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BEST APPS FOR EFFICIENCY

“Great companies obsess over productivity, not efficiency,” Michael Mankins wrote for Harvard Business Review (HBR).
As he says in his HBR article, “Our research indicates that the average company loses more than 20% of its productive capacity — more than a day each week — to what we call “organizational drag [sic].”
Organisational drag is any process that consumes valuable time and prevents people from getting things done – ie: productivity killers. The best companies are the ones that identify issues getting in the way of productivity and eitbe focher create more efficient processes or remove them altogether.
The same thing applies to individual staff members, entrepreneurs, freelancers and anyone who cares about making the most of every minute and [insert currency] they spend.
Whether you’re working solo or as part of a team, you need the right tools to identify and overcome productivity – so, in this article, we’ve got 10 of the best time management and productivity apps to help you get more done.
What kind of productivity apps are we looking at?
In this article, I’m going to run you through my pick of the top 15 time management and productivity apps that will help you get more done every hour of the working day.
Productivity tools come in many different forms and they often take a different approach to improving your workflow. So I’m not just going to reel off a bunch of apps and make out all your problems are solved.
The focus booster app is designed around the Pomodoro Technique – popular productivity strategy
What I’m going to do is break these productivity apps into the following categories, based on what they help you achieve:
Get organised
Improve habits
Increase focus
Once I’ve introduced all of the apps, I’m going to spend the final part of this article comparing them to help you choose the right toolkit for your needs.

Note, these aren’t in any particular order. All of these apps are great at what they do and my aim here is to help you get a better understanding of what they do differently and what you need from productivity tools in general.
So, let’s get started.

Get organised with these productivity apps

1: Serene (macOS)

$49/year, free trial available
Serene is a macOS application designed to help remote workers, freelancers and modern teams get into deep work and achieve their goals.
We’ll be talking about this app a few times throughout this article because it has something to offer for all of the goals we’re looking at: Getting organised, improving habits and increasing focus.
To make you more productive, Serene takes a unique approach to organising your tasks. It prompts you to set a single goal for each day and then break this goal into several tasks to stop you getting distracted by tasks that don’t contribute to your daily objective.
You then work in timed sessions for each task with a short break in between each one. Short working sessions and regular breaks help you stay refreshed and keep you hitting targets throughout the day.
No more feeling overwhelmed by workloads or getting sidetracked with distractions. You just take it one task at a time.
Key features:
Website blocker: Block websites that distract you, such as social media and news websites.
App blocker: You can also block apps that take your attention away from work – social apps, your email app and anything else getting in the way.
Distraction-free sessions: Work in 20-60 minute sessions with regular breaks to maximise productivity.
Session timer: Shows you how much time you have left to complete tasks, giving you a motivation boost towards the end of each session.
To-do lists: Manage tasks and make sure everything gets done by the right team member.
Day planner: Define your goal for the day, set your tasks and get stuff done.
Focus music: Play background music to help you keep your focus.
Phone silencer: Automatically put your phone on silent mobile while working to avoid unnecessary distractions.
As you can see, Serene packs a lot of features into a single productivity app and we’ll look at how these can also improve your working habits and increase focus later.

You can try Serene out for free here.

2: Todoist (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Chrome, Safari, Firefox)

Free, $3/monthor $5/mo
Todoist is a task management tool that promises to turn complex to-do lists into something easily manageable. In many ways, it’s like a Trello for individuals (and without the cards), helping you keep track of your own tasks and make sure nothing gets forgotten.
You can create and organise tasks, set and change deadlines, prioritise tasks, set project goals and keep track of progress with the apps measurement and reporting features.
Key features:
Task management: A slick, feature-rich interface that makes it easy to create and manage tasks – no matter how long your to-do list may be.
Prioritise tasks: Get the most important things done first by prioritising tasks.
Project goals: Set project goals and make sure you’re on track throughout.
Reports: Keep track of your progress with Todoist’s measurement and reporting features.
If you’re struggling to keep on top of your personal to-do list, Todoist offers a slick, cross-platform interface that makes it quick and easy to manage tasks.

3: Wunderlist (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Chrome, Safari)

Free or $4.99 per user

Wunderlist is a task management app with all kinds of advanced features. While Trello is designed for teams and Todoist is designed for individuals, Wunderlist is designed for both and it feels very much like a Trello alternative designed around to-do lists, rather than cards.
Instead of cards, you create lists and group them into folders, which every member of your team (if you have one) can access and edit accordingly.
Key features:
To-do lists: Create to-do lists for individuals or teams and group them into folders for larger tasks or projects.
Task management: Set deadlines, assign tasks, set reminders and add comments or notes.
Much like Trello, Wunderlist is a seriously powerful platform that offers a lot of productivity features for free or a relatively small subscription fee. See which one you prefer.

4: Trello (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android & web)

Free version, Business Class version $9.99/monthper user
Trello is a simple, easy-to-use project management app for collaborative teams. The platform is based on the Kanban board philosophy, a visual layout that originates from Japan, which you can see below.
Essentially, tasks are added and organised on “to-do,” “going” and “done” statuses, which helps teams keep track of progress. Tasks can be grouped into boards (the entire view above) and cards, which can contain multiple tasks in themselves. Individual tasks can be assigned to groups or team members with deadlines and checklists.
Key features:
Project management: Trello is a simple, easy-to-use project management app for collaborative teams.
To-do lists: Create to-do lists, add due dates, assign them to people and manage tasks as they’re completed.
Trello boards: Dashboards where you can create and manage lists of cards containing tasks and to-do lists.
Work with anyone: Invite anyone from around the world to help you make things happen.
Instant messaging: Talk to team members in real-time to discuss tasks.
Trello’s instant messaging makes it easy for teams to communicate and collaborate from anywhere and team members can join for free, although they’ll be limited to one board. Prices remain affordable on every paid package, though.

5: Slack (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android & web)

Free version, paid options from £5.25/monthper user
Slack is a messaging platform designed for teams and it’s the ideal communication tools for remote workers. Instant messaging is organised into channels, which team members can join and leave, as needed, so nobody receives messages or notifications irrelevant to them. Team members can also chat outside of main topics in separate threads which prevents these messages from interfering with the most project-centric conversations.
Key features:
Instant messaging: Live communication between every team member for seamless collaboration.
Statuses: Users can set availability statuses to focus on individual tasks as needed.
File sharing: Drag-and-drop file sharing for PDFs, images, videos and other common files types.
Voice & video calls: Voice and video calls directly from within Slack.
Screen sharing: Allows team members to show their work to others in real-time for stronger collaboration.
Now, the key thing to understand about Slack as a remote worker is the pricing policy. You can use Slack for free, which allows you to create a single workspace for small teams while paid versions start from £5.25/month per active user.
Ideally, your business (or the company you work for) will pay for a team version of Slack to provide everyone with a fully-collaborative workspace. However, the free version of Slack means small teams within a business can use the tool between themselves to improve their workflow.
This can improve collaboration within office environments but the real benefit of Slack is for remote workers who need to collaborate with team members in other locations – one of the most common problems cited by remote workers.

6: Monday (iOS, Android, web app)

Prices start from £15/month for 2 users, £34/month for 5 users
If your project management needs are too demanding for Trello, then monday.com is the first alternative you want to look at. Essentially, it’s a slightly more expensive, complex and powerful version of Trello, which is better suited to larger teams, more complex projects or teams juggling multiple projects at any one time.

While Trello is based around the Kanban board interface, monday allows you to manage projects using multiple views, including the popular Kanban dashboard. Once again, you can create tasks, group them, assign them and add due dates. Team members can then update the status of tasks with labels such as “to do,” “working on it,” “stuck” and “done”.
Key features:
Project management: monday is a more advanced project management that helps large teams and individual team members complete tasks on time.
Views: Multiple views allow you to check project overviews, timelines, individual workflows, checklists and reports.
Track progress: Track tasks, update statuses, receive notifications when deadlines are looming and reassign/prioritise tasks with ease.
Weekly task loads: Team members can work on multiple projects without getting lost by using monday’s weekly overview.
File sharing: Upload and share files so everyone has access to the resources they need via the same dashboard.
The Chart View and Timeline View options in monday, give you an overall picture of how projects are progressing, the timeline for tasks/projects and how your teams are aligning with deadlines – both for individual tasks and entire projects. These views offer great data visualisations, making it easy to manage projects, tasks and team members alike.

7: Airtable (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android)

Free version, $10/monthfor Plus, $20/monthfor Pro
We’re lucky to have so many productivity tools available to us today but this hasn’t always been the case. Back in the day (I’m just about old enough to remember), Microsoft Excel was the make-shift project management tool of choice. And, while it may not be the most intuitive tool for this purpose, Excel is surprisingly capable.
Airtable is built around the spreadsheet format and this is great news if your team is used to managing projects on tools like Excel. The platform will be familiar to anyone with Excel experience (or similar spreadsheet apps) but the functionality is a bit much for newcomers to adopt without learning the formulas and functions.
Airtable’s interface operates like a spreadsheet but it’s far more intuitive and includes all kinds of functionality that’s either not available in Excel or difficult to achieve. With Airtable, you can create and assign tasks, set statuses, add attachments and include notes – all within a few clicks
Key features:
Project management: Airtable turns spreadsheets into a fully-featured project management tool.
Dynamic fields: Turn fields into checkboxes or add links, attachments, text notes to fields.
Views: Manage projects in multiple views – grid, gallery, calendar and Kanban.
Team collaboration: Team members can interact with projects, update task statuses, add messages and prioritise their workflows.
Airtable also includes instant messaging for seamless collaboration and its cross-platform support makes this accessible to every team member, no matter where they are or which OS they’re using.

8: Taskade (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android & web)

Free version, paid versions from $7/mo
Taskade is a project management and collaboration tool for small teams. It takes the to-do list concept turns it into a visual platform for tracking the progress of tasks and projects. While Trello is limited to a single Kanban board view, Taskade allows you to toggle multiple views in one click so you can see exactly how things are coming along.
Key features:
Project management: Project and task management features with multiple views for team members to keep track of progress.
Live collaboration: Edit projects in real-time and communicate via live chat.
Team calendar: Keep track of tasks across multiple teams and workspaces.
Team roadmap: Plan and manage projects by visually assigning tasks and setting deadlines.
Taskade also gives you live messaging and video calls for better collaboration between remote team members. While the team roadmap system makes it easy to assign tasks to team members and manage team projects.
The other key feature Taskade provides is a team calendar where tasks assigned to each team member appear for everyone to see. This is important in terms of managing schedules, assigning tasks and keeping track of workloads.

9: Process.st (Web app)

14-day trial, $12.50/monthfor Business and $25/monthfor Business Pro
A common trait with team productivity tools is they’re often designed for technical teams used to dealing with advanced software platforms. This can make it difficult for non-technical teams to find tools that are designed with them in mind.
Process.st is one of those tools, making task management itself easier to manage for teams that don’t necessarily have the same IT skills as designers and developers. The platform is essentially an advanced checklist tool that allows you to create tasks and assign them to team members.
The idea is to make repetitive tasks easier for team members to complete (to instructions) and for new team members to take on tasks from others with less time spent on training.
You’ll find a library of templates for all kinds of processes like content promotion, social media image design, creating an invoice and fire inspections. You can edit these templates to include your own instructions and add, remove or edit individual tasks on each checklist.
For example, you can create a process for uploading content to social media with instructions for suitable content, image sizes, best times to upload, restrictions and whatever else your team members need to complete every time they do this task.
Key features:
Collaborative checklists: Create checklists for teams, assign tasks and track progress.
Schedules: Create daily, weekly and monthly workflows and automate repeated checklists.
Upload files: Add images, videos and text files to better communicate ideas between team members.
Conditional logic: Create dynamic checklists using if/then logic to adapt to your team’s needs and project demands.
Process.st means your team members will be able to complete every step of tasks by following instructions and checking them off their list as they go. This results in higher productivity rates, fewer mistakes and less time spent on creating documentation and training new team members.
This can be crucial if you have remote team members that can’t be trained in person.

10: Doodle (Web app)

Team packages start at €12.50/monthfor 5 users
Communication is crucial for collaborative projects and this becomes increasingly challenging as the number of remote workers on your team increases. While instant messaging is great when everyone is available, organising meetings, chats, video calls and group work sessions at a time that suits everyone can be difficult – especially if you’ve got remote workers in different time zones.
Luckily, Doodle’s got you covered with its collaborative scheduling app that makes it easy to arrange meetings with the ongoing email back-and-forths. It doesn’t matter how large your team is, how many time zones they’re spread across or how many teams your workforce comprises of – Doodle makes meetings happen.
Key features:
Team scheduling: Arrange meetings, video calls and collaborative sessions without the email back-and-forths.
Availability: Team members can set their hours of availability, which automatically adapts for time zones.
Reminders: Set reminders so team members are always ready for meetings.
Personal events: Keep private meetings, events and tasks hidden from team members so people only see the tasks they need to.
Essentially, users set their availability times, which are available for other team members to see, and meetings can be scheduled based on everyone’s availability times. Users simply confirm they can attend and the meeting goes ahead. Team members will also be sent automatic reminders before meetings so nothing gets forgotten.
Another key feature of Doodle is that user can integrate it with their own calendar apps but everything remains private. The only data visible to other users is availability times and details related to scheduled meetings – nothing else.

11: Calendar (Web app)

Free version available, paid versions from $10/mo
While Google Calendar is a great free digital calendar, it doesn’t provide some of the advanced features remote workers typically need. A more feature-rich alternative is the aptly named Calendar, which connects all of your calendars into a single interface.
Key features:
One calendar: Calendar integrates with all of your calendars (Google Calendar, Outlook, etc.) to keep everything in one place.
Synced events: Create events in Calendar or create them in your other calendar apps – they’ll always be synced.
Easy scheduling: Schedule team meetings without the usual email back and forths.
Analytics: Calendar provides analytics reports to help you boost productivity.
Meeting transcriptions: Automatic transcripts of your meetings.
Aside from integrating all of your calendar apps, Calendar’s star feature is the way it handles meetings. Instead of arranging video chats or other meetings with dizzying emails between multiple team members, Calendar allows anyone to choose and book meeting times during your availability hours while ensuring there are no conflicts with existing meetings or tasks.

12: Toggl (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox)

$9/mo, $18/monthor custom pricing for enterprise businesses
Toggl is a simple time tracker with powerful reporting that keeps track of how much time you’re spending on tasks. The idea is to document how much time you’re really spending on individual tasks to make sure you’re charging the right amount on your invoices.
For teams, it’s also a great tool for comparing the amount of time people spend on tasks, finding out what individuals are best at and knowing who can get you things done under pressure.
Key features
Time tracking: See how much time you (or others) are taking to get things done.
Boost profits: Check you’re charging enough for the time it takes to complete projects.
Reports: See how productive you are and
Cross-platform: Toggl’s apps work across just about every operating system and online so you can access it wherever you need, whenever you need it.
Toggl is an incredibly simple app but it does what it’s designed to do perfectly. Sometimes more features simply create more distractions and that’s counteractive for a productivity app – s problem you definitely won’t get with Toggl.

13: Pocket (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android & web)

Free
Pocket is a wonderfully simple productivity app that simply lets you save web pages for reading later. In truth, it’s little more than a bookmarking tool turned into an application but it really makes a difference to how you work
When you come across something interesting or useful, but you don’t have time to read it now, Pocket is there for you. Simply save the page (URL-based), assign a category if you want, and you’ll build a collection of resources in your Pocket account.
The app essentially turns into a feed of things you actually want/need to read, learn or use for later.
Key features:
Save for later: Save web pages for reading when you have time or need them.
Pocket may only have one key feature but I find myself using it every day and it costs me absolutely nothing.

14: Zapier (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android & web)

Free for 100 tasks/month, $19.99/month for 750 tasks, team package for 50,000 tasks, $299/month
Zapier is a simple automation tool that can save teams huge amounts of time on repetitive tasks and switching between different apps.
Essentially, Zapier sends data between apps like Trello and Gmail so emails are automatically sent out when anything changes in Trello. Or, you can link Doodle with Airtable so that records in Airtable are automatically updated as soon as a Doodle meeting closes.
There are thousands of existing automations already available on Zapier that you can use to handle repetitive tasks between different apps – and you can also create your own.
Add all these automations together and your team is collectively going to spend a lot less time on menial tasks, allowing them to focus on more critical tasks and get things done much faster.
Key features:
Integrate apps: Link your favourite apps so they can share data, allowing you to spend less time switching between apps.
Automate tasks: Automate repetitive tasks between apps.
Zaps: Browse Zapier’s library of pre-built automation workflows for your favourite apps.
Custom automations: Build your own automations if you can’t find them in Zapier’s library of “Zaps”.
Zapier is a very gentle introduction into business automation but it can make a real impact on the day-to-day tasks that often slow down collaborative teams.
Improve habits with these productivity apps

15: Loop – Habit Tracker (Android)

Free
This time we’ve got an Android-only productivity app but Loop takes a very different approach to most tools you’ll come across in this category. Instead of trying to keep you away from bad habits getting in the way of work and life, Loop aims to help you spend more of your time forming beneficial habits.
It could be spending more time on neglected admin tasks, catching up on your ever-growing inbox of emails or spending more time with the kids when you’re not working. Whatever you want to be doing more of, Focus will help you improve your habits.
Key features:
Develop better habits: Set targets for the things you want to spend more time doing.
Schedule: Set specific times and dates or weekly schedules to make your goals more achievable.
Habit score: See how you’re doing with individual habits or overall with your habit score.
Reporting: Detailed graphs and statistics to keep track of your habits and monitor performance over time.
Reminders: Set reminders to keep you in check during moments of weakness.
With productivity apps, there’s a lot of focus on the things you shouldn’t be doing but Loop takes the opposite approach and puts the focus on what you could be doing better.

Conclusion

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