SurveyMonkey offers slightly more branching and conditional logic options.

Conditional logic in surveys boils down to if/then statements. For example, "If the user selects Highly satisfied, then the survey ends and displays a thank-you page." Or "If the user selects anything less than highly satisfied, send the user to question What could we do better?"

Google Forms allows for this kind of branching for multiple choice and dropdown questions. You can send users to another section or question based on their previous answer, or you can choose to end the survey immediately.

SurveyMonkey also offers conditional logic, but only on its premium plans. It works in the same way as Google Forms: Send a respondent to a different question, page, or the end of the survey based on how they answer a specific question. But SurveyMonkey offers conditional logic on question types that Google Forms doesn't, such as checkboxes and star ratings.

Collecting Responses

SurveyMonkey offers more ways to collect survey responses.

Both Google Forms and SurveyMonkey let you send your survey via email, grab a link to post anywhere on the web, or embed the survey onto your website.

But SurveyMonkey offers a few other features that Google Forms doesn't. You can have people take your survey in Facebook Messenger, embed your survey into a mobile app, or even collect responses offline using the SurveyMonkey Anywhere app and upload them when you're back online. And if you need some help getting responses to your surveys, SurveyMonkey also has a product called Audience, where you pay them to promote your survey so you get more responses.

Looking for a tool that lets you conduct surveys on the go? Check out our guide to the best remote data collection apps.

Analysis and Reporting

SurveyMonkey makes it easy to visualize your data.

Both Google Forms and SurveyMonkey offer a variety of features for analyzing and visualizing your data. Both show you individual responses as well as summary data in graphical format.

Google Forms displays different types of graphs based on what type of question you asked.

SurveyMonkey, on the other hand, lets you select exactly how you want your summary data to display. On the free plan, you can choose between eight graph types—including pie charts, bar graphs, and line graphs—customize the colors your graphs display in, and even change the labels shown on your graphs for the data you've collected. This makes it really easy to visualize your data, customize it, grab screenshots of your graphs, and share them in a blog post or presentation.

Of course, you can do all of these things with Google Forms too, but it's not quite as simple. You have to send your data to Google Sheets and manually create your custom charts and graphs. Still, having your data in Google Sheets also gives you the ability to create pivot tables and use the Explore function to analyze your data in greater detail. Or you could send your data to Google Data Studio for even more visualizations.

SurveyMonkey's free plan doesn't let you export your results, so for deep analysis, you have to upgrade. Its available reporting tools increase in number and capabilities at each subscription tier, giving you options to filter your responses to analyze those from a specific group, measure sentiment, and evaluate statistical significance.

If you use questions from SurveyMonkey's question bank, you can even benchmark responses on commonly-tracked metrics—like customer satisfaction—against other users' results. The data behind these benchmarks is driven by the millions of answers that SurveyMonkey collects from users, and it can give you an idea of where you stand in the pack.

SurveyMonkey can also analyze the survey itself—even before you have any responses. The Genius feature scores your survey based on factors including survey length, question types, and estimated time to complete. The score provides an overall assessment, an estimate of completion rates, and suggested areas of improvement.

Google Forms vs. SurveyMonkey: Which App Should You Use?

If price is a concern, you're better off going with Google Forms. While SurveyMonkey has a free plan, it's extremely limited, and unless you're making very basic surveys and don't anticipate many responses, it won't get you far. Google Forms can also be a better option for testing the waters since its more limited range of options makes it easier to set up and distribute a survey without diving into advanced logic and analysis.

If design is a key consideration, SurveyMonkey is your better bet. Its surveys are much more customizable, and frankly, they look more professional than those created in Google Forms. SurveyMonkey is also a stronger option for advanced users who need quantitative analysis for large amounts of data—or for users who feel that they can leverage options like templates and industry benchmarks.

If you're not sure where to start, give Google Forms or SurveyMonkey's free plan a try and see which one sticks.

Finally, here's an at-a-glance feature comparison.

	Google Forms	SurveyMonkey
Pricing	100% free	Free plan available; feature availability increases with each premium tier
Design and Customization	Extremely limited	Robust options with premium plans
Collaboration Options	Limited to multiple editors	Viewing, editing, and commenting available
Question Types, Rules, and Scoring	More specific answer validation options and scoring options	More advanced question types
Templates	16 templates available	~200 templates and ~1,800 pre-written questions
Branching and Conditional Logic	Available for multiple choice and dropdown questions	Available for more question types
Collecting Responses	Email, link, or embed	Email, link, embed, Facebook Messenger, mobile embed, offline data collection
Analysis and Reporting	Limited, unless you use it in tandem with Google Sheets or Google Data Studio	Extensive options for data visualization

Automating SurveyMonkey and Google Forms

After you select your new survey tool and start collecting responses, you can do even more with the data you collect using these Zaps (automated workflows by Zapier).

• Send automatic follow-up emails to everyone who fills out your survey.

• Automatically add survey respondents to your email marketing tool.

• Automatically create tasks in your project management app to act on new survey responses.

source https://zapier.com/blog/google-forms-vs-surveymonkey/

If the Pomodoro Technique Doesn't Work for You, Try Flowtime

Finding the perfect productivity system is like finding the perfect recipe. Sometimes, a recipe with a really high rating tastes terrible. Sometimes, you find a comment that suggests adjustments, and those adjustments take it from mediocre to outstanding. And sometimes, you only use the recipe as a guide, modifying it to cater to your unique preferences and tastes.

The best productivity technique, like the best food, is personalized.

Productivity techniques can be adjusted, mined for their best parts, and mixed with parts of others until you've found a perfect blend. And that's exactly what Zoë Read-Bivens did to create the Flowtime Technique—an alternative to the Pomodoro Technique for people who dislike Pomodoro's consistent alarms.

The Flowtime Technique Is a Twist on Pomodoro

Flowtime is modified Pomodoro, so to understand the Flowtime Technique, it's helpful to first revisit the framework of the Pomodoro Technique.

While in college, Francesco Cirillo—the creator of the Pomodoro Technique—figured out that it was easier to stay focused when he 1) put a time limit on how long he planned to focus on a single task and 2) rewarded himself for staying focused by taking frequent breaks.

From that discovery, the Pomodoro Technique was born. Cirillo recommends doing focused work in 25-minute increments throughout the day. After each pomodoro (25-minute focus session), take a five-minute break from your work. And after completing four consecutive pomodoros, take a longer break, usually between 20 and 30 minutes.

Cirillo used a kitchen timer designed to look like a tomato to time his focus periods and breaks, which is how the Pomodoro Technique got its name—"pomodoro" means tomato in Italian. But today, there are dozens of Pomodoro timer apps you can use to automatically time and track each of your pomodoros and breaks.

The Problem with Working in Pomodoros

Before introducing the Flowtime Technique, Read-Bivens wrote about some of her struggles while working in pomodoros:

The first problem with the Pomodoro Technique is that the timer is a tyrant. The indivisibility of a pomodoro is supposed to prevent interruptions. Instead, it often forces an exhausted me to work longer than I'm comfortable with, or it interrupts me when I'm engaged and working well.

As Read-Bivens describes, one of the big problems with Pomodoro is that the timer is a consistent interruption that inhibits your ability to get into a flow state. Flow state describes a period of time in which you're fully engaged and immersed in a task. While in a flow state, you're highly focused and productive, and your ability to stay focused and productive is effortless.

So let's say you've achieved flow state, you're highly focused and productive, and then a timer goes off signaling that it's time for you to take a break. If the distraction of the alarm alone doesn't take you out of flow state, the break most certainly will.

Pomodoro is a great approach to tackling tasks that you don't want to do (like studying for an exam) or tasks that require little thought (like copying and pasting data from a document into a spreadsheet). The short duration of pomodoros and promise of a break as a reward can encourage you to stay focused and do what you need to do.

But other tasks like writing, coding, or creating art—tasks that require creativity, innovation, and/or problem-solving—may not be ideal to break into pomodoros. Limiting how much time you dedicate to those tasks may prevent you from getting into flow state and enjoying the benefits of its resulting boost to your productivity and focus.

The Flowtime Technique Solves Pomodoro's Big Problems

Flowtime Technique is Read-Bivens's solution to Pomodoro's problems. Here's how it works:

You start by writing down what one task you plan to work on during a focus session. Picking one task—what Read-Bivens calls "unitasking"—is the "one hard and fast rule of the Flowtime Technique."

Once you've picked your task, write down the time you start working on it, and then work until you feel like you need a break. You're not working for any specific amount of time, and there's no timer that signals when it's time for a break. Instead, you just have to monitor your focus and thoughts. When you start feeling tired or distracted, write down the end time, and take a break.

The length of your break is also up to you, though Read-Bivens offers a few suggestions:

• For 25 minutes of work or less, take a five-minute break.
• For 25-50 minutes of work, take an eight-minute break.
• For 50-90 minutes of work, take a 10-minute break.
• For more than 90 minutes of work, take a 15-minute break.

However, she notes that "the break times I suggest aren't rules. If you need a 10-minute break after working for 40 minutes, that's fine. Refreshed work is orders of magnitude better than fatigued work." So take a break for however long you need to feel refreshed. And if you're struggling to determine when you need a break, she recommends picking smaller tasks to focus on until you get a better sense of when you're feeling fatigued.

With the Flowtime Technique, you're essentially still breaking your day into pieces and rewarding yourself with breaks when you need them just like in Pomodoro. But because you're not tied to a timer, you're more likely to find yourself in a flow state from time to time. Plus, you don't have to suffer through staring at your work when you're distracted and waiting for an alarm to signal that it's time to take a break.

The Benefits of the Flowtime Technique

We've already discussed how Flowtime enables flow state, which is one of its primary benefits. But there are many other benefits to the approach.

First, because you're documenting start times and end times for each task, you can actually use your Flowtime data for time-tracking to see how much time you're dedicating to different types of tasks. Knowing how much time specific tasks usually take you can help you create better estimates for how long future tasks will take and discover what activities you need to eliminate to make time for new goals.

Second, Read-Bivens also recommends adding a column to track interruptions—things like calls, texts, emails, or desk drop-bys that pull your attention away from the task you're working on. Tracking this data could help you discover your biggest sources of distraction so you can take steps to eliminate those distractions.

With Flowtime, you can track the number of times you were interrupted or include notes detailing what those interruptions were.

Or if you work in different places—home, the office, a coffee shop, or a coworking space—tracking interruptions could help you find out which space is best for working when you need to stay focused.

Third, keeping track of how long you were able to focus naturally can help you identify days and times of the day when you're most focused or most easily distracted. This information can help you plan your day better, scheduling work that requires deep focus during times when you're naturally inclined to be focused.

And finally, if the more structured Pomodoro method works better for you, you could use Flowtime's approach for a couple of weeks to create your own personalized lengths for pomodoros. For example, if you find that you're usually able to focus for 60 minutes at a time in the morning and 15 minutes at a time in the afternoon, you could set your Pomodoro timers for those times to maintain the structure of Pomodoro without impacting your flow state potential. You can also keep track of the length of your breaks to determine the ideal length and frequency of your Pomodoro breaks.

Tools That Help with the Flowtime Technique

Read-Bivens recommends two options for recording your focus times and breaks for Flowtime: pen and paper or a spreadsheet.

And while both of these methods work, pen and paper isn't the most efficient way to review historical details, and long spreadsheets with tons of data can be difficult to scroll through to find what you're looking for. For these reasons, one of the following apps might be a better choice.

Toggl (Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, Chrome, Firefox)

Best for people who want something that's as easy to use as pen and paper

A lot of time-tracking apps are designed for tracking billable hours to a project or client, meaning there's a ton of setup required to start tracking your time. Toggl has a much more lightweight approach. You can start tracking time for tasks by typing in the name of your task and clicking enter. That starts the timer, which then runs until you press stop.

Over the course of your day, type the name of the task you're getting ready to work on and start the timer. Toggl tracks the time you work on the task down to the second and lists your start and end times once you stop the timer. You can track your breaks in the same way: Type Break as your task and start the timer, then stop the timer when you return from your break.

Toggl saves all of your tasks, breaks, and session lengths, and you can access that data at any time from Reports. Pick a date—or a date range—in its calendar view to access your tasks and session lengths for any date in the past.

And if you want to be able to see how you're spending your time in a calendar view, create a Zap—an automated workflow by Zapier—that adds an entry in Google Calendar every time you start a timer in Toggl.

Or if you want to make sure you track the time you spend in meetings, use this Zap to start a Toggl timer when an event on your Google Calendar starts.

Toggl Price: Free for up to five users; from $10/month for the Starter plan that includes scheduled email reports and unlimited team members.

TMetric (Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Edge)

Best for seeing your daily focus sessions and breaks in a timeline view

TMetric is another time-tracking app you can use for Flowtime, and its big benefit is that it shows you a timeline of how you spent your day. Focus periods appear in dark gray, and breaks appear in light gray. Hover over an entry in the timeline to see the exact amount of time you spent on it. A summary of the total time you spent on tasks/breaks also displays.

The best way to use TMetric is to create tasks at the beginning of the day for any item you're going to focus on during a focus period. Then, when it's time to start working on that task, click the play icon next to it to start recording your time. When you're finished, click stop. You can log your breaks throughout the day or add them later to gaps in your timeline.

When you need to view your performance for previous days, select the appropriate date in TMetric to see your tasks and timeline for that day. And if you already have a to-do app you like to use and don't want to have to retype everything into TMetric, you can create a Zap that sends your tasks from Todoist, Jira, Asana, Trello, or Google Tasks to TMetric automatically.

TMetric Price: Free for up to five users; from $5/month for the Professional plan for access to budgeting and invoicing features.

HourStack (Web, iOS, Android)

Best for a detailed weekly view of your focus sessions and breaks

HourStack is another great option for the Flowtime Technique, giving you a visual weekly picture of how you spent your time. It's like a calendar, but it's for things you did in the past instead of things you need to do.

To track your focus sessions and breaks in HourStack, add an entry and enter the name of the task you plan to focus on. You can also add an estimate for that task if you're curious to see if you can accurately estimate exactly how long it will take.

Once you've created the task, click on the task card and select Start to begin tracking your time. When you're finished, click on the task card again to pause the time or mark the task as complete. Then, do the same thing to track your breaks.

At the end of the week, you'll have a complete calendar view of each of the week's focus periods and breaks, alongside your estimates for how long you thought each task would take (if you added those).

And if you have your to-do's and tasks logged in another app already, you can send them to HourStack using one of its native integrations, or connect HourStack with more than 1,000 other apps using one of Zapier's HourStack integrations.

HourStack Price: From $7/month for the Personal plan that includes one user, app integrations, and unlimited entries.

Finding the Productivity Technique That's Right for You

Both the Pomodoro Technique and the Flowtime Technique were created by regular people who were simply looking for ways to stay focused and productive. And Flowtime is a great example of taking an existing technique that kind of works and putting your own spin on it, much like you would a recipe or anything else where preferences and tastes come into play.

In the end, the goal of using a productivity technique isn't to follow its rules to the letter. It's to discover new ways to stay focused, to get things done even when you don't want to, or to find better methods for prioritizing and tackling your to-do list.

Maybe neither Pomodoro or Flowtime is right for you. Maybe the best solution for you is a blend—a PomoFlowTime where you use timers when working on tasks you hate and don't when working on things that inspire you. And if that's what works for you, that's great. But if you write about it so others can use it, please don't call it PomoFlowTime.

source https://zapier.com/blog/flowtime-technique/

A Senior Manager at HubSpot Automates Registration for the INBOUND Conference

For the last few years, attendance at INBOUND, a week-long marketing, sales, and customer service event held in Boston, MA by HubSpot, has soared: 2017 had over 21,000 attendees and 2018 saw over 24,000. They expect bigger numbers for this year's event, being held the first week of September 2019.

Years past have seen speakers like Michelle Obama, Lena Waithe, Deepak Chopra, Shonda Rhimes, and plenty of other recognizable names. It's a can't-miss event for those passionate about growing their business—and growing as people— which means the registration experience must be seamless.

A clunky sign-up process leads to less customer confidence and lower attendance numbers, making it harder to get big names like this year's Katie Couric and Jada Pinkett-Smith.

But Elijah Clark-Ginsberg, senior event manager in charge of technology and attendee experience, says registration wasn't always as easy as their current experience:

"Event technology is a tough space with a lot of entrenched legacy providers […] We really jumped around trying to find something that worked for us and was a good experience for our attendees" he explains.

Part of the trouble he kept running into was that these older event technologies relied on archaic infrastructures. That meant moving information from the event management app into HubSpot, which INBOUND uses as both a customer relationship management (CRM) tool and for marketing automation. It was an immensely manual process.

"Between Zapier and Bizzabo, it's really been a complete game changer in terms of what we're able to do technology-wise and how easy it is for us and for our attendees."Elijah Clark-Ginsberg, Senior Event Manager, HubSpot

This work involved an outsourced team hired on to manage the integration and keep it running throughout the year. The cost came out of Elijah's team's budget and pulled resources from engineering teams.

It wasn't sustainable or cost-effective. So Elijah sought out a new event software. He landed on Bizzabo. "Since we've been using Bizzabo, we've seen a shift in how attendee-friendly our registration process is because Bizzabo's focus is so much more on the attendee," explains Elijah.

But there was still the issue of getting registration and attendee information from Bizzabo into HubSpot. Bizzabo's team had a recommendation for Elijah: automation tool, Zapier, which can be used to automatically send data from one app to another. Once he set up a Zap—an automated process—connecting Bizzabo and HubSpot, Elijah became a believer. "The cost to my budget is essentially zero," he says.

And as an added bonus, he and his team wound up getting even more out of the integration: insight. Thanks to the alerts and emails Zapier sends when it encounters an error, Elijah has a deeper insight into when and why things go awry during registration.

It adds a layer of transparency he didn't have before, providing insight into why a registered attendee doesn't show up to the event or when items don't transfer as expected. That transparency lends itself to an easy-to-follow paper trail, too:

"Say there are VIPs and we want to make sure that when they register, they redeem a code that's being tracked somewhere else," Elijah explains. "Now we know immediately when our most important investors have registered—and we're able to know that because of Zapier."

Elijah's getting all of these benefits—troubleshooting and a paper trail, a dramatically lowered cost, and the best attendee registration experience INBOUND has had—from one single Zap that connects Bizzabo to HubSpot.

About HubSpot

Since 2006, HubSpot has been on a mission to make the world more inbound. Today, over 56,500 total customers in more than 100 countries use HubSpot’s award-winning software, services, and support to transform the way they attract, engage, and delight customers. Comprised of Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, and a powerful free CRM, HubSpot gives companies the tools they need to Grow Better.

HubSpot's Tools

Icon:	App:	Used For:
	HubSpot	Customer relationship manager (CRM) and marketing automation
	Bizzabo	Event management

The Workflow

"[This] is actually the most foolproof and bulletproof integration we've ever had in our registration system."Elijah Clark-Ginsberg, Senior Event Manager, HubSpot

When someone registers to attend INBOUND, they select their ticket from a few options and then fill out a registration form powered by Bizzabo:

Once a registrant completes the form, Elijah's Zap jumps into action, taking the new registrant's information—like name, email, title, company, etc.—and sending it to HubSpot, where Zapier creates or updates a contact and fills in the appropriate fields. And the best part: What used to take months of building and managing an integration now happens instantly.

"It's a huge time saver," Elijah says. "Now, literally the day we start selling tickets, we start syncing, and we can just make the changes to the Zap on the fly."

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With this Zap handling what used to take a team of developers, Elijah says he's able to redirect their efforts to improving the attendee experience and build out new features:

"[Zapier] allows us to be a lot more innovative and creative with how we're using developers' time or money that we're paying freelance developers," he says. "We're able to have them work on slick new stuff that really elevates the experience."

Beyond saving his budget—and developer resources—Elijah enjoys the do-it-yourself (DIY) ethos Zapier enables.

"I think it comes down to just how much of [Zapier] is self-service, especially as a non-developer," Elijah says. "Being able to go ahead and get completely up and running, fix bugs and issues—and all that with very little effort—I think the biggest difference is that [Zapier's] very DIY."

Want to work as effectively as Elijah at HubSpot? Give Zapier a try for free.

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Our stories explore how Zapier's users solve common problems. From marketers to CEOs, educators to real estate agents, millions use Zapier to automate their most tedious tasks. If you haven't yet, try Zapier for free to see what we're all about.

What's your story? Tell us how you use Zapier to do more. You can also read even more customer stories and find new ways to improve your workflow and productivity.

All images provided by HubSpot.

source https://zapier.com/blog/hubspot/

We Put Off Drinking Coffee Until 10 a.m. Every Morning. It's Kind of Great.

When do you have your first dose of caffeine? For most people, the answer is obvious: first thing in the morning. But is that really the best time to drink coffee, tea, or any other caffeinated beverage?

Scientific research suggests not. Cortisol, a neurochemical related to alertness, is produced at high levels first thing in the morning, making caffeine consumption then redundant at best. Neuroscientist Steven L. Miller explains on his blog:

…cortisol production is strongly related to your level of alertness, and it just so happens that cortisol peaks for your 24-hour rhythm between 8 and 9 a.m., on average. Therefore, you are drinking caffeine at a time when you are already approaching your maximal level of alertness naturally.

So when are we supposed to drink caffeine? Miller continues:

Although your cortisol levels peak between 8 and 9 a.m. there are a few other times where—on average—blood levels peak again: between noon to 1 p.m., and between 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. In the morning, then, your coffee will probably be the most effective if you enjoy it between 9:30 and 11:30 a.m., when your cortisol levels are dropping before the next spike.

This post was picked up by Lifehacker, Time Magazine, Fast Company, and the YouTube channel ASAP Science, to name just a few. I remember reading about this, saying "that's interesting," then going right back to my habit of drinking coffee first thing in the morning.

Until now, in 2019, when I decided to try this lifehack out…and to drag a few of my Zapier co-workers along for the ride. I don't consider this a scientific study—more like a test done by a mildly curious blogger and a few guinea pigs he managed to drag along with him. Danvers, one of my co-workers, had done this for years, which was encouraging:

So I gave it a shot myself. Here's what happened.

Mornings Really Suck At First…

I'm up most weekdays at 6 a.m. Before this experiment, I had my daily cup of coffee around 7 a.m. I decided to put off my caffeine consumption until 10 a.m., every morning, for two weeks, and a few of my co-workers decided to join me.

For me, it was kind of brutal during the first week. The first two hours of the morning are generally my most productive time of the day, but without early coffee, I was feeling pretty groggy. I never got to the point of headaches, personally, but I definitely felt off.

But what stood out, even more, was how freaking potent my typical caffeine dose felt. My usual cup of morning coffee—which at 7 a.m. made me feel simply awake—made me downright jittery at 10 a.m., to the point where I had trouble concentrating after drinking it. Which is all just to say that I didn't have the best time for the first couple of days.

…Until Something Kind of Amazing Happens

But then, around four days in, something changed: The early mornings stopped being hard. After a few days I wouldn't even think about coffee first thing in the morning, but still felt energetic.

The jitteriness after my 10 a.m. cup eventually subsided too. Part of this is because I learned to savor my coffee, instead of scarfing it down like I did before. But mostly my body just adjusted to the new routine.

But perhaps the most surprising thing happened in the afternoons. Previously I'd crash around 2 p.m., at which point doing anything resembling writing is utterly impossible unless I make another pot of tea or something.

After making this switch, however, the mid-afternoon crash stopped happening. I stopped making mid-afternoon pots of tea. I felt energetic straight through the afternoon, without any secondary boost.

Can I promise these same results for everyone? Of course not. This is just what happened to me. Several of my co-workers experienced this differently—some noticed no difference whatsoever. People have different relationships with caffeine. Think of this as an opportunity to examine yours. What you learn might surprise you.

Thinking Of Trying This? Here Are a Few Tips

If you’re interested just know that delaying coffee or tea isn't going to be easy at first. Here are a few tips we picked up while trying this out, hopefully, they'll be helpful for you.

Replace The Ritual

Morning coffee or tea isn't just about the caffeine: it's a routine, a way to start your morning. Delaying your morning cup will be a lot easier if you replace the ritual with something else. Danvers, one of my Zapier co-workers, recommends hot beverages:

Frank, another co-worker, used peppermint oil:

The specifics don't matter, just find something to do when you'd otherwise be making coffee out of habit. It will make the transition a lot easier.

Try Working Out in the Morning

Physical activity is a great way to get the blood flowing, with or without caffeine. Early on during this experiment, I shifted my daily workout from just before lunch to right after breakfast. It helped a lot.

Pace Your Caffeine Consumption

I noticed some jitteriness drinking my routine coffee at 10 a.m. You might notice this too, in which case it might be a good idea to cut back the amount of caffeine you're consuming or to spread that consumption out over a long period of time.

I make my morning coffee using a moka pot and it tends to be quite strong. Since switching to 10 p.m. I've started pouring half a cup of coffee mixed with hot water or steamed milk. It's been a nice change of pace.

I think this is a change that I’m going to stick to, and if you’ve read this far I absolutely recommend that you try it out for at least a week. The results might surprise you.

source https://zapier.com/blog/delay-coffee-10am-every-morning/

How Small Businesses Use Infusionsoft by Keap and Zapier to Save Time—and Money

It's easy for a small business to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of apps and tools available for every aspect of a business. You have customer relationship management (CRM) systems where leads and notes live; sales automation tools to move leads from one stage to another; email marketing tools for newsletters and campaigns—and on and on.

But the savviest small business owners know you can use all-in-one marketing and sales automation tool Infusionsoft by Keap with app automator Zapier to cut costs and reduce the time it takes to manage the whole process.

Here's how a few of Zapier's users combine Infusionsoft's features with our library of over 1,400 apps to make their work more efficient and their days more productive.

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Create Infusionsoft Contacts from Form Entries

"Zapier unlocked functionality that would have otherwise been cost-prohibitive: merging Typeform responses with the appropriate Infusionsoft user records so we can keep track of client feedback."Dan Russell, Lead Strategist, Synduit

Companies and products alike grow through feedback. Synduit, a content and virtual marketing company, actively seeks out feedback from their clients to make sure the content they produce—as well as their other offerings—meet and surpass expectations, and to see if there's any room for improvement.

In order to keep track of which client gave what feedback, the team at Synduit uses Infusionsoft. In Infusionsoft, they collect clients, tag them, and trigger certain workflows depending on that tag.

To collect feedback, they use Typeform, sending forms to their clients as needed. When a client submits a response, a Zap, which is an automated workflow powered by Zapier, automatically runs, searching Infusionsoft for the client—and creating one when it doesn't exist—and adding the feedback to their record.

Over at Project Warrior, a fitness program based in the UK, founder Kyle Genner also uses Infusionsoft to manage his contacts, new and old. He uses a Wufoo form to schedule consultations with potential clients:

"Once the client completes the application in Wufoo, Zapier creates the contact in Infusionsoft and applies a 'hot lead' tag to it," he explains. He uses another Zap to send a text to the client, where they can book a call. If they don't? Infusionsoft comes into play again: "If they don't book a call, they're then sent a series of follow-up emails via Infusionsoft."

With a little automation, Kyle ensures every lead either books a consultation or gets a few emails, just to be safe.

For product engineering consultation firm YP3 Solutions, using resources and tools that are the best-in-class comes naturally: They seek out the best tools to aid their clients' R&D departments and engineering needs.

YP3 Solutions builds completely customizable web forms with Formsite.When the team gets a response, Zapier sends it to Infusionsoft, creating a contact. Zapier will also add a tag to the contact in Infusionsoft, which triggers one of the workflows they've built within Infusionsoft.

"It would be a full-time job managing all of the data to keep several campaigns going at once," says Jeremiah Harrison, digital marketing specialist. Instead of a person manually transferring information, this one Zap does it all, saving people power for the important work of assisting clients.

Automatically Manage Leads

Getting new leads is a lot like adopting a bundle of kittens: Fun at first—but as more start showing up, the effort and time to manage increases at an exponential rate. So, why not take the manual out of lead management, like New Meta does?

New Meta uses Zapier to send new leads from Facebook into Infusionsoft once a lead finishes filling out the Facebook lead ad form.

Now that these new leads exist, why not share the good news with the rest of the team? With these Zaps, you can instantly notify your team or an individual in Slack. It's an easy, trackable way to maintain a feed of new leads in Slack, where anyone can come in and see the funnel at work.

These are also an easy way to celebrate wins: When sharing in Slack or via email, add in a celebratory gif or emoji (or three). Sharing leads doesn't just have to be about the numbers—it's good for the company morale, too.

Jeremiah at YP3 Solutions uses another straightforward integration between Infusionsoft and online scheduler Calendly to make sure new leads know when their appointment is approaching.

He explains it best: "I use Zapier to take date and times from the Calendly app, load them into custom fields in Infusionsoft, and then send reminders from Infusionsoft field timers counting down to the appointment with unique, personalized emails."

It's a great way to ensure your lead doesn't forget the meeting, which always increases your chances of closing a deal.

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When you combine two powerful tools like Infusionsoft and Zapier, and throw in our 1,400+ partner apps, there's no limit to the work you can accomplish with simple, automated workflows.

Want to combine the powers of Infusionsoft with the easy automation of Zapier? Give Zapier a try for free.

Our stories explore how Zapier's users solve common problems. From marketers to CEOs, educators to real estate agents, millions use Zapier to automate their most tedious tasks. If you haven't yet, try Zapier for free to see what we're all about.

What's your story? Tell us how you use Zapier to do more. You can also read even more customer stories and find new ways to improve your workflow and productivity.

source https://zapier.com/blog/infusionsoft-case-studies/

Work-Life Balance May Have More to Do with Your Personality Than Your Job

Work-life balance—or work-life integration—is a hot topic right now. There are dozens of articles published every week about it, and everyone has their own opinions on how to achieve it. Even employers are getting in on the trend, presenting work-life balance as a perk in job descriptions.

There are certainly ways that the company you work for can destroy your work-life balance, hustle culture being a prime example. But there's also research that suggests that achieving work-life balance has little to do with your job—it's mostly driven by your personality.

First, Let's Agree That Work-Life Balance Is Difficult to Define

In a 2014 study on work-life balance policies in the workplace, researchers Diana Benito-Osorio, Laura Muñoz-Aguado, and Cristina Villar reviewed all of the ways work-life balance has been defined in various research studies. They found 37 different definitions in studies conducted over 20 years.

Some of the definitions focus on the amount of time spent in each activity ("Work-life balance refers to the individual capacity to properly manage personal and professional life"). Some refer to an individual's goals and priorities ("Work-life balance is about effectively managing the juggling act between paid work and all other activities that are important to people, such as family, community activities, voluntary works, personal development, and leisure and recreation"). And some refer more to an individual's mental state when at work or home ("Work-life balance is the extent to which an individual is equally engaged in his or her work role and family life")

So for some people, work-life balance means having an equal amount of time allocated to both work and non-work activities. For others, it means distancing themselves from thoughts about work so that they're able to be fully engaged in activities outside of work. In this piece, we're going to focus primarily on the latter definition.

Of course, there are situations where an imbalance between work and life is directly caused by your job—for example, if you're working 16-hour days to make partner at your law firm, you're an on-call surgeon, or you have a boss who expects you always to be online. But when it's not directly related to work expectations, an inability to achieve work-life balance may be an outcome of your personality.

How Personality Impacts Your Ability to Achieve Work-Life Balance

In her book Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life, sociologist Christena Nippert-Eng proposes that there are two types of people:

• Segmentors are people who are able to draw clear lines between work and life. Segregating work and life into separate sections of their minds is as natural as breathing.
• Integrators are people who struggle to separate work and life. They think about life at work and work at home and are much more likely to work—and think about work—during off hours.

If we go back to our definitions of work-life balance, Segmentors may be able to work more than 40 hours a week and still feel like they have sufficient work-life balance because they can shut off thoughts about work when they go home.

Integrators, on the other hand, may struggle even at 40 hours a week because they continue to think about work at home, making them less engaged with their families, priorities, and activities outside of work. Or they may be more prone to work outside of work hours, limiting the amount of time they have for personal activities and priorities.

So if you're an Integrator, your job, boss, or employer may have little to do with your inability to achieve work-life balance. It may simply be that you're inclined to blur the lines—incapable of segmenting the different parts of your life—so your struggle to achieve work-life balance follows you from job to job throughout your entire career.

Most People Are Integrators

A few years ago, the People Analytics team at Google sought to understand how Nippert-Eng's findings applied to Google employees. They conducted a study and found that only 31 percent of their employees could be classified as Segmentors.

The other 69 percent—more than two-thirds of all of their employees—were Integrators.

Additionally, they found that Segmentors tended to be much more satisfied with their well-being than Integrators. Integrators, on the other hand, were much more likely to express their desire to find a better balance between work and life.

If you feel like you struggle to balance work and life, you're probably an Integrator. And unless you work for someone like Elon Musk who believes everyone should be working 80 hours a week, those emails you're reading and sending outside of work are signs that you need to make an effort to create a better work-life balance for yourself.

Achieving Work-Life Balance as an Integrator

It makes for a funny article in The Onion, but you don't have to quit your job to achieve work-life balance.

Without a doubt, I am an Integrator. A few years ago, I worked with a Segregator—let's call him Frank—in a particularly stressful job. One morning, I was chatting with Frank about our project while we were getting ready for a meeting, and I mentioned that I had trouble sleeping the night before because I couldn't stop thinking about a new problem we were facing on the project.

"You were up late thinking about work?" Frank asked.

"Yes," I said. "You weren't?"

"I never think about work after I leave here for the day," he replied.

I didn't believe him—not for a second. "Just stop thinking about work" is something many people have recommended to me over the years, something that seems as silly as saying "just don't feel hungry." So I assumed Frank was lying or exaggerating.

As it turns out, Frank was a Segregator.

But when you're an Integrator, the idea of just not thinking about work at home sounds like a fairy tale. You've probably gotten some of the same advice I have over the years—"try meditating" being the core recommendation. Once, someone told me to imagine I was lying on a cloud, and every time I had a thought, put it in a box and throw it off the cloud.

I spent 15 minutes throwing boxes like I was a package sorter at UPS before finally calling it quits.

"Just don't think about it" simply isn't a viable solution to finding a better work-life balance; it's not a viable solution to anything, really. It's as helpful as telling an anxious person not to worry.

However, there is some research that may hold the keys to overcoming your Integrator tendencies so that you can train yourself to be more like Frank.

Find an activity that frees your mind from thoughts about work

A study by Sabine Sonnentag and Charlotte Fritz published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology presents research showing that drawing a line between work and life requires psychological detachment.

When we're at work, we experience work-related stress. Once that stress is no longer present, our bodies and brains begin to recover. But Sonnentag and Fritz argue that simply being away from work isn't enough to fully recover; you also need to create psychological detachment from work. In other words, to recover from work, you have to stop thinking about work.

So yes, we're back to "just stop thinking about it," but their research offers some actionable strategies. They found that engaging in activities outside of work, from simple things like taking a walk or reading a book to more intensive activities like learning a language or playing a sport—were much more likely to help people detach from work and work-related thoughts.

But the specific activity that creates psychological detachment differs from person to person. "It is not a specific activity per se that helps to recover from job stress but its underlying attributes such as relaxation or psychological distance from job-related issues," Sonnentag and Fritz write.

To find your activity, you may have to try different things to see what works. After work, go for a jog, cook dinner, or take a class on a subject you're interested in, and see which activity frees your mind from work and makes you feel more recovered from work stress.

If you go for a jog after work but think about work the whole time you're jogging, that's probably not the right activity for you. Find one that fully takes your mind away from work thoughts.

If you can find a way to create the psychological detachment you need to recover, you may find it much easier to create the work-life balance you desire.

Stop engaging in activities that remind you of work

Boomerang's Inbox Pause feature lets you set a schedule when you want to have your email delivered to your inbox.

Another work-life balance definition listed in the Benito-Osorio, Muñoz-Aguado, and Villar study references the changing nature of work as a factor in our inability to find balance: "Personal control of time focused at the individual or family level for those who have difficulty finding time for personal life because of the encompassing nature of many contemporary forms of work."

Why is contemporary work all-encompassing? A big reason is that we have access to work all the time thanks to laptops and mobile phones. Many of us use the same device for both personal and professional tasks and communications—although maybe we shouldn't—making it difficult to avoid reminders of work while away from work.

Have you ever glanced at your phone just before bed, noticed an unread email, read said email, and spent the next several hours stressing over its contents? Have you ever done the same first thing in the morning, after dinner, or while killing time over the weekend?

If so, there's an easy way to create a better work-life balance for yourself: Stop doing that.

Another important aspect of recovery is avoiding continued exposure to the cause of your stress. As Sonnentag and Fritz write: "it is an important precondition for recovery that the functional systems taxed during work will not be called upon any longer." In other words, every time you check in on work when you're not supposed to be working, you're inhibiting your ability to relax, recover, and detach from work.

When Google's Dublin office made employees drop their devices off at the end of the day so they couldn't work at home, many people reported feeling much less stressed. But even if your employer doesn't pry your devices from your hands as you leave work, there are ways to keep yourself from checking in on work at home.

Boomerang—a free Gmail and Outlook extension—offers a feature called Inbox Pause that lets you create a schedule for when you want to receive email. If you don't want to be tempted to read work emails in the evenings and on weekends, just create a schedule in Boomerang to have your email delivered only during working hours.

The fact that it doesn't deliver your email is key because it means you won't see new emails even if you're tempted to check your inbox in the evening.

If calls and texts on your work phone are a problem, you can use your phone's do not disturb feature to set a schedule for when you want all incoming notifications to be silenced.

If it's Slack that draws you back into work, you can set up a do-not-disturb schedule there, too.

These things all reduce the likelihood of being tempted to check in on work while you're off, but in the end, it mostly boils down to changing your behavior. If you're tempted to check in on work over the weekend, you have to avoid the temptation, knowing your future work-life-balanced self will thank you for it.

Talk to your boss about your personal goals

Google's People Analytics team recommends another strategy they call the "One Simple Thing" goal-setting technique. An employee shares a personal goal—something like "I won't read work emails at home"—with their boss. The employee's boss then becomes accountable for holding the employee to that goal.

And while Google's People Analytics team says they haven't been able to measure the success of the technique, other studies show that sharing personal goals with your boss can be beneficial for both you and the company you work for.

In an article for Harvard Business Review, executive coach Michael E. Kibler describes the results of a year-long executive development program focused on "active partnering"—a system where executives share both personal and professional goals with their bosses. Together, the two parties form strategies for how the organization can help support those goals.

Upon entering the program, 60 of the 473 participating executives noted that they were either considering leaving their firms or actively looking for new jobs. But in the five years after participating in the program, only two of the executives actually left their jobs.

The idea of sharing your personal goals—and your efforts to achieve work-life balance—with your boss may sound like an uncomfortable and unprofessional conversation, but there's value in having it. Your boss may be able to support you in your efforts to leave work at work by holding you accountable for working on the weekends, helping you identify tasks you really shouldn't be completing, or assisting you in brainstorming ways to delegate and share your workload.

And if your boss isn't on board with helping you achieve your goals, it may be a sign that it's not just your personality that's creating your work-life imbalance. It might be time to look for a new job.

If you are the boss, Google's "One Simple Thing" approach may be a good exercise to do with your team to help your employees better balance work and life. You can even make a copy of Google's template for the exercise as a simple starting point.

Make a to-do list for tomorrow at the end of every day

In his book The Organized Mind, neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explains that when we're trying to remember something, our brains put that information into a "rehearsal loop" that seeks to regularly remind us of that task.

If you leave work for the day with a brain full of tasks that you need to complete tomorrow or next week, your brain will constantly cycle back to those tasks while you're away from work. And since part of psychological detachment requires that we distance ourselves from thoughts about work, that rehearsal loop works against our ability to achieve work-life balance.

One strategy for closing the rehearsal loop and leaving work tasks at work: Spend 5-15 minutes at the end of every day writing down the things you need to work on the next day and/or week. Even something as simple as adding tasks to a list in a to-do app can help you leave your thoughts about those tasks behind. But there's also evidence that writing a more detailed and reflective journal entry could be worthwhile, too.

Social psychologist James W. Pennebaker says that "keeping a journal helps to organize an event in our mind. When we do that, our working memory improves, since our brains are freed from the enormously taxing job of processing that experience."

So by taking time at the end of your workday to reflect on the day's events, process and order those events in your mind, and write down what you need to take care of the next time you're at work, you can essentially empty your mind of thoughts about work before you head home for the day.

If you don't already have an established method for documenting your to-dos, consider these eight different task management methods to find the approach that works for you.

Integrators Who Work From Home

When you work in an office, commuting serves as an everyday event that creates a separation between work time and home time. But for those of us who work from home, there may not be such a clear distinction. The difference between working and relaxing may be as minuscule as shutting your laptop and grabbing a TV remote.

In 2004, researchers Tracey Crosbie and Jeanne Moore published the results of their study investigating whether working from home was the solution to achieving work-life balance. Their conclusion: more research was needed.

While some people expressed having a better work-life balance while working from home, others expressed that the balance had degraded since working from home.

Some of the participants said that working from home made them feel like they had more time to spend with their children—even if they were working longer hours. Most said working from home gave them more flexibility and control over how they spend their time.

Others expressed frustration at having to look at their work equipment and supplies while at home or said that getting work calls and direct mail at home caused tension within their families.

The researchers' conclusion: "Those who are thinking of working from home should give careful consideration to their personality, skills, and aspirations. For example, those who tend to work long hours outside of the home might find that home life is even further marginalized by work life."

For an Integrator who's already prone to blurring the lines between work and life, working from home can exacerbate that tendency, so it's important to set clear lines between work and life:

• Try setting working hours and sticking to them, much in the way that you would do if you were expected to be in the office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Create a space for your work that's separate from your living space. If you work on the couch and relax on the couch, there's no distinction between the two different activities.
• Consider the benefits of signing up for a coworking space to take your work outside of the house—or try working from a coffee shop occasionally.

But none of that is to say that working from home is inherently bad for work-life balance. Many of the study's participants said that working from home gave them more control over their personal time, which Sonnentag and Fritz say is another factor that enhances our ability to recover from work.

Achieving Work-Life Balance When It's Not in Your Nature to Do So

Sometimes, there's a clear reason why you haven't achieved a balance between work and life. If your job requires you to travel constantly, your boss demands that you work overtime regularly, or you're forced to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, those are obvious causes of your work-life imbalance.

But if those things aren't the case, it may just be in your nature to blur the lines between work and life. No job or career change can fix that for you. Instead, you have to make a focused effort to mimic Segregators—to draw clear lines between work life and home life—so your body and brain can relax, recover, and create more psychological distance between the two activities.

Related reading:

• Why Mindfulness Makes You More Productive—And How to Make It Work for You
• 10 Signs That You're Headed for Burnout
• The Best Ways to Protect Your Time
• How to Make Your Mondays More Productive (and Less Stressful)
• 7 Science-Backed Ways to Take Better Breaks

Hiking image by Holly Mandarich via Unsplash; woman working at a coffee shop by Bonnie Kittle via Unsplash.

source https://zapier.com/blog/achieving-work-life-balance/