Working from home comes with new challenges such as managing your time, deadlines and tasks. With more people working from home than ever before in this period of time, it’s important to keep up your productivity even when you’re not in the office. For some, working from home can be daunting and also unfamiliar but with time and exposure, you will slowly get used to things.
Here are four essential apps and tools to help you keep up your productivity levels. Working from home or remotely isn’t as difficult as it seems. Keep track of your work and also find your work-life balance by using these tools.
A popular task management tool, Todoist is useful for anyone who needs to manage their workload. It’s good for individuals, small teams and even professionals looking to manage anything from big projects to a simple groceries list. Todoist works like a simple checklist but with more advanced features. You’re able to prioritize tasks and projects into different sections and subtasks making it easy to see at a glance your workload. In Todoist, you can also assign tasks to different members of your team, making it easy to keep track of your team’s progress.
You can also set daily or weekly goals, and visualize your productivity trends to see your progress over time. Todoist also works offline and is available on 10 different platforms as well as on your web browser or as a Chrome extension. If you want to kickstart your productivity, try using Todoist.
An app that’s known for note-taking, Evernote also helps you create, organize, and store various media files. Whether it’s a text document, a photo, a video, an audio file or even a web page, you can store your works there. You can sync up your phone and computer on it, for easy access to your notes and ideas. It’s good for ideating and also for collaboration since you can share files amongst your team.
Make checklists on Evernote to keep track of your tasks on hand and also enjoy its useful features that make note-taking convenient. In the premium Evernote Business, they take it up a notch for team collaboration and created Spaces, which works like a big noticeboard with different “post-its notes” that team members can add and expand to read more details. Evernote is free to use while Evernote business is a monthly subscription.
If you use GSuite, for your email service, Google Calendar is a nifty tool and for most of us, a familiar one if you own a Gmail account. The app has a smart feature where it can suggest new meetings or schedule appointments based on your email inbox. Did you know that you can also use Google calendar for your task scheduling? Located in the Google Calendar, Google Tasks helps you to set deadlines, and also tasks with a due date which will automatically synchronize with your calendar.
It’s a useful tool when it comes to tracking your work and schedule since everything is located in one place. Google Calendar also allows you to set up video calls by providing your email recipients with the Google Meet links in your calendar invite. You can also send and share files through calendar invites without needing to open a separate email tab. Sync your calendar across all your devices for easy access. Get your productivity going by setting daily goals and reminders in your calendar by using Google Calendar. Don’t use GSuite for your email service? Most mail service apps also offer a calendar tool, do be sure to explore your mail service function and work within them as they’re most likely optimised for your mail account.
If you’re finding it difficult to focus on your tasks and keep straying to social media or binging that TV series, you may want to check out Serene. Serene helps you focus on your tasks by also reducing distractions online. You set an important goal per day and Serene will help break the day down into sessions to achieve that goal.
Installing the browser extension will block you from visiting any distracting websites listed on your blocklist while you’re in a Serene session and will also gently remind you of the tasks you should be working on instead. Currently Serene is only available on MacOS, if you’re in need of a distraction blocker, do check out Serene. If you’re a Windows user, Serene is under development to be optimised for the Windows operating system so do keep a lookout when they launch it for Windows.
As we all try to go about our daily life, be sure to try out the recommended apps above to fuel your productivity and also keep your levels up. There are many more platforms and tools out there so be sure to find one that fits you best. Don’t hesitate and just try to do your best to stay productive.
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