Organization is Key if You Aim for Higher Efficiency & Productivity
Working from home is a huge adjustment for people used to performing their job on-site or in an office. After all, productivity at work becomes challenging when you need to combine work with a space essentially meant for your relaxation and retreat.
Given that there is more to consider when merging home duties with your tasks at work, the sheer amount of items on your to-do list is overwhelming. Fortunately, technology is here to help. Several digital tools exist to aid people in fulfilling their tasks and projects at a steadier and more manageable pace.
Check out this comprehensive list of productivity tools and find one that suits your work-from-home needs the best!
Emails and Calendars
Adopting and maintaining a system to keep up with your routine keeps you from forgetting any important tasks. Platforms created for email productivity and task organization are perfect for this role.
Boomerang
Specifically created for Gmail, Boomerang lets you create reminders for important emails. Gain better control over sorting emails to reduce work distractions. For instance, get prompt follow-ups for sent messages where no response is received. Also, schedule when to send emails so you won’t forget to disseminate high-priority messages even while doing other tasks.
Evernote
The traditional way of taking notes is no longer as practical. Small post-it notes tend to get misplaced. Also, not everyone always carries a trusty pen with them. With Evernote, you can jot down important details of a meeting or brainstorming session with your team even while you’re on the go. Manage tasks, archive and sync notes, add reminders and due dates, flag overdue assignments. The app also has a web clipper feature that allows you to save screenshots, websites, links, references, and articles directly to the note. It saves you the trouble of having to copy and paste different links on your computer’s regular notes app.
Calendly
Do you manage several team meetings within a given workday or week? If so, then Calendly ensures you don’t miss out on any essential appointments with your colleagues. Its main feature focuses on creating and arranging meetings. Allow your team members to agree on a schedule that best works for them and mark their preferred time and date through an online calendar. The app also lets you send invitations to meetings and give coworkers the option to confirm their attendance. Send reminders for upcoming appointments, detect time zones for internationally-based attendees, get notifications for any changes on your calendar.
Team Collaboration & Productivity
Productivity tools make work-from-home setups possible for big and small companies. Here are some impressive online meeting platforms that are sure to increase your team’s synergy tenfold!
Trello
Trello mainly uses boards to group and arrange tasks according to priority and progress. For instance, if you manage a digital marketing team, you can create different boards for each campaign. Keep tabs on each task’s update by having teammates move boards under the appropriate timeline, whether it falls under ‘To Do,’ ‘Doing,’ or ‘Done.’ The software also generates productivity metrics, a helpful tool in gauging whether your collaborative efforts are effective or not.
Slack
This messaging app is quite popular among businesses. It has set the standard for establishing group messaging for work. With Slack, you can create different channels for each team or department. If you work with a remote team, you don’t have to worry about mismatched schedules since it is designed to operate on an asynchronous basis. In other words, it guarantees that staff from different time zones receive important project updates in real-time. Also, send individual messages, or notify each department simultaneously.
Zoom
Instead of relying on chats, why not arrange video conferences for easier communication? Zoom allows you to do just that. It supports high-quality videos and is capable of holding events with small to large numbers of attendees. At most, it can accommodate a total of 500 participants. You can also share screens with participants and create private meetings to prevent non-members from intruding on your meeting.
Goal-Setting & the Inclusion of AI-powered Productivity Functionalities
Equipping your workforce using AI technology and goal-oriented tools is a great way to stay motivated and committed to your team’s goals. The productivity tools listed below receive high recommendations for entrepreneurs and people working at home and co-working hubs.
Brain.fm
Do you have trouble focusing? Brain.fm is an audio streaming platform specifically created to help students and professionals gain better focus on their tasks at hand. It has a broad library of audio files that promote better concentration and enhanced brain function. Users no longer have to worry about creating a playlist, listening to repetitive sounds, or running out of audio content. Brain.fm’s AI capability produces a playlist for each user, and continuous listening is 100% guaranteed.
Beeminder
Think of Beeminder as a digitized version of a motivational life coach. Its main purpose is to help users set long or short-term goals and create concise and quantifiable milestones. Add daily and weekly tasks, generate accumulated metrics for each goal and effectively regulate time spent for each task. Minimize distractions such as excessive hours browsing social media and set specific timeframes for completing each task.
Grammarly for Copy Work
Staying professional and on top of your game at work is pivotal. One of the best ways to achieve that is through maintaining consistently impeccable grammar in your emails, messages, reports, and writeups. Grammarly is a cloud-based writing assistant that corrects grammar, sentence structure and analyzes different types of content. Impress your boss and teammates and enhance your writing skills!
Whether you need productivity tools to stay focused and committed to your goals, manage different teams, monitor the progress of your projects, promote teamwork, organize your emails and schedules, or record the minutes of each meeting, there is software developed specifically for what you need.
Guest Post:
Kat Sarmiento: Kat is a Molecular Biology Scientist turned Growth Marketing Scientist. During her free time, she loves to write articles that will bring delight, empower women, and spark the business mind. She loves to bake but unfortunately, baking doesn’t love her back. She has many things in her arsenal and writing is one of her passion projects.
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