Buckle down and get productive with these excellent apps for managing your work, organizing your life, collaborating with teams, and much more.
Get off of email. Stop wasting time in meetings. Work smarter, not harder. You've heard it all before. The advice and mantras all over the Internet about making yourself more productive could fill libraries. But there's no one-size-fits-all solution to being more productive. It depends so much on who you are and how you process information, not to mention the details of your work and life: What do you do, and how do you do it?
That's why this list of the best productivity apps is nearly 60 items long. Some productivity tools help you handle email because a big part of your life is handling email. Others automate various aspects of your life so you can get back to doing hard work that requires creativity and focus.
With the right productivity apps and services at your fingertips, you can increase your efficiency and get more done. People seem obsessed with productivity these days, but few actually think about what it is or what it means.
To me, the meaning of productivity is highly personal, but ultimately, it's about achieving goals. It's about making the most of your time so that you have time and energy left over to do more.
What Are Your Productivity Goals?
In the traditional sense, the phrase "increasing productivity" means making more money, making more goods, or both. But being more productive now has a much broader meaning. Your goal could be anything from maximizing profits in a business to getting a nine-to-five job done faster so that you have some mental and physical resources left over to pursue personal interests at home. Some people want to get out of the office faster each day to spend more time with their family. Some people want to put in two hours of work each night writing a movie script.Being more productive is all about figuring out how you want to live your life and making it possible.
What is Productivity Software?
An entire classification of software, productivity software, is devoted to making our work easier and ourselves more productive. It goes way beyond the more old-school definition of office suites, like Microsoft Office, and business applications.If there's a task to be done, whether it's personal or for your job, there's a productivity app that will help you do it faster, cheaper, and more efficiently. From browser plugins to services that help you maintain important relationships, productivity apps aim to do it all—or at least, try to help you do it all.
Productivity Apps for Individuals
In this age of DIY solutions and the accompanying focus on self-reliance, there are plenty of productivity apps that are almost more like self-help apps. Time-tracking programs, for instance, like RescueTime, help you figure out your work habits and patterns so you can hack your behaviors to make them more productive. Tools that minimize or prevent distractions, such as Stayfocusd, let you impose rules on your Web surfing behavior, blocking sites that might distract when you want to get work done. A lot of these apps aim to help you be the focused, attentive person you wish you were but struggle to be.Task-management and to-do list apps are also popular among individuals. With the ability to share and sync data through the Internet, it's easy to make lists of chores for your partner and kids, assigning them tasks anytime, anywhere. You can manage household chores and tasks from your home computer, or you can get it done from your smartphone the next time you're stuck waiting in a doctor's office or at the DMV.
Speaking of which, mobile devices are a huge part of the productivity movement. Being able to get a few little jobs done when you have natural downtime is a big part of what makes productivity apps so, well, productive. These apps let us juggle our time differently so that we aren't necessarily working more, but we are getting more done, both in our jobs and our home lives, across all the hours of the day.
And while we're on the subject of getting lots of things done at once, forget everything you think you know about the perils of multitasking. A growing body of research shows that multitasking makes you more productive, not less, as most people believe. There is a hitch, of course. You have to do the right amount of multitasking. Too much causes productivity to plummet. You've probably heard that multitasking prevents long periods of focus and interrupts our thought processes. Well, making use of natural downtime, like being productive while in a waiting room or while stuck on a train, are perfect examples of multitasking efficiently. Multitasking is a rather complicated topic, but the point is that it's not all bad, and mobile productivity apps help you multitask in the right way.
Productivity Apps for Businesses
Of course, there are plenty of productivity apps that fit better for business cases than home and personal life. Project management services, for example, help teams keep track of work and assets so there's less need to continually have meetings and make sure everyone is on the same page. They also give employees greater visibility into all the moving parts that make up a project. It's incredibly more productive to be able to find out who is responsible for what and when with a few clicks of the keyboard than having to track down individuals and ask a million questions.Invoicing and billing solutions—and really all kinds of online business accounting apps—do wonders for productivity, especially for very small business owners and sole proprietors. When you're a one-woman shop and time is at a premium, you can't afford to waste it messing around with accounting. You need tools that work efficiently and that get it right the first time, every time, so you can get back to the real work that makes your business tick.
And let's not leave out traditional office suites. In this list of the 60 best productivity apps, you'll find plenty of suggestions for word-processing programs, spreadsheet apps, and presentation tools as well. The best ones are now collaborative, letting multiple people work on the same document simultaneously. Quite a few are also free and include a good chunk of storage so you have a place to keep your documents while you work on them.
Problems and Solutions
At the heart of every great productivity app is a solution to a specific problem. Some look toward efficiency, aiming to take an existing product, such as email, and make it easier to use so we waste less time futzing with it. Others seek to silence the noise of the net, bolster collaboration, or unite disparate data.The 60 programs, mobile apps, plugins, and services in this list are among my favorites for helping anyone be more productive, from office workers to students. It's by no means a comprehensive list, but I hope it lets you explore your options among the truly necessary productivity tools, and also introduces you to some hidden gems that you might have missed while you were busy getting things done.
ABBYY FineReader
ABBYY makes the highest-power OCR software on the market; it's indispensable for anyone who needs fast, accurate text-recognition. This Editors' Choice software is smoothly automated for high-volume and hands-off operations, with precision correction tools for difficult tasks. Its superb tools make it easy to correct doubtful readings by comparing OCR text to the original.
Any.do
Any.do is a collaborative (or personal) task-management app for iOS, Android, and Chrome. It's a beautifully designed to-do app, but one unique feature, called the Any.do Moment, sets it apart from others. The Any.do Moment nudges you to make a habit of reviewing your daily tasks first thing in the morning so you're never caught off guard by surprise tasks and meetings later in the day. Developing a good habit that promotes productivity is extremely hard to do but immensely valuable, and it's impressive that Any.do goes for gold with this special feature.Asana
Collaborative workplace management tools are transforming how teams get work done together, and Asana was among the first to make a real splash. Asana helps teams keep track of what needs to get done and have both visibility into work and accountability, too. Businesses large and small are using it to manage projects, get employees off email, and inspire a new way of working. It's one of the best productivity apps available today, making it an Editors' Choice.Boxer
Email is a persistent pain for a lot of people. Finding an email app that gives you the tools you need to help you better manage your particular inbox can make all the difference. If you like to have a lot of control over how your app works, including the ability to assign specific actions to swipe gestures, then Boxer is for you. With fast notifications, plentiful customization options, and an integrated calendar and contacts list, this app for iPhone and Android provides a lot of value to those who like control and want to be more productive when it comes to mobile email.
Brewster
Brewster is an excellent contact manager; if everyone used it, no one would ever waste any time cleaning up their address books. Brewster hooks into multiple places where you might have contact information stored and brings them together, merging duplicates along the way. It's a time saver for all your networking needs.Do.com
Poorly managed meetings are a huge productivity killer, and that's where Do.com comes in. If you hold a lot of meetings or are the assistant for someone who does, Do.com will guide you toward better meeting practices while also providing a central place for archives, follow-ups, and more.
Doodle.com
Free; $39 per year for Private; $69 per year for BusinessFree at Doodle
Let's say you have five people and need to find a time and date to meet that works for everyone. You could start an email thread and waste half a day tracking replies, or you could use Doodle. Doodle helps you effortlessly set up polls for scheduling. It's free to use, and respondents don't even have to join to answer a poll. Doodle cuts down on needless email and streamlines scheduling big time.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking
Dictating reports and controlling your computer with your voice could be a huge productivity booster if you have an app that's highly smart and extremely intuitive. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is. It's not cheap, but it is the best dictation software on the market. With Dragon, you can start dictating emails right after setting up the software. Give yourself a few days to master deeper features, and you'll be flying through your work.
EasilyDo
EasilyDo is a mobile app that automates small tasks for you, everything from posting "happy birthday" on your friends' Facebook pages on the right day to texting your significant other when you're running late. EasilyDo is very simple to setup and use and comes with a wealth of functionality. For tiny time-eating tasks that you'd rather automate, let EasyDo take the helm.Evernote
Evernote is a wonderful productivity app with a variety of uses. What started as a note-taking app for text, voice memos, photos, and more has grown into a full-fledged business tool with collaborative features. Excellent search capabilities and OCR on images with text make Evernote indispensable for finding important information quickly.
Evernote Scannable
With Evernote Scannable, you can practically kiss your desktop scanner goodbye. This mobile app zips through stacks of pages you need to scan and turns them into collated PDFs. It also works wonders on business cards. You don't even have to press a button for Scannable to snap each picture, as it auto-detects edges and produces great quality images just about every time. Of course, it connects with Evernote for easy saving, as well as other storage.FileMaker Go
If you use FileMaker Pro, get FileMaker Go so you can keep up with your work when you're on a smartphone or tablet. This app lets you access database information from the palm of your hand. Whether you need to check inventory or share information, FileMaker Go lets you do it from anywhere.FreshBooks
FreshBooks is the site to beat when it comes to managing and tracking invoices, time, and expenses for very small businesses that don't need full-blown double-entry accounting. If you're a small business owner or sole proprietor, use FreshBooks for your accounting so you can get back to the real work.Google Drive
With a tremendous amount of free storage and great integration options with other software and services, Google Drive is a productivity wonder. Part office suite—with Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms—and part file-syncing service, Google Drive delivers a wide range of essential business software. It's easy to use, it's collaborative, and it works offline, too.HipChat
HipChat by Atlassian (the same company that makes JIRA) is an online, real-time, team communication and collaboration platform. If your team is searching for a replacement to email, HipChat should be at the top of your list. With excellent features, including screen-sharing and video calls, all for a very low price, it's an Editors' Choice.
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