Collecting and Organising Data for Maximum Productivity.

This week’s article is a guest post by Luke Smith.

Our lives nowadays revolve around our digital devices. Whether for business or personal use, many of us manage more than one including smartphones, tablets, computers, or laptops. As if the hardware isn’t enough, the amount of data each device collects and stores can be considerable. Media, calendars, notes, deadlines, and productivity-related information are just a few forms of the information stored on our devices.

Our smartphones and computers are designed to simplify our lives and improve productivity by helping us get things done. But organizing and protecting all our essential digital files can become a whole time-consuming task in itself. Consider the following ways to organize and protect your data for a more productive experience.

Protect Your Personal Data

It’s essential to take control of your personal data to keep it safe. Certain types of information can be used for identity theft and fraud. Data such as Social Security numbers, bank account, and credit card numbers, and home addresses should not be kept in the form of notes or contacts on your devices. If your device is lost or stolen, someone could access the unencrypted personal information.

You can secure your data by enabling passwords on all your devices to minimize the risk of someone else accessing your information. In many cases, if the device is lost or stolen, you may be able to remotely erase your information before someone obtains it.

You may be wondering how maintaining device safety leads to better productivity. If your data is stolen, it can take weeks and even months of your time to secure it again. The steps you need to take after the security breach include notifying your credit card companies or bank and waiting for replacement cards and checks which could take days or weeks. It would also be advisable to monitor your credit reports over several months to watch for fraudulent activity and file a complaint if any is found. The best measures to take are preventative ones so you don’t have to deal with the time-consuming aftermath of stolen data.

Embrace the Experimental Framework of Agility

Data organization for personal or businesses use can benefit from agility; you want to have the confidence to move quickly and efficiently. The fastest ways to access and manage your data include the following:

• Knowing exactly where your data is kept, to save time on searching for it.

• Syncing data between all devices, to minimize the time spent accessing your information.

• Securing your data to avoid the consequences of data theft or loss.

• Scheduling automatic backups of your device information, in case the device is lost, stolen, or damaged.

You could improve the speed of any of the ways mentioned to increase productivity by implementing an experimental framework. An experimental framework is generally used for software development but could be adapted for productivity. It essentially lets you innovate and test your ideas by identifying the issues that reduce your productivity in order to find alternatives for a more agile experience. There are five stages to experimenting through a framework:

2. Hypothesize Change

If you currently access and share data between your personal devices and company systems in an inefficient way, such as requesting employees to email you the data you need, conceptualizing solutions for possible alternatives is a good start.

After brainstorming, you may come up with a couple of ideas on how to improve integration between your smartphone and the company computer. One idea may be upgrading business software to work with a company that provides access to data via a cloud server. Another idea may be installing remote desktop software so you can take over a company computer.

2. Identify the Variables

In the second stage, you’ll need to look closer at the pros and cons of each option. You may find that upgrading your business software to cloud storage makes it simple to access your data from anywhere, but the upgrade could cost you thousands of dollars. As for remote desktop software, it’s less expensive and the software provider says it’s compatible with a smartphone.

3. Run the Experiment

Experimenting with your ideas may be as simple as running a free trial of each software option to compare how each one works for you. Or use ethical hacking to test how your prospective method will perform in order to find any vulnerabilities which could affect your valuable data.

4. Measure Results

After trying out each software for a week, you may have found things you like and dislike about both. You may find that the remote desktop software is thousands of dollars cheaper, but doesn’t work if the computer is shut off, which could be a problem if there’s a power outage. A company software upgrade may cost thousands more, but the data is more reliably accessible through the cloud server.

5. Determine Conversion to Improve

After much thought, you decide that spending more on the software that moves data to the cloud is the best choice. There will be fewer scenarios of inaccessible data, resulting in the benefits outweighing the cost.

In the end, getting things done is an ever-evolving process. The amount of data the apps and devices that are meant to improve your productivity are certain to increase. You’ll need to implement a plan to manage the information effectively while keeping your data safe no matter what the future may hold.

Luke Smith is a writer and researcher turned blogger. Since finishing college he is trying his hand at being a freelance writer. He enjoys writing on a variety of topics but leadership and digital marketing topics are his favorite. When he isn’t writing you can find him traveling, hiking, or gaming.

Thank you for reading my stories! 😊

My purpose is to help 1 million people by 2020 to live the lives they desire. To help people find happiness and become better organised and more productive so they can do more of the important things in life.

If you would like to learn more about the work I do, and how I can help you to become better organised and more productive, you can visit my website or you can say hello on Twitter, YouTube or Facebook and subscribe to my weekly newsletter right here.