What productivity tools can you recommend for personal & work uses?

Question

Feeling disorganized 👀

Accepted Answer

Slite has just changed the way we take notes and share knowledge within our organisation. It's particularly helpful to share content with the existing team, and providing newcomers with the knowledge base they need. A real game changer in collaboration!

Answer

Really great tool for project management and idea management. Offers many helpful views on your data and has great collaborative features. Also, scales with the size of the project. I and my team have been using Zenkit for a year now. It´s amazing! Love it!

Jutta A · Answer

Very flexible to use, with different views (e.g. Kanban, calendar... ) and as many custom fields as you need. Thanks to this flexibility, Zenkit can be adjusted to different types of work flow, from simple todo list to managing larger projects.
I'm using Zenkit mainly as personal Kanban board - very happy with it!

Axel Le Pennec · Answer

Slite is the perfect app to gather team meeting minutes, learnings, processes, specs and all you need to manage your team's valuable knowledge.

Ace Queen · Answer

I've used Wunderlist, Asana, etc. and have found TickTick to be the most comprehensive. Easy to use, clean design, deep features, shareable with others and importantly, fully offline capable when you're travelling.

fszxdsadzs · Answer

With trello, you can organize every aspect of you project:

programming: Divide your project in tasks, with that you can keep control each task, of what task are being working on and what do not,

design: patterns, layouts, images, videos and more, you add pictures and photos to the cards.

evaluations: In trello, you can have various columns, one for each management porpuse, one task pool, one for people working on an especifid task, one for completed task (waiting for review) and one task completed, reviewd and aprove, that way you can have a work flow that its easy to supervise and not overwalmaing to the team

Iryna Maniuk · Answer

- balance of functionality and simplicity
- intuitive, works well even for complete beginners
- all to-dos are kept in one place - visual and easily tracked
- reminders are lifesavers :)

Lisa Dziuba · Answer

Try to organise your work tasks and set up deadlines :)

Laure Albouy · Answer

For both personal and team note-taking! Makes content sharing and collaborating super productive for teams.

Answer

You can build a simple task list or you can create a full on project management system. You can manage just a list of clients or build the ultimate CRM. You can create a private notebook or build a full company plan to share with others. It's a great productivity system that you build yourself. Great for if you used every project management or CRM app and it was either underwhelming or overwhelming.

dennis · Answer

Anyshortcut is a Chrome extension to help people use keyboard shortcuts to open their frequently visited websites instantly.  It is definitely worth a try.

Answer

Trello, Slack, & Mailchimp are badass. Zapier links them together and makes them even more badass.

Super easy to use & great customer support.

I've streamlined & automated entire workflows at my internship with it. Pretty sweet.

Answer

Orcaso.io is designed around the idea of gamification, in other words, play and fun. And play and fun are the main elements of turning a strenuous work into an enjoyable one. 
Orcaso.io is based on few simple concepts taken directly from games. Employees gather points by completing tasks, they get positioned on the scoreboard, and they compete against each other.

Remember those old arcade games where you had a scoreboard and the kid whose name was in the first place was the coolest kid? In the meantime, all other kids committed hard to beat the high score. 
They worked so hard they became masters at the game. With Orcaso, you’re turning work into a game. 
 
Everything in Orcaso is built around this video game idea. If this sounds childish to you, then Orcaso isn’t a right tool for you. If you’re able to connect the two elements, then you’re ahead of the curve, and you can use the power of Orcaso.

Dallas Allison · Answer

I'm using this app everyday and it's working great. The UI is beautiful and attractive really. It also provide unlimited timers so I'm loving it

Answer

A fully powered task list that doesn’t require others to create an account and login. Makes it super easy to convince people to use it.

Maéva Alméras · Answer

When I've started to use TMetric, I noticed that I managed to increase my productivity. Recommend it!

Stephen Titus · Answer

Reminds you to keep in touch with your network without any manual input so you can be consistent in reach-outs.

Lisa Dziuba · Answer

try work with timer :) When I feel that I waste my time, I start counting my actual work time.

Andrea Smith · Answer

I use TMetric Free Online Time Tracking Software & App for tracking my working activity. I like that TMetric has desktop and mobile apps, so I can track my time everywhere.

Pavan Sethi · Answer

One of my favorite apps :) Set a timer for how long you cannot touch your phone. The more time you stay focused, the more coins you get to plant virtual trees in your forest (if you touch your phone, your tree dies!). The best part is that coins can eventually be used to plant real trees!

fszxdsadzs · Answer

Keeping Focused

When things get really hectic, it can feel like all the days in a week merge into one where nothing specific gets accomplished. Age-old methods like the Pomodoro technique, in which you set a timer and work within a 25-minute intense session and a 5-minute break, are proven to help stay focused. But why not refine the practice? Resources like FocusList allow you to set these timers along with tasks to complete. This simple to-do list and timer mash-up provides a great way to keep focused on both the task and the big picture. Another more interactive focus resource is Forest, which is great for students thanks to its playful nature.

fszxdsadzs · Answer

Mapping Habits
Being able to keep track of all the habits you have in your routine is important. Whether you’ve just started running or you’ve just stopped smoking, tracking all of these touch points will help you be consistent and spot weak areas. Strides is one that I find very helpful for keeping an eye on all of the habits or targets I need to achieve.

Kastan Day · Answer

The natural language input makes entering tasks as easy as thinking about them. One of the best features.  Its very simple but lets you go very deep if you want.

fszxdsadzs · Answer

Despite being a huge Google Calendar user, I also use another Slack bot that helps me to keep an eye on my daily meetings. The Cisco Spark Meeting Notes plugin on Slack allows you to get a direct message every morning with a layout of your day’s meetings, pulling in data from your calendar. It’s very easy to setup and it works great for getting the day ready and preparing agendas to keep your meetings productive.

drew olanoff · Answer

I spend most of my time in Gmail as it is, and I don't want to load up a separate tab/app for basic non-sales CRM functions.

Katarina Wajda · Answer

Works well as a knowledge base for teams, but can be used personally as well.

Chase Benjamin · Answer

You cannot live without Trello. It's just not possible.

Antony Bearpark · Answer

Our team uses Yack.net to send and receive messages and files. We have our clients on too who each have their own Organization that they can invite specific members too to collaborate with, without having to switch accounts or  platforms. Each of our team members are connected to the right companies which is all organised under one roof.

Additionally, we record all our calls, so everyone can see what they need to do. The calls are automatically transcribed via the software and later on we can search through the messages to see what was said in the calls. It's pretty clever really!

Jean Pierre · Answer

Many customizable ready-made templates.

Cristian Mudure · Answer

Stackfield is perfect for cases where protecting your corporate information is essential.

Filipa Nascimento · Answer

Outplanr turns your to do lists into a work plan. This work planner allows you to share your task list with your team (work use) and at same time you can have your own personal to do list (personal use).

Mike · Answer

IC Project 
- for base organization, 
- for task management, 
- for team communication, 
- for clients, 
- Google Docs for content and spreadsheets, 
- integration with Google Drive for files, 
- editor for notes, 
- for time tracking/logging.

Sam Rye · Answer

I find that most productivity tools are actually niche time sinks.

If I REALLY want to be more productive, I need to step away, gather myself and refocus for 10 minutes, and then I double my productivity.

I've found the Focus and Creativity packs from Headspace amazing for supporting me to do that.

Matt Lovato · Answer

You've gotta check out Samepage. Its dead simple to use, and its extremely powerful. Perfect for both home and work use. It combines Slack, Asana, Trello, and your file-sharing tool of choice into a single seamless platform.  Winner of Capterra's "Most Recommended Project Management Software" award.

Lidia Lüttin · Answer

Help you to organize and find back all your digital files! It's free!

Virrindra V Argekar · Answer

Helps me get into the zone and helps me with the flow. Just the right beats and variants from Elec, down tempo, classical and yes its even got a Rain channel.

Try it out.

Emily Kellert · Answer

Easily organize different projects in notebooks or with tags. Truly been a lifesaver in my professional life. Personal I use Google Keep

Harini Janakiraman · Answer

A much better and beautiful pomodoro timer. Sleek UI and beautiful images popup on task completion.

Leah Gibbs · Answer

This is a great little platform, simple to use, nice UI

Sami Ben Hassine · Answer

Fabulous contains a habit changing journey that will help you increase your productivity by putting into place simple habits like writing your todo list in the morning, or starting a session of deep work.

🤔 · Answer

Why not?

🤔 · Answer

Why not?

Ricard 🎗️ · Answer

From my point of view Toggl is the best tool for time tracking.
- simple
- clear
- can define clients, projects and tasks
- with reports
- freemium
- with extensions for chrome to link it with Trello (another great tool) where I define the projects and tasks

Eric Lee · Answer

Feather, with it's minimalistic and elegant design, is all of these:
- A calendar with integrated to-do list and stats
- A to-do list with schedules and time tracking stats
- A goal manager with daily to-do list and schedules
Words cannot describe Feather. It's free to download and use, do check it out!

Ben Rohr · Answer

Can't believe this isn't on here yet. I have been using this for 5+ years. Amazingly simple and brilliant.

Jean Paul Mugizi · Answer

Workflowy works just like my brain and I am able to focus on dumping my ideas on paper rather than fiddling with UIs.

Zee M Kane · Answer

How this doesn't get more recognition I have no idea. Super flexible and powerful whiteboard-like 'padlets' that let you easily gather ideas, and share/collaborate with others while doing so. Browser extensions, mobile apps and more.

Nicolet Groen · Answer

Freedom (.) to An excellent app and website blocker that keeps you productive. I can block all my social media, individual websites (just type in the URL) and my and chosen apps on my mac when I need to work.

I declare this app as a must! (oh, and it syncs with all your devices so no excuses not to work!) I bought it a week ago and boy it helps me to focus!

Nicolet Groen · Answer

Good project management app with a very sleek interface. I prefer it over Asana and Trello.

Shankar Arul · Answer

Drag & drop your excel files, connect to your databases to start slicing & dicing your data in seconds !

Eithiriel DeMeré · Answer

When Microsoft Word and Google Docs just aren't enough, use Airstory. You can outline, write, save online research, import Evernote notes, time travel through versions, collaborate with others and publish all over the place.

Gabriel Cuevas · Answer

The best proposal software with key features such as E-signature, Reporting, Analytics, Proposal Tracking & Management as well as Content Management Libraries. For both large and small teams. Get 50% OFF 3 months with exclusive Product Hunt discount code: PH2018

Rubem Andrade · Answer

Great player for e-mails. Clear, very friendly and high productivity.

Andrey Damo · Answer

Very clean design with the essencial things. Works fine in desktop and mobile. Better than Asana and Trello for me.

Ashok Gudibandla · Answer

Whatever tools you use - Trello, Slack, Google Apps, MailChimp, etc - make them more awesome with Automate.io
Create automated workflows across 100+ apps

Don Schaefer · Answer

Xmind has been a workhorse for me for quite a while now.

Pragati Basu · Answer

Talkwalker Alerts helps marketers become more productive by helping them save time by following their brand online and on Twitter. It helps to solve the problem of tracking brand mentions on various platforms which is very time consuming. You can have all mentions delivered to your inbox as they happen , once a day or once a week depending on what you're tracking. Et Voila, you're automatically more productive

Alexandra Cote · Answer

Complete project management app with time tracking feature. Free for individual use and ready to help you organize your work anytime.

Aaron Green · Answer

Project management for humans not robots...

Becky Simmons · Answer

This app with several updates will get outstanding really. It provides all the functions I need and is working just great.

Amamiya Hotaru · Answer

Love it!

Answer

I use this app to avoid distraction because this app can help you lock all your other apps. Every time I need to focus on something really important, I just lock all my apps and put my phone away. On the one hand, I can stop checking my phone and stay focus. On the other hand, I knew that my phone is safe with AppLock.

Answer

Most downloaded app lock in Play Store. Protect privacy with password, pattern, fingerprint lock. Supports intruder selfie, incognito browser and multiple Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin accounts management.
★ #1 App lock in over 50 countries.
★ Over 300 Million users, supports 32 languages.

☞ AppLock can lock Facebook, Whatsapp, Gallery, Messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, SMS, Contacts, Gmail, Settings, incoming calls and any app you choose. Prevent unauthorized access and guard privacy. Ensure security.
☞ AppLock can hide pictures and videos. Hidden pictures and videos are vanished from Gallery and only visible in the photo and video vault. Protect private memories easily. No pin, no way.
☞AppLock has random keyboard and invisible pattern lock. No more worry people may peep the pin or pattern. More safe!

bazingagag · Answer

Mobile security is more and more important nowadays, that’s why I think no matter who you are, what you do. You will need an app to protect your phone!

I am using this app called ‘AppLock’, which is amazing because it can lock all of my apps, images even videos. This app is always on my list when it comes to app recommendation.

The one thing that I like the most about this app is that it can take photos of the person who’s trying to unlock your phone! This feature is really funny because I always got the intruder selfie notification from my kids. They are trying really hard to unlock my phone for video games.

If you are a cautious people, you really do need one of this app.

Zachary Martin · Answer

This is great for getting tech and web micro-tasks done quickly and simply!

Prateeka · Answer

Eliminate manual tasks - automate expense reporting like a pro.

Corpa · Answer

Creative teams use Corpa to redefine work and workflows. Build, integrate, automate and run processes, workflows, tasks, communication, reports, and dashboards in one mobile app.

Sanjay Patel · Answer

It's the new elegant project management tool that merely your task management, time - logging, invoicing, build for a small team & individual freelancer.

Rich Peterson · Answer

Huge selection of tools for personal uses.

Rich Peterson · Answer

Keep it simple and find the tool that suits the way you work.

Rich Peterson · Answer

We've reviewed all the top tools and agree that Trello and Asana come out on top. Plenty of others depending on the features you need.

Olga Vakulenko · Answer

This add-in for powerpoint shortens time on slide editing tremendously and boosts your productivity.

Guillaume Bardet · Answer

I will go ahead and shamelessly mention the bookmarks and tabs manager I have been working on. :)

We are always working on improving the product and making sure our current 6,000+ users are happy with the extension.

If you are looking for a bookmark and tabs manager, and you are familiar with boards and columns similar to Trello, Qlearly might be a good solution for you!

Guillaume Bardet · Answer

I will go ahead and shamelessly mention the bookmarks and tabs manager I have been working on. :)

If you are looking for a bookmark and tabs manager, and you are familiar with boards and columns similar to Trello, Qlearly might be a good solution for you. You can create notes and tasks as well as collaborate on boards with your teammates.

Ingvar Helgerson · Answer

The best replacement for regular team task manager for managing repeating processes like hiring, invoices etc. 
I used to use Asana for these tasks and just clone existing project every time new hire arrived and need to do all onboarding steps again. But real workflow tools are much more useful and Metatask is one of the simplest to use.

sravya m · Answer

Troop Messenger for a year, and I found we chose a good and simple to use application for our daily team interactions for all of our project updates. This tool has been exclusively built for providing happy team collaboration. It made me to easily interact with all my peers on all my projects and the regular task updates with features. - Three Features I like the most in Troop Messenger are Fork out, Burnout and Audio Messaging. - It makes reach my team members and groups just at the touch of a button.

David Miller · Answer

ProProfs Project is the productivity tool you can use for both personal and professional work. It is simple-to-use project management software that comes in both free and paid versions. So, zero in on your needs to select the right pricing model. One thing that’s certain is you will get all indispensable features.

Parthibakumar Murugesan · Answer

MirrorFly has been specially designed for team collaboration to provide seamless work-flow routines among diverse teams. The teams working on various client projects need to collaborate at one single interface for all the project tasks and updates. So as to ensure this Mirrorfly has defined a beautiful feature stack to extend all the communication (chat,video & voice) support services.

Stephen Titus · Answer

Reminds you to keep in touch with your network without any manual input so you can be consistent in reach-outs.

Marcel Folaron · Answer

Leantime.io allows you to track your To-Dos on kanban boards as well your calendar. In addition to that, you can keep a separate list board for ideas and product research. It was designed as a lean project management system combining design thinking, lean and agile into a simple system. Great for small teams and startups.

Gabriel Cuevas · Answer

Every company I have worked for, I have introduced Trello. It becomes the most used tool in the company. It's a great way to collaborate with team members. It's also Stupid Simple to use.

Rubem Andrade · Answer

Trello is the application to organize your tasks... organize your life!

Gabriel Cuevas · Answer

Slack should be the only communication tool your organization uses. How else can you send auto-generated Giphy's during a much needed moment? The integrations are also badass.

Rg Enzon · Answer

I personally use Bear for personal tasks. I also get to write drafts for upcoming blog posts that I wanted to post. I'm also a huge UI freak, so you should say that I'm pretty picky with apps I have installed on my phone. Anyways, check it out. You'll love it!

Luis Gabriel Martins · Answer

Bear has become my go to app for taking notes, documenting, putting ideias into paper and many more. It's by far my favorite note taking app. It has a really clean interface, great for focused work, also markdown support, and organizational tags.
I recommend this app for anyone.

David Miranda · Answer

I can't recommend this highly enough. Killer features for me are: nested todos, nested documents, and code blocks. It's so nice having a tool that I can keep literally every piece of content for my business inside of.

Alexandra Martel · Answer

AirTable organizes my whole life now. It completely replaced my CRM. I also use it to rate movies I watch with friends, as a personal CRM, to plan content for my blog and to keep track of my hours/bills/money. It's absolutely fabulous.

fszxdsadzs · Answer

Manage your time.

Time management tools like RescueTime can help you take control of your day. I use it to track how much time I spend on different websites and applications. The app is easy to set up and it runs in the background of your computer or mobile device, tracking, measuring and categorizing your activity.

What’s great about this tool is that you can set goals then work toward achieving them, like spending a maximum one hour per day on email.

RescueTime also provides a reporting dashboard so you can see exactly where you’ve been procrastinating and whether or not you achieved your goals.

Aswin Bakshi · Answer

It gives you clear picture how much time you are spending on different websites and apps. It has a nice dashboard to see how productive you are.

Gabriel Cuevas · Answer

We love Zapier so much, we also integrated Proposable into it. Let your team know when you close a deal to multiple systems, push data from one SaaS to another. Genius. Oh, the Zapier guys are also pretty cool..

Shashwat Pradhan · Answer

To automatically keep track of your time & have a better work-life balance.

Frej · Answer

Manage all your "annoying" recurring tasks with Firesub.

Stowe Boyd · Answer

Projects, tasks, subtasks. I particularly like the new beta UX, the drag-and-drop of tasks and subtasks, and markdown in descriptions, notes, and comments. Tags are a great new addition, too.

Hugo Fauquenoi · Answer

The best way to get yourself organized - for personal and professional uses.

Nora Conrad · Answer

I love todoist! I used Asana before and that's a great option as well.

Tim Kilroy · Answer

ToDoist is, quite simply, a life saver for me. Todoist helps me turn my ADHD into an accelerant rather than a source of friction

Kastan Day · Answer

Quip is a fantasic note taking tool (think google docs, but with way more functionality, native offline support, desktop apps, and wonderful code formatting).  It's also just crazy beautiful - I'm in love. They also recently added a bunch of mini apps that provide sleak calendar and task views and more.

Varun Perla · Answer

A perfect way to organise all your tasks

Woody · Answer

Amazing design

Vasil Enchev · Answer

It's made for productivity

Jeeva Vijay Prasath · Answer

I have been using Ora only for weeks, but a big fan already. Very well designed app. You have the freedom to create your own system for managing projects with so many options. You can create simple tasks lists to advanced kanban board workflows with the option to enable and disable features as you require for each project. Anything you can imagine for in a project management app is there.

Ivan Mir · Answer

If you are using macOS, Qbserve (my app) will automatically track both personal productivity and time spent on work projects.

Nora Conrad · Answer

Great task and project management tool!

Stefano Gorgoni · Answer

Easy to use, full of features, fast... and it's a fantastic tool to implement GTD. 
Honestly, I find it hard to believe Asana has so few upvotes...

Answer

With ProofHub, you can organize your project and tasks, track your time and complete your deadlines on time.

Marvin Russell · Answer

Besides working here, the Checkli is really stupendous for personal use because it's free to make unlimited checklists, super easy to use, the iOS app is fan-freaking-tastic, and in addition to making free checklists, you can find existing ones and use them for free.

Lucas Pierru · Answer

Free and definitely better than Trello (slicker UI, time management, and overall more features)