What's your Favourite Productivity Tool?

Abhishek N
11 replies

Replies

Colleen Camacho
I know how it is. “If my team could only be a little more productive, we could actually focus on what we’re trying to accomplish!” At ClearPoint, we’ve heard variations of that phrase a million times over—and I’m sure you have as well. One thing we stress to our potential customers is that if they use the right tool for the job, they’ll free up more time to execute on their strategy. Because we strongly believe this to be true, we’ve compiled a list of 11 productivity apps our team couldn’t function without. (And these opinions are our own—we’re not sponsored for them!) This amazing tool tracks your activity on the computer and sends you a summary of how you have spent your time with the hours you did the past week. This is an excellent tool to identify your time thieves and improve your productivity because you are able to see where you are spending too much time and where you need to cut down. It also gives you a percentage of how productive you are. When we want to be more productive, the first step is improving the areas you are not so productive and this tool does all the hard work for you. A weekly summary is sent directly to your email. Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and consistent effort. These are the words of Paul J Meyer – a renowned personal and professional development expert. I would like to add another element that is helping individuals to be more productive is – productivity apps. As the times have become a little too much competitive, it makes sense to take help from a myriad of productivity tools available in the market. It’s super simple. Every morning, I set aside just 10 minutes to start an activity. Lets say I want to write a book, I will set a timer for just 10 minutes and focus intensely on writing until it rings. This technique is especially helpful for things you find hard or overwhelming to start. Like getting in shape. Just run in place for 10 minutes every morning until timer goes off. The two benefits: One, you only have to do it for 10 minutes, so your mind is less likely to make up distractions and excuses. Two, if you do this without a break every day for a few weeks, JUST 10 minutes a day, you have established a new pathway in your brain. Now it’s a habit, something your brain will help you do without thinking or debating (like brushing teeth) It would definitively be Byword. As a writer I spend most of my productive time in the writing app. The less time I spend in a task manager thinking, and the more time I spend in the writing app working, the more productive I am. Byword is helping me move away from all the distractions that could potentially distract me, and keeps me in the writing mode. Your favorite productivity tool should be the one that delivers you the most results. Pick one that lets you complete your primary task in the least possible amount of time. Things by Cultured Code for Mac and iOS has changed the way I manage my life. It uses David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system to manage task lists, projects and areas of responsibility. I can schedule woman delusion test tasks, differentiate between work-related and personal to dos, and assign different tags to tasks to provide context, such as ‘errands’ and ‘offline’. It’s a great way of getting everything out of my head and into the cloud, leaving me with the mental space to focus on more exciting things! My latest “no more distractions” discovery: The “SelfControl” app for my Mac. Once I enable it I can no longer access websites renowned for their distraction effect…like Facebook. SelfControl actually allows you to choose which websites you want to block, so anything can go in the list – from ekart logistics tracking to CNN. I usually set it for 2 hours at a time. SelfControl has a countdown timer that is visible on my screen. The (expected) benefit? Less Distractions + Increased Productivity. I avoid mindless browsing that just happens out of habit. The (unexpected) benefit? Focus. Seeing the timer countdown makes me feel in “work mode”. For the next 2 hours, I’M WORKING!
Abhishek N
@colleen_camacho Wow! Interesting, actually I use a tool called Flow. I keep 25 mins + 5mins break schedule. It's helping me a lot and I'll checkout SelfControl too!
Matthew Johnson
I always find it funny to see Notion classified as a productivity tool. I can't think of a tool that hinders personal productivity more than Notion.
Abhishek N
@mattcrail Interesting, why do you think like that? can you explain a bit about it?!
Matthew Johnson
@abhishek_nellikkalaya so many reasons: 1. It's slow 2. search is poor 3. Until recently you couldn't integrate it with anything. Even now the API doesn't let you do the integrations that would be really useful. 4. It's so unstructured, which is the beauty of it for many applications, like creating an internal wiki or creating rich documents to share around. But if you are trying to be productive, the last thing you should be doing is messing around trying to dial in your Notion dashboard. Plus, the more data you get into it, the more unruly it gets, and therefore you spend even more time trying to organize your Notion rather than doing work. I could go on but that's a good start
Abhishek N
@mattcrail Actually I agree with your last point. It happened to me also
Valeria Migova
My favourite one is online whiteboard Weje :)
Pavel Kukhnavets
Productivity tools may contain variouys features depending on businesses' needs and requirements. I'd like to highlight GanttPRO (https://ganttpro.com/) - a professional gantt chart generator that has recommended itself as a reliable helper in the project manager's tool arsenal. Being an online solution, it is available on Mac as well as any other OS. The Gantt chart-based approach, combined with the clean and attractive interface, makes tasks and project management highly intuitive. 10 points!