How IRAP uses Boomerang to make busy days less stressful

As the Deputy Executive Director of Impact at IRAP, my role involves collaborating with our teams to address the challenges faced by refugees and migrants globally and drive meaningful change. Day to day, that means I’m in lots of meetings with colleagues around the globe.

I had never used Boomerang before joining IRAP and being provided with a subscription, but it has transformed the way I work. Boomerang has been nothing short of life-changing. Boomerang helps me create agendas ahead of time, arrive at meetings prepared when it’s time for them to start, and follow up with reminders to complete action items afterwards.

Schedule messages months in advance to reduce mental load

Everyone can relate: when your days are busy, it’s not possible to remember everything that needs to be done at the right time. Some of my meetings are very frequent, and I’ll be working closely with the same colleagues for periods of days or weeks. But others, like strategic planning, only take place quarterly or even once or twice per year. Boomerang has been an accessible way for me to reduce my mental load without dropping the ball. As ideas and results come across my desk, I simply schedule them to return at the appropriate time. That way, when I’m ready to create a meeting agenda, I have all the relevant information right in front of me — even if it’s been months since I saw it last.

Tackle busy days with just-in-time reminders

Thanks to Boomerang, I’m always prepared for the next meeting on my calendar. I’ve built a habit of using Boomerang to return emails that contain meeting details and agendas back to the top of my inbox right before the meeting starts. This way, I don’t have to scroll through all my messages to get the context for the meeting. I love how it’s super simple and yet so effective. This Boomerangfeaturehas made my days less stressful and helped me arrive to meetings more well-prepared.

Meeting follow-ups made easy

What we try to do with our meetings at IRAP is to discuss an issue and then have next steps. Using Boomerang helps keep our tasks in order. After a meeting, I can organize the action items in an email and use Boomerang’s scheduling features to ensure everyone stays on track. Between scheduling reminder messages to send to colleagues later and triggering emails to return to my attention if I don’t receive a reply, I feel so much more confident that I’m not missing a beat than I did when I didn’t have Boomerang to help me manage it all.

Email is a primary means of keeping in touch for our globally-distributed team. We rely on asynchronous communication because so many of us are in time zones that are hours apart. In any given week, I correspond with dozens of people in hundreds of messages, but you wouldn’t know if you saw my inbox. My email is manageable, not cluttered, thanks to Boomerang. That results in less of my time being spent on admin work so that I’m able to dedicate more of my energy to advocating for the rights of people seeking safety.