If New Year’s resolutions are not on your mind then they probably should be. With the new year set to start in less than two weeks, most people are likely starting to ponder on how they are going to do better in 2016. Sure, New Year’s resolutions typically only last a few weeks, but that is because they typically only take a single day to plan. Start planning now and make resolutions that you can keep, then figure out exactly how you are going to get yourself to accomplish those resolutions.
Luckily, every year that goes by comes with a slew of new and exciting apps and tools that help people become more productive. If you are looking for a few tools to make your 2017 a success, try these.
1. Evernote
Evernote is nearly an all-inclusive productivity app. It is supposed to help people organize everything they are doing into one neat place. We are talking about files, notepads, and other types of information. The best part of Evernote is that it is on the cloud so that everyone that needs to can have access to the right content.
Think of Evernote as a digital version of that old planner that your mom used to carry around. Just as useful, twice as organized, hundreds of times more convenient.
2. Toggl
Toggl is a way to keep track of your time. Sure, it might take a few extra seconds to keep track of everything you do, but studies show that people are significantly more productive when they know where their time is going. It is just a fact of life that when something is measured, it improves. The Toggl app works across pretty much every device as well, making it easy for everyone on a work team to succeed.
3. Hound
Another interesting name in productivity apps, Hound is essentially a much-improved version of Siri. You can ask Hound anything you want and it can forecast weather, find coffee shops, and quite a bit more. You don’t need to do keyword prompts or use any special phrases either.
The way to know that Hound must be good is that it is succeeding in the Apple store. This means that people with access to Siri are still choosing to use Hound as an alternative. This is a good sign that Hound beats Siri.
One of our favorite features was the ability to narrow in search results. For example, you can not only tell Hound to find you a hotel, but you can tell it exactly what type of hotel you want it to find and how much you are willing to spend.
4. Zapier
Zapier has been around for a little longer but is essentially a great way to automate processes in life and in the workplace. There are more processes available to automate than could possibly be said in one article. Suffice to say, nearly everyone in the world has at least a few processes that Zapier could make more efficient. Even if it just saves twenty seconds on a task that you do ten times a day, the savings in a month or year is astounding.
5. Google Drive
One would hope that everyone has heard of Google Drive, perhaps even used it at this point. However, one cannot write about tools for productivity without including Google Drive. Google Drive is the ultimate organizer for all files. This includes pictures, videos, Word files, Excel files, PDFs and more. It operates like a simple filing cabinet, except digitized.
A few of the best parts about Google Drive are the cost (it is free) and the cloud. You are able to access everything you have managed to digitize in seconds from any device that can access the internet. It is also great to know that Google is incredibly secure and has backups of everything in multiple locations.
