Our lives have become easier due to technologies. Now, when we all have smartphones and tablets, there is a great amount of apps that can track how many miles you’ve walked and how much time you spend in social networks. The line between fun and work in app world is not easy to distinguish. So, Eric Ebert has gathered 29 apps that will help you to be productive.
Contents
1. Staying on track
These apps will be of a great help for focusing and staying on track.
Freedom
If it’s difficult for you to concentrate on your work because other apps and websites distract you, pay attention to this app. Freedom will shut down all definite websites for a period of time a user sets. It allows to choose which websites are allowed and which ones are prohibited. If it’s impossible for you to stop surfing, you can disable the browser you use.
Headspace
The brain needs mindfulness exercises in order to perform well. Headspace offers guided meditations and various techniques that will teach you to how to clear and calm your mind in 10 minutes a day.
Mental Workout
Mental Workout includes 5 various functions that will enhance your mental abilities. All of them are created with the help of specialists. For example, Good Night has been developed by a clinical psychologist, a fellow at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Rescue Time
Does it happen to you when you think of your day, it’s so hard to remember what task consumed most of your time and what distraction where the most harmful for your productivity? Rescue Time is a way out. It allows to track your everyday activities in order to find weak places. It also creates reports which makes it easier to analyze inefficiencies. Moreover, the app can tracks your pogress according to the goals you choose.
2. Collaboration
Apps that will help both you and your team work more efficiently
Trello
No doubt, it takes a lot of time to organize, assign and track tasks for a team. Trello will make your own and team projects more productive. You’ll see all the projects in one screen so it’ll be easier to assign, track and discard projects when they’re finished.
Google Docs
Google Docs is an app that gives teams a possibility to create online presentations, documents and spreadsheets together. You can do it in a minute or in an hour, offline or online with your colleagues.
Yammer
If your team don’t work at one place, it may be difficult with your employees and colleagues. Yammer unites teammates and they can work and communicate efficiently. Members of the team can transfer among projects and tell about the experience they’ve got outside their group. Managers can participate in meeting with the project teams and always stay in tune.
3. Network
?heck out these apps in order to enhance your network.
FullContact
It’s a fact that managing contacts require a lot of time. Moreover, the old method of keeping and remembering contacts is outdated. To be precise, only 9% of business cards get to a CRM system and it’s a loss of potential clients. FullContact gives you a possibility to scan or take photos of business cards and then it uploads them to your database.
Weave
Although we’re living in the era of Linkedin and Facebook, it’s quite a challenge to expand your professional network. Weave will help you to expand your online network and meet your new acquaintances in real life. It finds contacts which may be useful for your professional network and also makes an appointment which is convenient for both partners.
Meetup
Meetup simplifies the processes of creating a group or connecting with existing ones. It connects users with the same interest to events that fit their schedules.
Namerick
Namerick uses the techniques based on human memory studies in order to teach you names easily. You’ll learn them by using repetition and mnemonic techniques modeled off people who have already succeeded in it.
4. Improving browser productivity
These will ensure that you are productive online.
Saved.io
Saved.io keeps all your bookmarks in a cloud so it’s wasy for users to open them from any browser or device. It also allows to organize and annotate bookmarks. Add ‘saved.io’ to your web address and it will be saved to your account.
Grammarly
Grammarly will point to grammar mistakes and fix common problems. It also highlights contextual spelling mistakes. What’s more, it suggests synonyms which will make your texts sound rich.
Buffer
Buffer is a browser extension that automates the timing of your social media posts across multiple social media outlets. If you post messages for a company, you can choose Buffer for Business that includes rich analytics and RSS feed integration.
LastPass
LastPass keeps all your passwords from different websites in a cloud to stream your browsing.It also offers an option of document backup and a centralized data system that shows all your accounts at once.
5. Maximizing desktop performance
We all need it.
AutoHotKey
AutoHotKey is a script creator that is much more user-friendly than most programs. It allows to create hotkeys fast and easy or remap your keyboard to make your desktop experience more productive.
Free Download Manager
Free Download Manager automatically increases a download speed. You can schedule the beginning of download when you’re away in order not to waste time. You can also control download speed to perform other tasks simultaneously. There’s a possibility to resume broken downloads or avoid an unproductive problem.
Syncplicity
Suchlike services (Syncplicity, Dropbox and Box ) provide cloud file-sharing.
6. Organizing
The following apps are for those people who need some help for staying organized.
Acuity Scheduling
Acuity Scheduling is a scheduling apps that works on various devices. It’s even possible to pay bills via this app (through an integration with PayPal).
Todoist
It happened to everybody: sometimes we may forget about a task because there are too many of them. Or it’s hard to decide what to do first. Todoist helps to deal with all these problems by assigning tasks and subtasks to your list with deadlines and comments.
Bizzabo
Managing events is a hard and time-consuming task. The most difficult thing here is that there are multiple things that make up an event and doing them may take too much of your time. Bizzabo gives your event a website with the information you put into the system. It manages necessary contacts for an event, deals with email marketing and gets information out to social media outlets. The organization and agenda features will make the process even more efficient and productive.
Evernote
Evernote is a platform for viewing, organizing and modifying your projects. It works on all devices and has an Evernote Web Clipper extension for many browsers which helps to save articles, web pages, images and so on.
Genius Scan
Genius Scan will make a scanner out of your phone so you’ll be able to save things as PDFs and JPEGs. Later on, they can be modified. This way you can take a picture of anything you want and make a document out of it.
7. Improving email productivity
Control your emails with the help of these apps.
Lookeen
Lookeen makes you more productive by optimizing searches for Outlook. The search is pervasive, and can target information normally unsearchable through a manual search, for example, information embedded within multiple file types of attachments, contact information, appointments, and archived data.
Mail Pilot
What an average person does 33% of a work week? He/she reads, organizes. prioritizes and replies to emails. Mail Pilot creates a to-do list out of your inbox. It organizes and prioritizes it. It also sets reminders for replies. Mail Pilot will organize your inbox in a way that will make emails feel like work and an accomplishment when finished.
Mailbird
Mailbird creates a custom design for your inbox to adjust it for your preferences and needs. It compiles messages from various sources (WhatsApp, Facebook, and email) and from various devices so you can view them in one place. There’s also a possibility to conduct live meetings if necessary.
8. Staying informed
Here are the simplest way to be aware of important topics to you.
News360
News360 finds out what you like reading and wets up a newsfeed for your preferences.
Instapaper
Instapaper saves anything you may want to read in the Internet: from articles to recipes and lyrics. Later on, they are available on all your devices. You can also read them offline.
AppAdvice
AppAdvice has reviews for the latest apps and advice on how to enhance your performance with the apps and devices you have.