The Top 5 Apps For Productivity

We all aim to be more productive. For some, this might mean finishing a project in half the time it would normally take. For others, this might mean squeezing extra days at the gym in a week. Regardless of your ambitions and goals, here is a list we’ve compiled of the top 5 apps for productivity.

How We Define “Apps For Productivity”

For the purposes of this blog post, we define apps for productivity as any software that assists in making your life easier and more efficient. While many variants of these apps exist, we found these to be the most effective, and the most user friendly.

Although some require a paid subscription, free alternatives will work just fine. We recommend thinking about the areas of your life you’d like to improve, then continuing with this list to see what works best for you. Hopefully, after reading through, you will have found something that works for you.

1. Forest

forest app for productivity

One of the easiest ways to boost productivity is to spend less time on your phone. The Forest app makes this incredibly easy and interactive. You can set a timer ranging from 10 minutes to 2 hours. Within this time, a virtual seed is planted and grows throughout the timer if you remain on the app. If you leave the app, however, the seed will begin to die until you return.

Once the timer is complete, you’re awarded virtual coins alongside the tree you just grew. This tree is then added to a virtual forest where you can build and share your collection with friends. What makes this app interesting is that you can eventually redeem your coins for a real-life planting of a tree. This way, you’re not only being more productive but also helping save the planet one tree at a time.

productivity tree

This conditioning method is famously known as the Pomodoro Technique. The Pomodoro Technique consists of 6 steps. First, you choose a task you’d like to get done. Second, you set a timer for a short amount of time that you will do this task without interruption. Third, do the task for the specified period of time. Fourth, when the timer goes off, put a checkmark on a piece of paper or a tracking device. Fifth, take a break! Sixth, redo the process from step 1, but every time you take a break you can take a longer break than the previous time.

2. TimePage

productivity app

Having difficulty staying organized with planning? Look no further. The TimePage app is not only extremely effective but also boasts a sleek and minimal design. This app allows you to fill out a virtual “heat” calendar with future events and due dates. The more busy a day in your calendar is, the brighter its color becomes. Your less busy days will be cooler, or darker colored.

Another added bonus of using TimePage is that it syncs to your Calendar app on both iPhone and MacBook. This allows you to create a powerful calendar hub that is sure to help avoid overdue projects and missing important events. Furthermore, you can set custom notifications that will remind you of your events prior to them occurring.

Liking this post? Then you will love our post, How To Re-Wire Your Brain to Enjoy Productivity.

3. Slack

When operating or working for a business, email messaging might not be the easiest form of wide-spread communication. Slack provides the perfect solution to this problem. The app essentially acts as a replacement for email within a company. Slack is organized through channels. These channels can be respective to a department, team, or group of people. This allows for updates, discussions, and changes to be communicated in one accessible place.

productivity app

How will this improve my productivity? Simple. Slack saves you the time of forwarding and digging through countless emails for critical information. By having one large virtual cloud of information that’s both easily accessible and searchable, productivity will increase. Adding to the features, this app supports the sending of images, GIFS, and emojis. Currently, it supports over 120,000 companies in becoming more efficient, organized, and productive.

4. Any.Do

productivity app

Any.Do offers a powerful mobile app that makes it quick to add tasks, organize them into lists, and add due dates. The app’s “Plan my Day” feature forces you to schedule when you’ll accomplish your various tasks so that you remember to do these things throughout the day. Any.do also integrates nicely across a vast variety of devices. It currently supports Amazon’s Alexa, Slack, and Apple Watch integration. This is exactly what you need if you’re the kind of person who adds things to a list and forgets about them.

The power of having a daily checklist has been proven time, and time again. This study highlights the ways a simple checklist improved both productivity and team-work among medical workers.

5. Simple Habit

Meditation is a popular method for boosting productivity and clearing the mind of distractions. One of our personal favorite apps for productivity, Simple Habit, makes meditation easy and convenient even with the busiest schedule.

productivity app

The app provides an array of 5 to 10 minute guided meditations. Many of these meditations specifically target preparing you for a long day, clearing your mind of distractions, motivating you to work harder, and so much more. This makes it easy to select a fast, easy-to-follow guided meditation that is catered to your needs.

By clearing your mind of distractions, you’re allowing yourself to work more efficiently, therefore more productively.

Key Takeaways

Productivity is undoubtedly one of the biggest keys to accomplishing our goals. If you look at any success story, it is usually backed by a hyper-productive individual who set out to make their dreams reality. There is no question that we should be doing anything that we can to boost this productivity. In a digital age, this task has become a lot more simple and convenient. Hundreds of applications allow you to better organize, plan, and live out your life. By using these tools, we’re setting ourselves up to be in a better position than if we had not.

If used consistently, these five apps for productivity will certainly help you become more productive. While they each have alternatives, we are confident that these picks have the cleanest and easiest to use designs. We encourage you to investigate each of them yourself, sign up for the free trials, and see if they can assist you in getting more done in less time.

If you’d like to learn more ways to improve the quality of your life, you will definitely like this article on “Ways to Work on Yourself During the Pandemic.”