There are only so many hours available in the day to be productive. Necessities like sleeping or eating meals take up a few hours of the day, and circumstances such as commuting and raising children will take away several more.
Since it’s not possible to add in any hours to your day, it’s important to be as productive during your work hours as you can. Falling behind on tasks can lead to them quickly piling up and result in long nights needed to catch back up.
Fortunately, there are a few apps created with software designed specifically to help boost your productivity.
What Are You Looking For?
Before you head to the Google Play Store or your App Store and start downloading apps or free software, you should first figure out exactly what you are looking for the software to do. There are essentially three different goals for using productivity-boosting software: helping you to get better organized, increasing your amount of focus, and helping you to develop better habits.
Depending on your specific circumstances, some of these software options might be a better fit for you than others.
Dialed
The first option on this list is one that places an emphasis on all three of the categories that can improve your productivity. Dialed is an app that provides a second phone number for your smartphone in addition to contact management capabilities.
When used properly, the available features help you organize, stay focused, and create better habits. The Dialed app has a few features that can help the organization using contact management.
One such feature is the ability to create contact sheets that bundle the calls, texts, and relevant information of a contact in one convenient place. For focus, Dialed provides a second phone number that helps you to screen calls, block spam, and block or certain mute users. This helps to keep you from being distracted by unimportant interruptions and allows you to stay focused on work with only a single click.
Dialed also provides the ability to set work hours, off-hours, and a do not disturb mode. These features route calls to a prerecorded message or provide an automatic reply to texts. It also allows you to set boundaries between work and home life to create healthier habits for productivity.
A subscription for this platform is $9.99 monthly or $89.99 annually.
Todoist
The main focus of this software is around creating and completing complicated to-do lists and managing your tasks. With an easy-to-use interface, this software helps you create and manage task lists.
It also allows you to prioritize tasks and place a larger emphasis on the more important ones. Other available features include creating projects, setting deadlines, and assigning tasks to your team members.
The daily and weekly overviews can help remind you of your progress and what else is required to complete the project, helping you stay on track to meet deadlines.
The free version will provide these options for up to five collaborators and allow for five active projects, but the Pro and Business plans will provide more features, while also allowing for more active projects and more collaborators. The monthly subscriptions for these plans cost $3 and $5, respectively.
Trello
This software is another option for creating tasks and managing projects. The concept is based on the Japanese board philosophy known as Kanban. This philosophy focuses on creating a visual layout and labeling tasks as “to-do,” “doing,” or “done.”
By organizing the various tasks of a project and assigning them to collaborative teams, Trello makes it easier to stay on top of deadlines and finish the project on time. Another benefit of using Trello is that it allows its users to communicate easily. Trello provides an instant messaging feature that helps the various members of your team communicate in real-time while working together.
The free version of this app will allow only one board to be created, but the paid subscription will unlock more options. The monthly plan costs $9.99 each month per user. It's available on iOs, iPhone, Android devices, tablets, and your web browser.
RescueTime
This is one of the most effective productivity apps. RescueTime runs in the background of your phone or laptop and monitors the amount of time that you spend using various websites and apps like Facebook, etc.
The app will then produce reports that display and break down the results, helping to show you how much time you’ve been wasting and where. Once you learn where you are spending your time and focus, you can block those sites or set up a time limit and alarms.
By creating these boundaries and setting a general goal for productivity, you will be able to focus more on your tasks instead of wasting time. The basic version of the app is free, but they offer a paid version with a couple more enhanced features for $9 monthly or $72 annually.
Focus Booster
One of the more popular methods of improving your time management is by using the Pomodoro Technique. The idea is that by taking a five-minute break after 25 minutes of work, you can help to recharge your focus, get back on task, and maintain a high level of productivity.
Focus Booster helps you to manually create timesheets with assigned tasks and view reports on your progress. The app can’t block websites, but it does provide a mini timer on your screen that will serve as a reminder of what you should be working on.
The free version should be enough to help you, but there are paid versions available for $2.99 and $4.99 monthly.
Forest
This free app is a little bit different than the others on this list, but it’s one of the best for helping to eliminate distractions. It won’t help much with organization, but it can help you stay off your mobile device and focus on your desktop tasks.
The best part is how it gets you to put your phone down. Whenever you want to focus, you plant a virtual tree in the app. The longer that you spend away from your phone, the more that the tree grows.
If you can stay off your phone long enough, you can grow an entire forest. While this sounds like a silly game, you can earn virtual coins in this game that can be used to plant and grow trees in real life.
Everyone knows how important trees are to the planet. By staying off of your phone, you can stay focused on your task and increase your productivity and help make the world a better place in the process.
The Takeaway
The best way to save time and stress is by maximizing your productivity. This is much easier said than done, but a few apps and resources can help you.
Whether you need help getting better organized, improving your focus, or developing better habits, there are plenty of options available. However, instead of stacking multiple apps and juggling a few monthly subscriptions, you might find success simply using one instead.
Dialed can help with all three of these productivity categories when used properly. The free seven-day trial can help you see just how effective it can be at boosting your productivity.
SOURCES
Why Plant Trees? | Onetreeplanted.org
The Pomodoro Technique Really Works for Productivity | Themuse.com