1st March 2021

Our top five apps to help boost productivity

If 2021 is the year you promised to buckle down and get more done, make sure you have the right apps to hand. From time-tracking and to-do lists to note-taking, we have handpicked our favourite productivity apps to help you organise your workload, collaborate with others and ultimately get things done.

Try them out and decide for yourself and let us know which ones work best for you.

Evernote

Never forget the important stuff and get organised with the popular Evernote app. Perfect for capturing your day to day notes not just through typing, but also through audio, imagery, digital sketches and more! Gone are the days of handwriting notes, with Evernote you can sync your notes across different devices from smartphone to desktop – which are also accessible when offline.

Another advantage is the app’s handy search function, which allows you to sift through your notes quickly just by typing in a few keywords.

Forest

Easily distracted by your phone? Forest motivates you to put down your device to ensure you stay focused on the task at hand. The premise is simple: Plant a seed when you’re ready to get to work, then set a timer. Stay on task, your tree grows — but if you exit the app for whatever reason, your tree dies.

The app is partnered with Trees of the Future who plant actual trees, so not only are you helping yourself, you are helping the planet too!

Todoist

If you’re looking for a simple way to organise and keep track of your daily to-do list, Todoist is a great task management app to use. It allows you to create and sort tasks, set due dates and reminders, and even track your progress and collaborate on projects with others.

Other useful features include location-based reminders as well as options to sort tasks according to priority and tags.

Toggl

Ever procrastinate so much that you’ve not finished a task and wondered where your time has gone? Then perhaps give time tracking a go. Toggl is a great app to helps you keep track of how much time you are spending on different tasks as well as making you more aware of how you spend your time. Toggl can be used on your smartphone or can run in the background on your desktop, both of which features handy reminders when you’ve not logged your time.

At the end of the day or week, you will be able to see a summary of your activity, as well as detailed weekly reports to help you to manage time efficiently.

Google Calendar

Keeping a digital calendar updated is a little easier than its paper counterpart. That’s where Google Calendar comes in. This app can help you from missing meetings and appointments as well as make your life a little less hectic. With its simple design, it’s super easy to add events and meetings, share your calendar with colleagues and family as well as sync with your emails to ensure those meetings are noted.