Automating Yourself

Psst…you know how there’s a blue-jillion things you need to be doing? Dozens and dozens of balls in the air to be juggled? Plate after plate to keep spinning? Do yourself a favor – A.U.T.O.M.A.T.E.

Go to those casting websites you check each day and see if you can’t sign up for email alerts. Make sure those profiles are correct! If you signed up a few years ago, you probably don’t read the same age range, now, that you did then. Update. Refresh. Sign up for email alerts.

You know all those websites out there you KNOW you should TOTES be reading, but keep forgetting about? Then clearly you’ve not met my good friend, Feedly.com. Srsly. Once you have a profile, when you do have time to surf, look for new, interesting, and informative things to add to your feed.

While we’re at it, is your computer set up to automatically update, scan for viruses, backup, and defrag regularly? Having recently suffered through computer crash, I want to do my public service for the day and tell you to set all those things up to run without you having to push a button. While you’re at it, you are backing up in multiple places, right? RIGHT?!

Hey, you know a cool tool to help you look like you’re really with it? Buffer. Actually, it’s bufferapp.com. You can schedule social media stuff so that your fan page, or project page, or show twitter feed doesn’t sit idle whilst you, you know, make magical art things happen.

Google alerts are pretty cool, too. I have mine set up for a couple of playwright submission phrases, so I don’t have to spend time hunting them down. The submissions literally come to me.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to take a moment to sing the praises of Google calendar. I can enter tasks, I can enter appointments, I can enter deadlines — whatever — and the elves at Google send me email reminders and – AND! – alerts on my phone, because I’ve got the app synced with my account.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things for which I’m totally a pen-and-paper kinda gal. But sometimes, a gal needs a little help.