Productivity hacks: New ways to save time during the workday

Time really is money — so it needs to be spent wisely. We only get so many hours in the day to do everything we need to, like move through our to-do lists, make an impact at our jobs, and spend time with loved ones at the end of the day.

So it’s vital you make the most of the time you do have, which often means finding ways to maximize productivity and reduce redundant or monotonous tasks. But increasing productivity can feel easier said than done — it’s hard to say no to a new project, and you can’t push off your mundane tasks to someone else. That’s where technology comes into play.

By finding solutions that help you trim back on unnecessary tasks, you can streamline workflows and make your workday work better for you. Here are a few productivity hacks to start with.

Meetings are typically a great way to collaborate and get everyone on the same page. But when poorly managed, they can drain your productivity. If you’ve ever sat through a meeting just to plan another meeting, or one that covered information you already knew, then you know how inefficient some meetings can be. But this can be an easy fix with a survey tool that allows you to collect information upfront and establish a baseline of understanding before you meet.

Now available for all Zoom customers, Zoom Surveys provides a seamless way to poll and survey your intended audience to gather feedback and opinions. Before hosting a meeting, launch a quick survey to your participants to gather ideas upfront, identify themes, and determine which topics are most pressing. By altering your meeting content based on the findings – not your assumptions – you can help ensure that everyone walks away fully informed. Even better, if everyone is aligned ahead of time, you may be able to eliminate the meeting altogether. 

What about the times you need feedback to improve your work? We all know the value of surveys, but if you spend too much time creating them, tracking down emails, or worse, not receiving the engagement you need, an integrated survey tool can help. 

Built in to the Zoom platform, Zoom Surveys enables you to get the feedback you need, when you need it, and creates an engaging and interactive experience for participants. Launch a survey at any time to poll colleagues for feedback, suggest areas for improvement, and learn more about your customers’ preferences. 

Zoom Surveys is easily accessible and can be used on its own or launched from directly inside Zoom Meetings or Zoom Webinars. And coming soon, Zoom Surveys will expand to integrate with Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Phone, Zoom Events, and Zoom Scheduler.

As a survey creator, you can: 

• Create a survey library
• Designate answers to be anonymous 
• Share surveys via a hyperlink
• Add additional messaging
• Customize your survey’s background with your preferred logos, colors, and branding elements
• Define next questions based on respondents’ answers

You’ve taken notes since you were in school. They’re essential for remembering important items and reflecting on what you learned, and the same goes for today’s working professionals. Many people use digital note-taking tools to summarize and track action items for projects or during meetings. And while these are necessary for documenting details, jumping from your note app to your meeting solution can hurt your focus. After a call, you usually have to spend a few extra minutes sharing the notes with everyone, and then wait a few extra hours or even days to get their input. This adds up, especially if you have a lot of meetings on your calendar.

Our advice: bring your note-taking app into your existing communications platform. By combining the two, you can have everything you need in one place to stay productive, easily tracking your to-dos before, during, and after meetings. 

That’s why we’re offering Zoom Notes. With Zoom Notes, you can create and take notes right in the Zoom app, which helps you:  

• Create a personal or shared agenda before a meeting to help everyone prepare
• Manually capture what is shared in a meeting
• Share outcomes, action items, and decisions after a meeting for visibility and alignment
• Pull up a note in a meeting without the distraction of switching apps
• Build a central repository for personal and shared notes

Zoom Notes is available to all paid Zoom customers, with the exception of those on a Zoom United bundle. 

Speaking of skipping unnecessary steps — why use a scheduling tool that’s outside of your meeting solution? Using third-party apps like Calendly means you have to toggle between multiple applications like your email, calendar, and video communications solution just to set up a call, potentially hurting productivity.

Find that same functionality within existing solutions, starting with Zoom Scheduler (now generally Find that same functionality within existing solutions, starting with Zoom Scheduler. With our integrated scheduling tool, you can reduce the time and hassle of appointment scheduling by getting it done all within Zoom.

You can use Zoom Scheduler to:

• Generate slots of availability when all relevant stakeholders are available
• Create a recurring instance of availability
• Allow multiple users to sign up for one slot
• Automate and personalize email reminders and confirmations
• Collect preferred information during the attendee booking process
• Customize the colors, logos, and more on your appointment booking page to align to your brand voice
• Set up a session that allows an attendee to find time with an available team member
• Customize and shorten any URLs you generate

We all know the feeling: you need to get started on a project, but you can’t find the inspiration or motivation. You’re wasting precious time trying to figure out how to get out of your creative slump or writing block. 

Another productivity hack: find a free-flowing space to get a brainstorm going, spark an idea, or conceptualize something visually.

A virtual whiteboard can be the key to unlocking new levels of creativity and collaboration. With a digital canvas, you can expand and clarify ideas in a visual way, helping you move past mental roadblocks and on to tackling the project at hand. And with Zoom Whiteboard, you can watch ideas come to life together with your team, using it to collaborate before, during, and after meetings.

While there are dozens of whiteboarding features you can use to effectively visualize ideas or get inspired, here are a few that will help you streamline brainstorming sessions:

• Launch a meeting from within a whiteboard: Want to walk through a whiteboard live after receiving input? Instantly launch a Zoom Meeting with all of the active collaborators on your whiteboard, and dive into a discussion right then and there.
• Presentation mode: Get the group’s attention by requiring collaborators to follow along when you’re presenting a whiteboard during a meeting. They won’t be able to edit the canvas when you set this feature on, keeping them focused on the subject matter at hand. That way, you can get the input you need in a timely manner.
• Timer: Keep teams on track with an activity timer feature that also serves as a countdown clock. You can extend the time or play sound effects when time is up, inspiring everyone to take quick and effective action. 
• Templates: You can design and publish internal whiteboard templates that only your organization can access. So when lightning strikes and a great idea pops into your head, you can quickly launch an existing template and share it with your teams in a snap.

Sometimes, you need to hop on a quick video call with someone to explain a convoluted topic or visually display how something works. But what happens if you can’t track them down or get a call on the books? 

That’s where asynchronous video tools come into play. With these solutions, you can quickly record yourself and your screen, and then send those videos to relevant stakeholders. Our asynchronous video offering, Zoom Clips, helps you do just that, allowing you to easily record, edit, and share high-quality short-form videos both internally and externally. You can demonstrate important information to teammates in a pinch, add a personal touch to your collaboration, or just share a detailed project update without having to join a live meeting.

With Zoom Clips, you also get a dedicated content library where you can manage, share, rename, download, or delete your clips. And you can share this content with others at any time, so they can then view the clip, leave comments, or use emojis to react to it. You can get your message across without having to waste time getting a hold of someone.

The little things add up to a lot of time and energy — the time it takes to share notes with a team, set up a meeting, collect feedback, or get a brainstorming session going. By trimming unnecessary tasks, you don’t just regain productivity, you also pave the way for more strategic, meaningful work. 

Whether you’re bringing notes or scheduling apps into your communications platform, simplifying workflows with integrations, or cutting out the mundane with intuitive AI features, Zoom is your all-in-one platform for productive, meaningful work. All of these come as part of our Zoom Workplace offering, which combines video, chat, phone, meetings, notes, whiteboard, surveys, and more into one seamless platform. One dedicated space to help you jumpstart creativity and streamline workflows. Make your workday work for you with our productivity solutions that integrate seamlessly into Zoom’s ecosystem.

To learn more about saving time with Zoom, watch our on-demand webinar, “Supercharge Your Efficiency: Zoom’s Top 10 Time-Saving Features.”