Time is not an easy thing to find in today’s fast-paced business world, which is why apps and tools that save time and boost productivity have become so popular. With the New Year on the horizon, we look back on eight of the most talked-about productivity tools of 2017.
1. Momentum
This ‘habit tracker’ is designed to help you create productive habits during the working day. It was inspired by comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘Don’t Break The Chain’ idea, which says that, if you want to enhance your productivity, you should identify a task and put a cross on your calendar every time you complete that task in a day. By creating a visible series of crosses, you are more likely to keep doing the task so as not to break the chain. The app uses ticks instead of crosses, letting you assign tasks to yourself and tick them off throughout the day.
You can try it for free on your iPhone or iPad here.
2. Notability
Notability is basically designed for all those times when you wish you had a pen in your pocket, or a way to instantly record your thoughts. Essentially, it lets you work and learn in line with your own style – whether that’s by importing and annotating PDFs, creating an interactive checklist, or recording meetings and automatically linking the notes to the audio.
Get it for your Apple device here.
3. Todoist
Todoist is designed to be your go-to tool for when you need to collaborate, access work or email an idea to yourself for later. The app syncs across your phone, laptop, inbox and more, letting you easily drag and drop tasks to keep your workload perfectly organised.
4. Trello
This free project management and visual collaboration app enables you to create boards and cards for keeping track of every part of a project, as well as your overall workload. It lets you drag and drop cards to assign people to tasks, see what stage each task is at and organise information about them in a format that is quick and easy for everyone to grasp.
5. join.me
Being able to collaborate with colleagues from wherever you are is an essential part of working nowadays, and join.me is a free screen sharing tool that enables you to do so instantly and continuously. The idea is that individual employees can share their windows with other team members in an online meeting so that everyone can see what’s going on.
6. Basecamp
Basecamp is a collaboration and project management tool that is designed to be implemented across the business so that there’s a central hub where all projects, deadlines and notes are organised. The idea is to empower individuals to get on with their tasks without always having to ask other people where things are or who should be doing what.
7. Google Drive and Dropbox
Google Drive and Dropbox have become essential tools for many businesses, allowing teams to instantly share and collaborate on work. These cloud-based applications are often used as a layer of security for files, backing up documents in the storage provider’s online servers.
8. Slack
Slack is a communication tool that enables teams to build an archive of conversations and comments between colleagues, which can be quickly searched so that everyone knows what’s going on at all times – even if they have missed a meeting. Everyone in the team can see what each employee is working on at that time, and the status of every project and task.
These are just eight of the most talked-about productivity tools of 2017. Contact us at Dragon IS to find out about the IT support you need to organise, create and collaborate using them.
