It’s amazing what a huge effect a few apps can have on your productivity. Since I started testing out software like mad two years ago, I’ve discovered more and more ways to get things done more efficiently and more effectively. With the help of just these ten productive tools I have dramatically increased the quantity and quality of my output. Read about each of them below.
1. 2Do ($9.99)
There are a lot of free to-do list applications out there, and some of them are pretty great. Wunderlist is one that immediately springs to mind. Why, then, did I choose a $10 app? Because 2Do has every feature you could ever think of while still offering a very streamlined experience. For people with even the most hectic and complicated schedules, 2Do will fulfill all your needs. For those with less to organize, it’s an easy-to-use application that has everything you might ever want. It’s available for iOS and Android at the price listed above.
2. Mint (Free)
Money plays a big role in all our lives, so it makes sense that you would have productive tools that help you manage it. Mint is among the best ways to manage your money from multiple sources, organizing your various accounts in one place. For everything from your bank accounts to your credit cards to loans to even your PayPal account, Mint has you covered.c
3. Scrivener ($45)
I’ll come out and say it: Microsoft Word sucks. It’s cluttered, it’s clunky and it’s nowhere near intuitive. Word is one of those productive tools that we’ve been forced to use for years due to its dominance in the marketplace, but Scrivener is becoming a more and more viable contender for your word processor. Scrivener treats every page of your document as a separate file, which sounds like a small feature but will revolutionize how you work on long projects. Between that and its intuitive design, Scrivener (available for Windows and Mac) is highly recommended.
4. Google Drive (Free)
A cloud storage service is an absolute must on a list of productive tools. There are a number to choose from. While Dropbox was a major contender for this spot, Google Drive wins out for more people’s needs. Whereas you have to go through extra steps to add storage to your Dropbox account, Google Drive automatically comes with a respectable 15 GB to store emails, photos and other data. If you want more space, Google has it for the very affordable prices of just $2/month for 100 GB or $10/month for 1TB. This is in addition to Google’s brilliantly simple apps connected to Google Drive, productive tools that are great for collaboration and serve as great free alternatives for Microsoft Office software. Google Drive is available on any platform.
5. Mailbox (Free)
A lot of us use our email inboxes as de facto to-do lists, even if we already have an app like 2Do or Wunderlist for that purpose. That was a bad idea until productive tools like Mailbox arrived on the scene. Mailbox, available for iOS, Android and Mac, allows you to store emails for later viewing without having to archive them. It also has the innovative ability to “snooze” emails until the date and time of your choice, so that they’ll pop back up in your inbox right when you need them. This is especially great if you have to follow up with people who don’t always reply to the first email you send.
6. GoodReader ($4.99)
iBooks and other default applications are completely satisfactory ways to read PDFs, but who wants to settle for satisfactory? Productive tools like GoodReader make reading on a tablet or a phone the best experience out there and also give you the power to edit documents. GoodReader itself is only available for iOS but you can find some alternatives for Android here.
7. Feedly (Free)
Even most internet users are getting their news in an antiquated way. Instead of browsing dozens of sites to get updates from all your favorite sources, you can use a service like Feedly to compile articles and blog posts in one place where you get to read them ad-free. The experience becomes even better when you get a third-party app like Reeder to read the content you’ve compiled on your computer, tablet, or phone.
8. Pocket (Free)
An app that goes hand-in-hand with Feedly, Pocket lets you save things you find on the internet for later reading. For example, if you come across an awesome article that you don’t have time to read right away, save it to Pocket with either the browser extension on a PC or a share function on a mobile device so that you can enjoy it at a time of your convenience.
9. Skitch (Free)
There are some really fancy options for annotating images and documents, but those options are rarely necessary. Most of the time when you’re marking something you’re doing it in a hurry. Skitch is an expert at the rush job, making it painless to annotate and mark up images and documents sent to you to review.
10. Evernote (Free)
Evernote is one of the most beloved and powerful tools for productivity out there. The developers describe it as your external brain, and the description is accurate. Your account is made up of notes you write, notebooks to contain your notes, and stacks to organize your notebooks. Almost any kind of information, whether it be reminders, facts or ideas, can be stored in Evernote in the form of either text, pictures or audio. Its uses are almost infinite, and everyone can take advantage of it in a different way. For some, it’s a simple note-taking app in which they can jot down to-dos, musings and reminders. Others store pretty much their entire lives in their Evernote account. The magic of that is that the more you put into Evernote, the more you get out of it. The browser extension that allows you to “clip” articles from the web directly into your notebooks and Evernote’s wide-ranging syncing abilities with all kinds of digital services only make it stronger. Evernote has a $5/month premium service, but all its key features are absolutely free of price.
Featured photo credit: Evernote Trunk Conference Entrance/Brooks Duncan via flickr.com
