5 Productivity Apps That Will Help You Get More Done Daily, Guaranteed!

In our world today, every last one of us is perpetually busy. We strive daily to balance the demands of our careers against the pressing needs that tug at us from various corners of our personal lives. Most times, this balance seems impossible to attain. Increasing productivity isn’t just a race against time. It is important to work smart, as much as it is to work hard. In order to improve productivity, it becomes imperative to manage our time effectively and efficiently in ways that would better benefit us. Thankfully, we live in an era where the most helpful technologies are right at our fingertips. Here are 7 productivity apps that are guaranteed to help you get more done daily.

Trello App

Trello is one of the most amazing productivity apps ever (yeah I said it). You can use it to organize basically anything and everything in your life. For work, you can organize your tasks into boards using the Visual Kanban boards for instance, because they are flexible, they are shareable and they let you pack a ton of detail into each card. Trello can also be used to plan weddings, birthdays, special occasions and schedule personal appointments outside of work.

The software allows you to collect your tasks into lists while still getting a bird’s eye view of your entire day. You can have various boards set up where you can organize tasks based on the time each takes; this makes it an easy tool for planning what to do next. Time tracking isn’t just for people who need to invoice their pay by time spent. It is one of the best ways to increase your personal and professional productivity.

Tip: You can track the time you spend on your tasks by connecting Trello with RescueTime through Zapier so that every time you complete a task, that event will be highlighted in RescueTime.

Lift

Lift is an app that simply put, helps you turn your goals into actions. This is one of my preferred productivity apps because it is basically designed to facilitate the formation of better habits. Once you accomplish the desired goal, the app lets you celebrate it with a simple act of check-in. Lift is a system which allows you to track, and record your progress and it works so well because of the communities in place to support one another.

If you’re having troubles sticking to a new habit, or a new goal for instance; having someone in your corner to spur you on makes it so much easier. With Lift, you will get peer coaching, support from friends, or family, as well as, necessary reminders to keep you going. I think this is the perfect hack for setting new goals and actually making them happen because there is a lot of room for both your personal growth and your overall productivity levels.

Focus Booster.

Focus Booster is a free desktop app that will improve your focus and productivity by simply getting you to… well… focus. The app uses the Pomodoro technique, a famous time management method that makes your work sessions productive by alternating 25-minute long working blocs with short breaks. The result is that you remain focused and maintain sustainable, long-term productivity as well.

Focus Booster makes our list of productivity apps because it is a very simple way to boost your productivity when performing mind-consuming tasks. It keeps you on your toes while simultaneously reducing your mental exhaustion. Now there are different Pomodoro Timers out there, but my favorite is the Focusbooster App because it is free, it works, it is very clean and it is very simple to understand.

An alternative to Focus Booster that you could also try out is Tomighty. It works in the same way, and it is also completely free. Focus Booster is simple and clean to use, however, a few of my friends prefer Tomighty because they can better tweak the workings to their liking.

Any.do

Any.do is basically your classic on-the-go to-do list. It’s perfect for keeping up with your busy schedule and taking note of all you need to do, irrespective of the date. It helps clear your head of all the insignificant things you don’t need to remember by collating the tasks, reminders, and things that you actually need to do in one location. It’s great for list-making and managing tasks because it help you focus on the bigger tasks all day long. 

There are several productivity apps for handling to-do lists, however, Any.do has a unique feature called the Any.do Moment. The Any.do Moment encourages making a habit of reviewing your daily tasks, which is why this productivity tool is one of my favorites. Ever since I got this app my focus on my daily tasks has improved immensely because cutting out what I don’t really need to do has gotten much easier.

Instapaper

There are great articles on the internet but the hours you spend reading through them can be both a good and bad thing for your productivity. The aforementioned depends largely on how far along you are with your lists of important tasks for the day. Instapaper solves this very basic problem. When connected to a browser, you can send interesting reads to Instapaper where the app will download it into a text-friendly version for you to read even without your internet connection.

As you remain focused on your other tasks, these articles would be saved to your account and you can sort them out at your convenience into folders. You can also have them read aloud to you if you are too tired to read them yourself. You will find this approach ideal if you only want to save interesting write-ups to read at your leisure time. This way, you can still get around to performing your daily tasks without feeling like you are missing out on any relevant information from your favorite platforms.

Pocket is another popular read-it-later app but it is best suited for those who are looking to gather information for a big project.

Inkflow.

Inkflow is tailored to suit the creative needs of personal artists or visual thinkers. This is a personal favorite because it allows me to capture my ideas normally as I would with a pen, and better re-arrange them towards my liking so I can have my own personal ideas as fuller pictures. It’s really easy to use because it’s a creative way of getting your ideas out of your head.

With this productivity app, you get to doodle out your ideas before you even think they make sense and this curbs procrastination greatly. It’s also refreshing to use because sometimes, you realize your ideas aren’t as hopeless as you feared only after scribbling them on your notebook. I use this hack sometimes to scratch little ideas and thoughts when I write because it makes me feel giddy. Also, because doodling is actually proven to help make you focus. 

Hit The Pause button.

We don’t hear this often enough but rest is as crucial to our productivity as hard work. It is the first and best of all productivity apps – a natural as I like to say. Heightened productivity has a lot to do with self-discipline, but a core constituent of self-discipline is recognizing when to pause and draw a breath. Listen to your body and when it tells you to, step away from your devices and gather your own thoughts. The last thing you need when you are feeling overwhelmed with work or lost is more exposure to tech or social media because scrolling through your newsfeed will raise your anxiety and still not get the job done.

Finally, create a pure connection to your own soul from time to time because the effect on you, in combination with these productivity tools will be priceless. Try out some of these hacks but don’t overwhelm yourself by just making lists and not getting anything done. Stick to whichever one that actually works for you because that is easiest way to nurture your individual productivity.