Productivity tools for effective work and organisation

Being productive and organised involves making deliberate efforts and implementing useful strategies. Various software programs and tools can help boost your productivity both in and out of the workplace. Understanding these tools, their functions and how they work can enable you to utilise them to achieve your goals. In this article, we discuss what productivity tools are and list 16 of these beneficial tools and their functions.

What are productivity tools?

Productivity tools are various apps, software or platforms that can help you plan, organise and complete set tasks. These tools may enable you to achieve your goals and improve your work efficiency. There are various tools and software programs to achieve specific goals. Knowing which may work best to complete your tasks can help you utilise them to improve your efficiency and productivity.

Related: How is productivity measured? (With tips and example)

16 productivity tools you can use to improve efficiency

Many beneficial tools can help with your productivity. Here are examples of some of them:

1. ProofHub

ProofHub is project management software that helps manage tasks and projects and ensures accountability and effective communication. The program allows you to allocate tasks, monitor the time spent on a step or task and upload documents to organise your work. It's a beneficial tool for projects, team members and any task relating to work, as it ensures all the necessary information is present and available in one location.

Related: Project management skills and how to improve them

2. nTask

nTask is a tool that lets you record and control every part of your project on a central platform to ensure you're closely monitoring your projects and performance. Projects may possess different elements, making it complex to stay productive from the start until the end of your project. With a project management tool like nTask, you can effectively and efficiently monitor every project component and ensure productivity. The features on this platform allow you to track employee sheets and organise meetings and to-do lists.

3. Calendar

Using digital calendars or other management tools to use your time efficiently may be inefficient because of how long you may spend entering and editing information. With the calendar platform, an algorithm learns your schedule and helps you organise, book and update events and meetings on your calendar. You can also synchronise these actions across different calendar tools to save some time, allowing you to focus on other essential tasks. Some calendar features include:

• sharing the calendar and selecting who can see specific information

• providing calendar analytics

• automatically scheduling meetings and inviting participants

• using analytical tools to reveal time spent in meetings

• integrating different digital calendars, including other emails, collaboration and project management tools

Related: The best shared calendar apps (features explained)

4. Slack

Slack is a collaboration software that ensures effective communication amongst team members. It allows integration with some commonly used apps, such as Dropbox. An essential feature of Slack is team communication and chat. You can also use it to set reminders and highlight essential words when they appear during a conversation.

Related: Collaboration skills: definitions and examples

5. Bit.ai

Bit.ai is a document and collaboration management platform that enables users to share, track, collaborate and manage company documents and all essential files. While there are a variety of productivity applications or programs available, using too many at a time may overwhelm you and leave you feeling disorganised. Moving through different apps may impede your productivity and progress on projects.

Bit.ai contains features that allow you to collaborate in real-time and store various media files, including images, videos and PDFs, in a single location. This feature saves you from shuffling different apps, as you can organise and manage all the documents and files you require from one place. It may be the productivity platform you need if you value convenience and prefer managing products on a single platform.

6. Google Docs

Google Docs is a tool that allows you to create, access, edit and collaborate with any mobile device with or without an internet connection. It's a commonly used platform to store and manage documents while allowing collaboration amongst individuals. The major features of Google Docs include styling and editing tools, different pre-made documents, resumes and reports and the ability to create a document with a mobile application or browser.

Related: A guide for how to make Google Docs on multiple devices

7. Skype

Skype is a global software that allows users to collaborate with real-time conversations through video calls. It has some exciting features enabling you to connect with others and enjoy your experience. Some significant features of Skype include real-time messaging and document sharing, mobile calls at reasonable rates and cool video features.

Related: The 11 best free video conferencing software to use

8. Zoom

Zoom is another collaborative software that allows you to hold meetings with team members and conferences with 500 participants. It provides conference services with cloud computing and allows convenient collaboration between individuals at varying locations. The platform provides high audio and video quality and screen sharing, allowing you to join and leave ongoing sessions easily.

9. Toggl

Toggl is an ideal platform for work if you seek to track your time on projects or specific activities. It's an application you can easily use to track time and integrate with other beneficial tools to improve its function. The platform's features give you an overview of time spent and team progress amongst other mobile functionalities.

Related: How is productivity calculated? (With formula and examples)

10. Paymo

Paymo is an application that helps you with scheduling, planning, tracking time, invoicing and managing tasks. It includes essential elements and gives you a general view of a team's productivity and performance. With Paymo's features, you can track your time on projects, get project reports, put time entries in categories and automate processes.

Related: What are project management tools (with 15 examples)

11. Evernote

Evernote allows you to store and remember the necessary information you may forget. It's a platform that reminds you of everything you require and helps maintain your organisation and productivity. You can use Evernote to document, organise and share your notes, so your ideas and beneficial information are always available whenever you require them. The platform possesses features that allow easy access to attachments, audio recordings and links. You may also search and get information from business cards.

Related: 9 of the best note-taking apps for Windows (with examples)

12. Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is a digital application that allows you to write notes on any of your mobile devices. The platform allows you to type, draw or write freely, like using a pen on paper. It's helpful when you want to jot impromptu notes or sudden ideas. You can input whatever information you want by selecting a section and a new page. This software allows audio or video recording, real-time collaboration and character recognition from images.

13. Dropbox Paper

Dropbox Paper is a platform for teams to discuss ideas together. It provides a more relaxed work experience as users can express themselves using emojis and stickers to lighten the conversation and connect. Every team member can access and update Dropbox files in Paper documents. Changes you make on documents save automatically, making presentations easy.

14. Google Keep

Google Keep is a valuable notes app that allows its users to write down reminders, ideas, meeting notes, checklists, to-do lists and other similar writings. It provides you with digital sticky notes that you can integrate with Google Docs. The platform works on various mobile devices and browsers. Some of its major features include:

• location and time reminders

• audio notes with Google's speech-to-text engine

• synchronisation with web applications

• notes with colour codes

15. Email Finder

Email Finder is a tool that helps you to find an email within a few seconds. Once you input the first and last name of the person's email you seek to find, including their website's domain, you get the desired results in moments. The free version of this tool offers 25 email searches each month, which may be sufficient depending on your regular tasks. Additionally, the tool possesses a Chrome extension that allows you to find a website's email with just one click.

16. Boomerang

Boomerang is an email management application for Gmail that helps you set and schedule email reminders. The platform allows you to receive a message about a set time in your inbox. Its features enable you to decide when to receive or send an email and remove distractions so you can focus on essential tasks. The Boomerang platform may be right for you if you require a tool to manage and organise your emails.

Please note that none of the companies, institutions or organisations mentioned in this article are affiliated with Indeed.