The best tools for productivity

[Apex]

There are many tools that can help us to be more productive, so I've opened this thread to see if we can all share the tools we use for this.

Here are some tools I use to be more productive:

• Kanbanchi (online): I recently started using the kanban method. Kanbanchi has everything I need for free, because it allows me to organize my tasks with priorities, tags, comments, attachments and more. In addition, I find the most aesthetically beautiful tool I have used for this purpose.
• RescueTime (Windows/Linux/Mac/Online): This great little tool allows me to view approximately my productivity, being very useful to see when and in what I waste my time.
• Hourglass (Windows): A small Windows timer that allows me to put countdowns for various activities, which makes me more motivated by "competing" with the clock. It can also be used for pomodoros, for example.

What are your favorite productivity tools?

 

[Samwise89]

Trello keeps me organized in the big picture, but on the day to day I live out of spreadsheets and text files to keep quick notes.

I don't do time tracking and time boxing any more. It just pressures me. I liked it at first because it gamified work, but then it became a problem of not matching my high scores. That felt more like guilt and was getting me down.

I like to create goal milestones and create a nice table in a spreadsheet and print it out and keep it on my desk. Then each time I finish a part, I can put a big X in that box. I watch the sheet get filled with X's until I reach the milestone. That visual and physical part of drawing the X's helps keep me motivated.

 

[shaunm]

Rescue Time

Excellent tool to track your time and how you spend it. I was suprised with how much time I actually wasted per day and it helped me get my act together. Without a doubt it is my favourite productivity tool.

Alfred(Mac Only)

Without a doubt, my second favourite productivity tool. It has a built in tracker, currently my average use for it is around the 150 actions per day mark. Depending on what I am doing on the day this can go over the 400 mark.

It has an extended clipboard, quick and easy macros and a whole bunch of third party plugins for various tools.

IFTTT

Quick and easy macros for a whole bunch of apps and tools out there. I currently have about 30 recipies for a number of tasks and I plan to expand it soon into helping me manage my social media and YouTube. It's team roll out support for new apps pretty often.

Trello

A board based task management system. I use it as a Kanban Board system to help track my own projects as well as the work of a number of freelancers that work for me. It intergrates with IFTTT too so you are able to set up a whole bunch of recipies to enhance to tool.

Pocket

Although it is initially intended as a read it later tool where you can save webpages to your pocket to read later if you dont have time when you discover it I also use it to help with Rescute Time tracking.

For example, say I am on YouTube, I have YouTube set as unproductive time within Rescue Time but I see a video about how to improve productivity. I will save it to my Pocket and mark all time spent in my pocket app as productive so I get to watch a productive video and have Rescue Time save it as productive time. I do this for Forums, Reddit and a few other sites too.

Dropbox

Pretty sure most will have heard of dropbox, its an online storage service. I manily use Dropbox to keep my VPS'/Servers/Laptop all synced togeather with various tasks automatically to save me time. I also use it as a back up for photos and videos as well as important documents and such. I also have a few shared folders for some freelancers to make the work process more streamlined for them.

ToDoIst

Basically a to do list app, it works on computers, phones and tablets seamlessly. It has a few native intergrations with calendar apps and such as well as with IFTTT. It also has a built in digital Karma system, personally, I see no reason for it but I have seen some YouTube videos where people said it helped them stay productive to reach their daily karma goals. In all honesty, I think the Karma is totally useless.

Noisli

I personally don't use this anymore as I just stream some Two Steps From Hell or Wardruna on Spotify for background noise now but its basically an app for background noise. It has a bunch of stuff like rain falling, a stream, coffeeshop, and thunderstorms.

 

[Northstar07]

E.ggtimer.com : Open one browser page and place it on seperate screen. Pomodoro all day. 20 minute segments to beat the clock on task lists. Because it's on a separate screen that is staring at me from the wall, keeps the wheels turning and tasks churning!!

 

[Royso]

Nozbe - King In The North. Great tool that helps me get organized. Well designed, works swiftly on all main platforms and devices, has integrations with popular software (Evernote, Dropbox, Google Calendar and few more), great for team work and small companies, and is developed for 10 years by a passionate team. Built with GTD methodology in mind, so works best with cleaning inbox(es) routines and periodic reviews.

AllMyNotes - my main database for notes (on Windows), knowledge materials, projects timeline, and so on. Product of 2 people (husband and wife). There is nevertheless one big minus: no mobile app Therefore I also use Evernote in some cases and...

... Simplenote - small, smart and fast app for taking notes. Built by Automattic (they are also into Wordpress development), works great with many devices. We use it as go-to family collaboration tool, ie. for sharing information that everyone should have quick access to, for shopping lists, quick ideas, and so on. It is so simple that also less techie family members use it.

Honorable mentions: Pocket, KeePass, VeraCrypt (newer TrueCrypt), IFTTT, Dropbox/OneDrive, Pushover, SimpleMind Pro (mind maps), and for audiobooks in traffic: Smart Audiobook Player or MortPlayer.

 

[Tao]

I have used StayFocusd which you can set to block certain websites on your computer, or allow only a specified amount of time to browse on them during set hours.

It was good to force me to spend as limited amount of time on Facebook, Reddit etc.