Tips Posts 6–10 of 13

Switching from Google Workspace to Zoho - the Good, the Bad and the Buggy

Late last year, Google announced they’d be doing away with their free, legacy G Suite (now called Google Workspace) program. I’d been using G Suite with my jedfonner.com domain for 17 years to handle email, calendar and Google Docs. When Eli and Isaac had gotten old enough, I’d given them accounts at jedfonner.com too. Even though Google eventually walked back their plans to force people off their free tier, this scare made me realize I didn’t want to be beholden to Google for such crucial systems as my email and calendar for me and my family.

Looking around for alternatives, I looked at a few like ProtonMail and Tutanota but eventually I settled on Zoho. I’d actually been using Zoho Notebook for a while, ever since Google Keep stopped working on my phone, and I liked how the company was focused on being a low-cost but full featured suite of products for teams and businesses. So I decided to take the leap and move from Google to Zoho Workplace.

Let me tell you about my experience moving away from Google. If after reading this post you are interested in signing up or switching to Zoho, use this referral link to earn $100 in promotional credit: https://go.zoho.com/uDa.

Boost your 1-on-1s with this one simple trick

The number one rule of being a manager is to have 1-on-1s with your direct reports (Don’t believe me? Read this and this and this). But the best 1-on-1s are those where your direct report has spent time thinking about what they want to discuss with you. How can you ensure this happens?

In my experience, some of your employees will jump at the opportunity to have uninterrupted time with their manager, and they will have a million things they want to talk about. But what about the other type of employee? At least half, if not more, of your employees need to spend time reflecting and thinking about what they want to get out of the meeting beforehand. How do you encourage these people to prepare for their 1-on-1 with you?

I’ve found that sending a specific, helpful, and timely reminder email can have a huge impact on the quality of your 1-on-1s. Sounds easy, right? Let me show you how you can set this up automatically.

$30 buys parents a good night's sleep

I’ve been remiss in not blogging about this sooner. Looking back, I can say that the Kid’Sleep Classic “bunny clock” must be the best $30 we’ve spent on our kids, at least in terms of getting them to sleep through the night.

I've Been Doing This Wrong My Whole Life

So I recently came across a video that blew my mind. Apparently I’ve been tying my shoes wrong for 25+ years. I blame my parents. I’ve switched to the reef knot and sure enough, my laces look better and don’t come untied at all.

Who Should You Side With This Election?

This election seems nastier and more confusing than ever before. So how do you wade through all the misleading attack ads, deceptive opinion pieces, ridiculous talking heads and other garbage? You can spend your days checking out FactCheck.org and PolitiFact. Both are awesome sites for getting to the truth of various talking points, rumors and breaking stories. But keeping up with everything is exhausting. I Side With offers an alternative.