Technology to Help (not Hinder) Productivity
In recent years, technology, and mobile applications (or apps) have gotten a bad rap as time sucks. There are dozens of articles about the use of tracking screen time and the need to avoid falling into the trap of scrolling endlessly on our phones looking for entertainment. But those articles are half-right. For every social media or game app built to capture our attention for hours on end, there is an app to help us regain those precious hours with increased productivity
According to Dropbox, “productivity software is a collection of productivity apps, tools, and integrations that lets users easily create content used in the workplace, like documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Productivity apps with project management tools are important in the workplace because they can facilitate easy collaboration, communication, time management and organization of content.”
For those who feel that they have more and more work with less and less hours in the day to get everything done, these apps can feel like a secret weapon or a really great assistant.
Here are some of our favourite productivity apps on the market right now:
Slack is a channel-based messaging platform. In Slack, team members send messages and share files in channels. Create channels for teams, projects, office locations, or anything else that’s relevant to your organization. You can make channels private for conversations that shouldn’t be open to all members, or you can use shared channels to collaborate with external organizations from your own workspaces.
Choose from the free version or upgrade your plan to a paid version depending on your business needs.
Trello is the easy, free, flexible, and visual way to manage your projects and organize anything, trusted by millions of people from all over the world.
Evernote is a fancy note taking app. It helps you to keep organized—great note taking, project planning, and a great search function. You can add voice recordings, images, links and plain old notes to the app and easily organize via notebooks for different subjects. Evernote is well loved from Entrepreneurs to professional students and can be accessed from either Android, iPhone or Windows based devices.
There is a basic free version as well as upgraded pro and business versions that come with premium features. The best part is that notes sync across different devices.
If you’ve never heard of Dropbox, you may have been living under a rock. It’s the app for your storage solutions; allowing you to easily to store and transfer files – and access those files across teams or devices. Dropbox helps solve the modern-day problem of transferring large files. It also has a feature that allows teams to work on files together, in real time. Dropbox also has a project planning and task management feature that takes transforms app from a simple file sharing app to a true productivity app.
As with the other apps, there are free and pro versions that come with increased storage limits and access to premium features.
Having solid passwords for all your accounts (no password123 or qwerty allowed) is essential to keeping your information private and access to your accounts in your hands. However, it can start to get tricky when it comes time to remembering the logins for the dozens of sites and applications we use daily. Lastpass is software that can generate and keep track of secure passwords, so you can use your precious brain power for something else. It can also digitally store important records like credit cards, passports and memberships so you can securely keep them in one place and access them from where you are.
Choose from Free, Premium and Family plans – depending on your individual needs.
Timetree is a smart calendar sharing software. Share your calendars with different groups and connect with family, partner, friends, and colleagues. TimeTree makes it effortless to coordinate and collaborate with others in a single calendar. No more forgetting important appointments or double-bookings. This app is great for personal or professional use and even comes with a shared notes features (think grocery lists or camping supplies). No more trying to sync schedules. Best of all, it’s free and highly rated in the app stores.
FocusKeeper is a time management app for your mobile devices that uses the Pomodoro technique of time management. It breaks your work down in 25-minute task sessions and rewards you with breaks, The more tasks you complete, the longer your breaks. This app is simple but effective and available for free for Android and iOS.
All-in-one solution
Integrating just one, or all of these productivity software solutions into your personal and professional life is bound to help you regain some our precious time. Finally. if you’re looking for an all-in one solution, we love Zoho. Zoho is a Client Relationship Management (CRM) tool that integrates over 40 apps into one, helping you automate all sorts of business processes. It’s especially great for connecting a distributed workforce in this post-COVID world.
