5 Apps To Power Up Your Productivity

Should most of us attempt to describe a typical day in two words we’d say endless scrolling.

Whether it is checking what’s landed on your feed on social media or looking for productivity apps that actually work, those words hit the mark!

We completely understand the pain of trying to keep all the due dates in mind while juggling a million other to-dos.

Hence, we came up with a list of five of the best productivity apps that will keep you from getting overwhelmed. Share our love of these tools that result in great payoff and save you a lot of hassle:

ForestApp

You may already have used the productivity app, FocusList, which will make using ForestApp easy for you. The difference between these two lies in how the latter keeps you from phubbing around on your phone.

It’s especially handy when there are deadlines that you need to meet. Moreover, you can use ForestApp in conjunction with the Pomodoro technique for even better results. We find that a 25-min interval is best in most cases.

To begin, set your timer to 25 minutes, then stop worrying about things like who’s texting you, answering calls, etc., for that amount of time.

Now, here’s the ForestApp twist – Should you successfully stick to your task and don’t pick up your phone even once, you grow a tree. Failure means watching the sapling wither and die. With each time interval braved, you add another tree to your woodsy haven. You are potentially looking at a full forest. Once you are done with the task, there is no problem in using airg spam-free apps

Notion

What is Notion? Notion is a note-taking and collaboration application with markdown support that also integrates tasks, wikis, and databases. The problem with adding Notion to most lists is that you struggle to place it in the right category.

It is a great project management tool, as well. For the latter, you can use Notion to store your SOPs, save ideas about projects that may pan out in the future, manage workflows, and coordinate with your teammates.

You see why it is so difficult to categorize Notion? You may use it for creating templates for any task or process. That includes simple to-do lists to a complicated multiple-step project.

while you’re doing that, your teammates will be able to keep up with the changes you make to that template.

Finally, for students and educators, a personal account on Notion is available. When they sign up with an .edu account, they won’t have to pay the $4/month fee.

Boomerang

One of our favorite apps for work happens to be Boomerang. This plugin for Android, Gmail, and Outlook comes in handy when you get an important email, but at an inconvenient time.

With Boomerang, you can temporarily dismiss that email. You won’t even see it in your inbox when you do that. Several hours later, when you have a handle on your other tasks, the message reappears like magic.

But the magic of Boomerang doesn’t just end there. The plugin lets you press pause on your inbox so you can focus on things besides the ping that announces email arrivals. Additionally, it allows you to schedule your outgoing messages so that they go out at specified times.

Basecamp

For teams working on a project that needs a tool much more comprehensive than the other to-do lists out there, Basecamp is the best choice. Despite being around as a cloud-based project for quite some time, Basecamp remains a popular project management app.

If you opt for the Basecamp basic plan, your team gets to work on unlimited projects. In addition, the app also offers 100GB of storage space. Want to add external users to a project? Need a plan that comes with more storage? Then opt for the premium plans for both.

Were you to ask us one reason for recommending Basecamp, we’d choose how intuitive it is. With it’s Apple-like, albeit simple features, Basecamp is a great aid.

For instance, all your internal team members will get a daily email, so that they stay in the loop with the progress of each project.

You’ll also find the following features to be of much use:

• Keyboard shortcuts
• A power user-directed cheat sheet
• The option to drag and drop your files or reorder them
• Integration with Google Docs

Evernote

Evernote is a notebook app that Is found on multiple interfaces including, the web, Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. Once you have your ideas on Evernote, you can populate them with quick checklists, add in rich text, or reminders. You could also use it to scan your documents with Evernote’s built-in camera tool. Then there’s also the option for dragging in files, tracking your forms, tickets, and receipts. Afterward, you can organize the creative mess into separate notebooks. Tag them, developing your productivity system or use Evernote’s search tool to find things as you need them.

The tool also clips articles that you like and allows you to add them to your notebooks. Other things that you’d want to save such as recipes and online references, also go in there. With the camera tools, you can extract data from business cards or make digital notes out of paper post-it ones. Finally, there’s also the option of geo-tagging that refines each search you run.

Keep the tools you use daily and weed out ones that don’t help you reach your goals. We’re all juggling with multiple hats, roles and overflowing plates. These apps can help power up productivity for all of us!

**Bonus Update ** Milanote

Milanote is a tool for organizing your creative projects into beautiful visual boards as if you were working on a wall in a creative studio – visual, tactile, & sometimes a bit messy. Milanote is a new favorite of our marketing & experience team. It has templates to guide you through a variety of different projects, from creating a mood board to organize & develop your visual direction for a project to writing that perfect brief. Its sharing features allow you to get feedback from other departments or clients. I urge all creative professionals to check it out.