I received this image from a friend a while ago when we were both sitting in a very boring lecture where nobody seemed to pay attention to what was going on. And looking at the image distracted me even more and made me think: What went wrong there? Did the speaker even notice that? Attendees glued to their smartphone screens but not to his slides, and definitely not his presentation.

What was missing was the connection to the real world, between speaker, audience and what the value of the information could be in our daily lives. Establishing this connection is something that is more important for businesses in all industries than ever before.

If you are looking at your screen all day you might forget that your actual audience is human. They are out there and they do not want pixels but the solution to a real life problem.I seriously believe that knowing your audience and connecting with it emotionally means everything. Danny Brown commented in a thought-provoking blogpost that we are the “connection generation” - and he is damn right about that. Is the product you are building only a bunch of pixels?

Think about it.

I’m on the go a lot, which means I spend just as much time (if not more) on my phone as I spend on my laptop.

This would not have been possible even just a few years ago, but thank goodness for technology; it has made it so easy to be extremely productive with just a smartphone. Here’s a list of 10 mobile apps I adore that help me save time and get things done.

1. WriteThat.Name

One of the biggest hassles I run into is when I need to quickly call someone who’s not yet saved in my phone contacts. I then have to search through my emails to find the phone number. This is way too time consuming. Although it is not technically an app, WriteThat.Name improves mobile productivity by automatically scanning the signatures of people that email you, extracting their information, and merging it with your contacts in both your email and phone. If they haven’t emailed you before, WriteThat.Name adds them as a contact or if they already exist, it updates their information for you. Also, it’s important to me that my contacts don’t just live on my phone. With WriteThat.Name, they are stored in cloud, so they’re safe even if something happens to your phone.

2. MobileDay

I use conference lines frequently when I’m working with people from all over the world. These calls typically all have their own conference number and conference code, especially at PwC. When calling from my cell, it’s a huge annoyance to have to search my email on my phone and keep track of all the dial-in codes (not only extremely expensive when you’re calling an international number from the Middle East) The MobileDay app works with any conference call service by looking through your calendar, reminding you of the call, and with one click calling the conference line and dial any necessary codes for you. Bonus: If you’re an Android user, it will give you the option of calling through Viper or Skype.

3. CamCard

The premise is simple: if somebody gives you a business card, use the camera on your phone to take a picture of it. CamCard recognises the text, stores it, categorises it and files it along with the image of the card. This saves hours of either hunting for that card you’ve lost or cumulatively typing up every contact you ever make over years. CamCard can recognize 16 languages, back everything up online and can synchronise with other address books.

4. Oanda Currency Converter 

The main pain of being the travelling kind, or the kind that deals with a lot of international transactions, is working out the currency conversion. There are a ton of mobile apps that can take care of that for you, but not all of them are accurate and updated daily for conversion rates. The rates in this app account for more than 190 currencies and four metals, based on information supplied by leading market data contributors. It also gives you the option of adding a percentage to better approximate the actual rate charged by your bank or credit card company.

5. Hipmunk

I do a lot of traveling. Hipmunk speeds up the process of planning those trips, whether my schedule is flexible or very precise. The site has data from nearly every airline and hotel. It’s similar to Kayak and Trip Advisor, but it’s much smarter. Hipmunk displays results in a visual timeline or map. You can see departure times or hotel locations with one quick glance. The simple visual makes the results seem more relevant to my needs, which saves me the time of sorting through options that won’t work.

6. SignEasy

Who has the time to figure out using a scanner these days? SignEasy eliminates the need to print and send documents that need to be printed just because they need a signature. This app lets you sign documents using your phone, which not only saves time, but lets you get the document back to where it needs to go in a much more timely (and eco-friendly) manner.

7. Google Maps for Android

Everyone knows this one, but not everyone knows that it’s much better than Google Maps for your computer, and it also trumps the iPhone’s version of this app (sorry, Apple fans!). Tell this app where you’re headed, and it gives you different routes and tells you how long each will take based on the current traffic conditions.

You can even use it when you’re taking public transportation. I was recently in New York and used it all the time to figure out the quickest way to get somewhere on the subway. It knows that sometimes taking two or three different trains may get you to your destination faster than staying on the same one, and it’s sure to give you that option. Also when in an unfamiliar city, it’s nice to know the fastest route so you don’t seem like a tourist to the cab driver who’s looking to rack up your fee.

8. Google Drive

Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) is an alternative to Dropbox. It’s a place to store all your files, but much more handy and secure than a hard drive because it’s in the cloud. I can access my files from my phone, my computer, or even from my friend’s phone or computer. I never have to worry about losing important documents I’m working on because everything is automatically saved as I write, and can easily be shared with the rest of my team.

9. Genius Scan 

Every office in the world has a copier room - or at least a copier. This is a scanner in your pocket. You can quickly scan documents and send them through email or fax as PDF files. You can also upload it to Evernote, Drop Box or any other type of cloud service already on your phone. This comes in handy when you need to keep important documents or pamphlets on you. Although it may seem like taking a regular picture of what you need is much easier, Genius scan allows you to creating multi-page pdf documents with minimal effort. The process is fast and almost too easy, with the app automatically finding the borders of your document and almost always correctly processing the image.

10. IFTTT 

Although it’s not a mobile app, I just cannot live without IFTTT - it is the ductape of the internet. A shorthand for “If this, then that,” Ifttt is a simple web app that automates actions when certain conditions are met. It lets users build “recipes” from popular “channels” in an ‘If This Then That’ formula, allowing users to construct automated tasks by linking popular online services. For example, if it checks the forecast and it looks like rain, you can set it to send you a text message to grab your umbrella. I personally have it set to  call with appointment reminders. And that’s just a start. It can be a bit intimidating at first, but you’ll get the hang of it quickly.

These days, if you want to be efficient and productive, you must work on the go. These are my go-to apps. 

The speed and volume of information in the modern age can make us feel like our heads may physically blow clean off our necks.

In the world of marketing communications and ebusiness, both client-side and agency colleagues I’ve spoken share the same sentiment: it’s extremely difficult to effectively utilize the small bucket of time they have every week to read and synthesize information.

Metalife, a futurist/cultural insights agency, calls this struggle information pin-balling. In short, human minds are not programmed to handle the volume and interactivity of modern information. As a result, most of us bounce from content to content, barely absorbing the surface level information and over-relying on a cloud of information to supplement our inability to store and recall facts.

After witnessing and experiencing this phenomenon myself, I’ve isolated a few problems and some simple solutions that I believe help our minds recall and absorb information.

Four things you do that exasperates information pin-balling:

1. Multi-tasking:

Do you read a whitepaper while answering emails and listening to music? If so, comprehension levels are probably going to be low. There are lots of good studies out there that establish that humans are very poor at multi-tasking.

2. Poor (or lack of) archiving system.

What do you do after you stumble into a great financial services campaign from Germany? If you don’t have a system to log articles, you are not going to be able to action insights and best practices when the time comes to use it.

3. Lack of rigorous evaluation

The democratization of information has led to an explosion of agencies and experts. There are now more people than ever tasked with analyzing information and making strategic decisions. Unfortunately; due to lack of time, skill and/or will, there seems to be a lack of critical evaluation taking place.

Even if you didn’t major in statistics and it’s been a while since your last research methods class, you ought to be capable of assessing methodology, assumptions, limitations and similarities at a high level.

4. Quantity over Quality

Rather than deeply evaluating one sub-topic of a larger theme, many of us seem to get a thrill out of exploring 100 different topics at a surface level.

Recommendations:

• Find a quiet space, turn off all other applications and take notes while you read.
• Develop a knowledge bank database with a reliable tagging system and a search function that indexes tags and file text contents (Noise uses Zotero, an open source citation management application developed by George Mason University).
• Rather than trying to read 1,000 articles on 1,000 different topics, choose one topic per week or even month and find as many reliable sources as possible.
• Wherever possible, try to find on the root sources of information (press release, research study) rather than the chatter and commentary that are simply derivatives of that core information.
• Document each article’s argument, sources, methodology, findings, etc while you read.
• Compare and contrast notes for articles that address the same topic for common threads than you can turn into actionable insights down the road.