The Ultimate Guide To Productivity Apps

One of the keys to being highly productive is effectively managing both projects and tasks. Here are three task management apps that are particularly useful.

Using the Quick Entry feature, you can easily get tasks out of your brain and into your organizational system. Using the Mail Drop feature, you can create tasks via email, which is convenient if tasks get assigned to you through email.

Once tasks are in OmniFocus, they can be organized into projects and folders. You can also add tags to tasks and projects, including location-based tags. When you’re near that location, you’ll be reminded to do that task. 

By assigning due dates to tasks, you can plan out your week and see what tasks are coming due soon.

Tasks and projects can be quickly and easily added and appropriately organized. Assigning due dates to tasks makes it easy to see what you must work on today and what is due soon. You can also set specific goals for projects, which helps you ensure that things keep moving along, and the reporting features help you measure and evaluate your progress.

Tasks are organized into boards, and within the boards are unique cards. Each card can have multiple tasks on it, and people can be assigned to individual tasks. If you like having a visual representation of where all tasks stand in terms of completeness, Trello is a very useful tool. 

One particularly valuable feature of Trello is instant messaging, which allows you to talk to and collaborate with teammates in real-time.

As the saying goes, the weakest pen is more reliable than the strongest memory. Taking notes consistently spares you from needing to remember everything and allows you to capture, store, and organize ideas and thoughts. 

Here are some of the best note taking apps.

One big plus of using Evernote is their powerful search feature, which allows you to search for words and phrases in text files, PDFs, and even images. So, for example, if you snap a photo of a book cover, you can search for the author’s name and Evernote will retrieve the image.

One nice feature of OneNote is that you can include multiple elements in a single note, like having an audio file and an image side-by-side.

One of Google Keep’s best features is that it works seamlessly with other G-Suite products. For example, if you’re working on a Google doc, you can have Google Keep open simultaneously in a sidebar and drag notes directly into the document. If any notes have a due date, it will automatically be added to your Google Calendar.

When it comes to communicating with people on your team, you probably need something a bit more flexible and robust than email. You need to be able to quickly message back and forth, share resources, and engage in video and audio calls.

Here are some of the most effective communication apps.

Conversation within the app happens both between team members and in different channels. Channels can be created for specific teams or projects, and users can decide which channels they want to be part of, thus protecting them from being bombarded by unwanted notifications. 

Past conversations can be easily located through the search function, and files can be quickly added to any conversation. And, of course, audio and video calls can also be done from within the app.

Video or audio meetings can be scheduled and attended from directly within the app. If you are a Microsoft Office user, you’ll be pleased to see that it integrates very tightly with Teams, making it easier to collaborate on projects, set up calendar appointments, and share notes.

The real strength of Google Chat is the deep integration with other Google apps. For example, if you paste a link to a Google document in a room, permissions on the document are automatically changed so that everyone in the room has access to it. 

If you want to set up a video chat, simply tag Google Meet, whoever is attending the meeting, and specify a meeting time. The meeting will be automatically added to everyone’s calendars and a video chat link will be included. 

And, as you would expect with anything from Google, there is a strong search function that displays results in real-time as you type them.

When used correctly, your calendar can be one of your most powerful productivity tools. With it, you can control the flow of your day, use your time more efficiently, and ensure you make time for your most important projects. 

Here are some of our favorite calendar apps.

Many other productivity apps, like Trello and Asana, natively integrate with Google Calendar, and it also seamlessly works with other G Suite apps. You can easily share both single events and entire calendars with other people, and the app has deep search functionality.

The smart scheduling feature cuts out the back and forth that is usually required when setting up a meeting, and the use of AI and machine learning allows the app to tailor the experience specifically to your schedule. 

To top it all off, analytics allow you to see exactly how you’re using your time and then make improvements based on that data.

The app automatically detects when you stop working, making it easy for you to discard idle time. Reminders help you remember to start tracking your time, and the autotracker feature will automatically make time tracking suggestions based on the specific software you’re using. 

These days, there are more distractions than ever before, with a constant barrage of notifications coming from your phone, email, chat apps, social media, and a hundred other things. 

Here are some apps specifically designed to help you focus.

If you need to stay off the internet completely, you can prevent the internet from working on your devices for a specified period of time. Freedom also offers an ambient noise feature, piping the sounds of a cafe, library, office, or nature into your headphones. 

To top it all off, if you’re tempted to shut Freedom down mid-session, you can even prevent yourself from doing that.

What’s more, you can set specific productivity goals, like spending less time doing email and more time working on projects that will actually move the needle for you.

The interface is simple, allowing you to quickly choose your sound of choice and get started working. It works best with headphones and it usually takes about 15 minutes for you to feel more focused.

The ability to automate tasks that you repeatedly perform can save you hours every week. It also frees you up to work on high-value activities instead of wasting your time on tedious tasks. 

Thankfully, there are numerous apps that make automation a cinch.

You can even connect multiple apps together, allow you to automatically perform complex actions that would normally take significant amounts of time. For example, you could automatically post event details in Slack and send reminder emails whenever you set up events in Google Calendar.

On top of this, IFTTT allows you to trigger actions from your mobile phone, which can be very convenient. For example, say you’re on your way home and you want to turn on your Philips Hue lights. You can easily do this with just a tap on your smartphone.

The final three productivity apps are ones that don’t fit neatly into any of the categories above but should still be part of your productivity arsenal.

Otter.ai can transcribe both in real-time and after the fact, giving you instant access to the details of any conversation. The transcriptions are fully searchable, allowing you to quickly find words or phrases that were said. It even imports images and identifies who is speaking, making it easier to identify what was said and by whom. 

If you do a fair amount of remote calls, you’ll be happy to know that Otter.ai integrates seamlessly with Zoom, ensuring that all your meetings are immediately transcribed.

If you purchase the “Powerpack” you unlock even more features, like text expansion, the ability to paste old things from your clipboard, and integration with 1Password.

Impressively, Duet Display runs at 60 frames per second, cutting lag to almost zero. And unlike some apps, it runs over wifi, meaning you don’t need to connect it to your computer using a USB cable. 

It even supports the Mac Touchbar and gestures, along with fully customizable shortcuts.

We also have the top productivity podcast, The Productivity Show, where we go deeper. Below you will find some the best episodes on this topic.