15 Tools To Help Increase Your Productivity

Let’s go ahead and get it out there: while you’re reading this article, you’re probably also scanning your Twitter feed, scrolling through Instagram posts, and maybe even sneaking a look at Facebook (News - Alert) every so often. It’s okay to say it: the internet is a distracting place, and you’re on your computer more often than you’re not. Even on the job. Unless you don’t have a computer. But if you don’t have a computer, I’m not sure how you’re reading this article in the first place.

So let’s assume we all have computers and we’re all using them all the time. But it’s time to focus. Maybe you’re running a business, a little startup you think will change the world. And, hey, it just might change the world. But in case you haven’t heard already, about 90 percent of startups fail. It would be a real shame to see your startup go down swinging before it had a chance to change the world.

So, how can you assure that you put yourself and your employees in the best possible position to succeed. The name of the game is productivity. Here are fifteen great apps and tools proven to help increase productivity and efficiency in the workplace.

Google (News - Alert) Analytics & Webmaster Tools

If your company has any sort of online presence at all, these tools are a necessity. Between Google’s Analytics and Webmaster Tools service, you can track just about every single aspect of your website’s performance, from traffic to referrals to conversions, and everything in between. And since Google kind of, you know, runs the internet as we know it, you can probably trust that their numbers are solid. And so are their products.

ZenPayroll

Speaking of boring nitty-gritty businessy things you don’t want to do, when was the last time you were filling out tax forms and thought to yourself, “Wow, this is a blast”? Never. You’ve never thought that before. No one has. Why not streamline the payroll process by letting someone else take care of it for you? With an emphasis on serving small businesses, you can bet that ZenPayroll will take very good care of your the boring aspects of finance so you and your financial manager can keep your focus squarely on running your business.

Zenefits

While you’re letting ZenPayroll help you run your business more efficiently, why not keep this zen thing going and let Zenefits take care of the rest of your red tape? They’ll cover basically every HR nightmare you don’t want to deal with: contractors, vacation, insurance, you name it. And these guys are on the rise. They beat the state of Utah in a lawsuit. They’re one of the fastest growing businesses ever. Don’t you think they know a thing or two about productivity?

Producteev

Now then. You’ve got your payroll straightened out. You’ve got people taking care of HR. You’ve even got some top-notch freelance developers shaping up your back end. It’s time to get down to business! Your employees are raring to go! Let’s change the world! And let’s do it by delegating tasks to team members! That’s where Producteev comes in. The task-manager platform allows you to delegate tasks to certain people and then check up on them to make sure they’re staying as productive as you no doubt are.

HiveDesk

Remember how we talked about your company’s online presence? Yeah, okay. So maybe you’ve hired some remote freelance programmers and they’re saving your back end from total collapse because no one in your office knows how to do that. Just in case you want to check up on them, HiveDesk has got you covered. It’s a platform designed exclusively to manage a distributed workforce, so you can always keep tabs on employees even if they’re not in the same office as you.

PivotalTracker

Now, you’ve got your employees in your office, you’ve got your remote workers, you’ve got yourself, and everyone’s doing a great job, working around the clock to finish their projects and vault your company into the stratosphere. What could possibly go wrong? Well, lots. You’ve got a lot of moving parts, and being the boss, you’re the go-to person for any issue that comes up. Overwhelmed yet? Try adopting some simple agile project management tactics. Originally developed by Toyota and now the widespread standard in the tech industry, agile techniques are built on the idea of phasing deliverables into stages, and you’ll need PivotalTracker, a platform designed specifically for agile project management, to help you keep your head above water while juggling all these projects.

Toggl

This one’s pretty simple. Let’s say you’ve got your projects all delegated to certain team members and you’re wanting to monitor their progress. Or maybe you’re paying people by the hour and want to see exactly how long they’re working on the projects you’ve given them. Enter Toggl. It’s a project timer that shows you how long people are spending on certain projects, and it includes features that report to you the weekly breakdown of time spent on projects, so you can better budget your time on a week-to-week basis.

FreshBooks

Now that your employees are taken care of, it’s time to have a look at the clients. The invoicing process can often be, well, a total nightmare. FreshBooks has you covered. Especially for small businesses, this platform is designed to streamline just about every client accounting issue you could think of, including invoicing, estimates, and even the payments themselves.

Hemingway

Okay. Your business is running smoothly. Your employees are happily working with utmost productivity in your streamlined world-changing startup. Now we need to focus on you. That’s right, even you could stand to brush up in a few areas. Let’s start with your writing. Face it: you’re no Ernest Hemingway. Luckily for you, you don’t have to be. Let the Hemingway Editor app help you out. Whether it’s business memos, funding proposals, even standard emails, Hemingway is great for checking over your writing and helping you get your message across in the best way possible.

SaneBox

Now that you’re a world-changing well-oiled machine of a business mogul, you’re probably getting a lot of emails piling up in your inbox. It’s annoying, but what can you do? Well, for one, you can download SaneBox, an extremely clever app that scans and analyzes your email inbox and helps streamline your email, determining which emails matter the most and which can be deleted or stored away for later. It sounds like voodoo, and it might be, but it’s still pretty awesome and very good for time-saving.

Sunrise

Your emails are all sorted out, but your calendar is still a nightmare. You’ve got your work calendar, your personal calendar, somehow a calendar pops up for some old email address you had five years ago, who knows. But it’s all a mess. If you find yourself in this position, take a deep breath and download Sunrise. It’s an app that streamlines all your calendars into one simple interface, allowing you to get a grip on your life and increase productivity on a daily basis.

IFTTT

The acronym’s kind of silly, I’ll admit, but once you realize what it stands for—If This Then That—it starts to make sense just why this app is so popular. Basically, the app lets you create “recipes” to streamline basic patterns in your daily computer use. It’s like a hotkey for moving things from app to app. So, if you want to save all your Instagram photos to Dropbox (News - Alert), instead of uploading them every time yourself, you can let the IFTTT app take care of it. Again, it might sound like some crazy tech voodoo, but it will save you a surprising amount of time.

MySammy

Since we’ve already established that you’re on your computer all the time, we may as well face it: you get distracted looking at your favorite websites and blogs more often than you care to admit. Your employees do too. MySammy is a fascinating platform that tracks web usage and measures how productive you’ve been based on your web activity. So now, instead of just blocking a bunch of websites, you can install MySammy and let your employees—and yourself—prove just how productive you’re being!

StayFocusd

Okay, so maybe you need to discipline yourself a little better. The internet is far too distracting. You can’t help but check your fantasy football roster at least twice an hour. If you’re having trouble, let StayFocusd do the work for you. This productivity extension for Google Chrome lets you monitor yourself, so you can limit the amount of time you spend on a site, or block the too-distracting sites altogether.

A kitchen timer

Maybe you’re hopeless in front of the computer. Maybe the apps and the platforms don’t help you. It’s okay. You can still be productive. Just use the Pomodoro Technique. Whip out that kitchen timer, break up your work schedule into short blocks, and get to work. You’ve got some world-changing to do.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi

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