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How to Build a Knockout Tech Stack that Gets You (and Your Team) Organized

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with emails, meetings, and tasks, getting organized is necessary to regain control. But, organization isn’t a one step process. True, thorough organization requires that you set priorities, simplify processes, and automate where you can. Trying to organize a never-ending to-do list, or wall-to-wall meetings is frustrating and futile.

The good news is there are a number of tools and applications that can help. When combined, they create a powerful and effective tech stack—a set of complementary tools that work together to remove roadblocks and lessen your workload. We’ve previously put together a People Ops tech stack, and are at it again, curating a list of the perfect apps to get you organized.

Check out our tech stack recommendations for organizing three of the most time-intensive parts of your day:

Email

Zero emails is the goal of this app and what feels like a Herculean task is accomplished with its self-learning technology; Zero learns your priorities and preferences and creates a “mail-feed” to optimize your inbox, including summarizing unread emails.

Handle starts with your email, and leverages it into a powerful to-do generating machine by merging it with your calendar. You can easily transform emails into tasks, and then drag and drop them into your calendar, creating a seamless and integrated workflow.

Meetings

Calendly saves you from excessive emails by allowing you to set your availability preferences for meetings and then create and send out a custom calendar link. Clients, coworkers, and customers then schedule a time that works for them (and which you already know works for you).

Solid wants your meetings to be as productive as possible, so it tracks time, agenda items left to complete, and the group’s actions during the meeting. It then emails everyone the outcome, including any personal tasks for each attendee, and generates feedback on the meeting’s productivity.

Clara is your personal meeting scheduler. By cc-ing Clara on any email, the tool takes over the planning process and finds a time that works for all parties. She takes care of the back and forth emails automatically, so you don’t have to, and then syncs the information with everyone’s calendars.

Tasks

Airtable is the spreadsheet you’ve been dreaming of. It takes your (or your team’s) tasks in all their various forms (e.g. written lists, images, videos, etc.) and makes them easy to see, use, and organize. It integrates with all your apps and is optimized for every device, making it truly one of the most intuitive and sleekest-looking spreadsheets out there.

Asana makes planning easy and beautiful to look at. You and your team can break up tasks by sprint, week, month, day, task, assignee, etc. and then create subtasks to make sure you all hit your goals on time. You can also attach docs to tasks, so checking on projects is easy and clutter-free.

Plan merges your to-do list with your calendar and then filters by event, task, and areas of focus. It schedules in time for you to complete your work and then offers analytics, allowing you to learn from your work and productivity patterns.

The beauty of all of this tech stack is that the apps don’t live in a vacuum, but rather understand that most of your stress is a result of the ways so many of your responsibilities overlap. Getting truly organized means utilizing tools, like a tech stack, that are as integrated as your duties, and that automate many of your mundane, but time-intensive tasks.

What tools do you use to stay organized? Tweet us your tech stacks @zenefits and learn how to organize your HR once and for all with our free guide.

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