During the day we often pick up our phones to send a text relating to what we are working on and get sidetracked by different notifications or apps. We end up wasting time we should have spent working. You can keep the distractions to a minimum if you don’t have to look at your phone. There’s a wide variety of services on Google Assistant that will help you avoid that trap. All you need to activate them is your voice. And the services in this list don’t require you to add any new apps to your phone either. You may even be able to delete some! If you don’t have Google Assistant set up to respond to your voice, you can follow these quick steps to enable it. Here are some useful things Google Assistant Services can do for you to help keep you away from distraction and working productively.
Send email
Sending email is a necessary part of anyone’s workday, but opening your email can lure you into a black hole of distractions. Use Google Assistant to send an email without opening your inbox and losing an hour in the email weeds. To do this, launch Google Assistant and say “Email _______ (name of contact).” Then dictate the message you want to compose, review it, and send it.
Use a calculator
Math is hard sometimes. If you need a quick calculation, you don’t need to open your calculator app and type in the problem. All you need to do is ask Google Assistant, and it will solve the problem for you using the proper order of operations. This feature saves you both time and mental energy, making it easier to remain focused and be productive.
Keep track of daily expenses
Whether for work or home, keeping track of your expenses can be time-consuming and complicated. Google has an expense tracker service where you can log in your expenses each day. Just say, “OK Google, tell Daily Expense that I have spent $23.15 on groceries.”
Help you choose
Did you know that adults make over 35,000 decisions every day? Why not take some of that pressure off of yourself and spend less time deciding and more time working? You can ask Google Assistant to flip a coin, or you can say, “Talk to Help Me Choose” and have it give you two choices. The service chooses for you!
Remind you
Busy people get distracted and forget things. If you have a meeting to go to or plan on watching a webinar at 2:00, you can ask Assistant to set a reminder for you by saying, “OK Google, set a reminder to watch that webinar at two” or ” Remind me to call John.”
Set a timer
Many workers use the Pomodoro method for keeping themselves focused. Part of using this system requires setting timers for work time and break time. Setting a timer using Google Assistant is easy. Just say, “OK Google,” and then ask it to set a timer or countdown to one minute. It starts running automatically.
Keep track of time spent on tasks
If you work from home or are an independent contractor for someone, you need to keep track of the hours you spend working. Google Assistant has a way for you to keep track of this information without any complicated software that can take time away from what you should be doing. Ask Google Assistant to talk to Timesheets Companion. It keeps track of your work and saves it to a spreadsheet for you.
Take vocal notes
When you are working on one thing, but suddenly get an idea for something else for another project, what do you do? To keep yourself on track with what you are doing, yet also remember that brilliant idea, you can tell Google Assistant to talk to Vocal Notes, and it will record and save your thoughts. You can access them later and either read them or listen to them. The Services available on Google Assistant make tasks in every area of your life simpler to keep track of. For more ways to use Google assistant in your everyday life, check out the “What it can do” section of the Google Assistant home page.
