In modern work culture, it’s almost impossible to get the job done without using at least one technology solution. Programs, tools, and applications were created to make people and businesses’ lives easier, and they are pretty good at it. In fact, they are becoming indispensable methods to increase work productivity, collaboration levels, and overall success.
In this article, we will present you with 7 tools that are game-changers when it comes to performance, dedication, and smart use of work time. They’re equipped with features that can help teams with important aspects like task planning, reminders, meetings/calls, communication, access to information and so much more.
Best tools for work productivity
We start our list with this tool that has been gaining much popularity lately. Slack is a messaging app for businesses that centers all the members, messages, and files related to a specific subject in one place, improving both collaboration and work productivity. Slack’s most innovative aspect is its organized spaces called “channels” and the fact that you can create one for each different sector of the company/work. This is why Slack is a good candidate to be the central hub of any project and team’s communication.
Another helpful component is the “Reminder” tool: You type “/remind” in a channel and add what you’d like to be reminded of, then Slackbot will alert you when the time comes, helping users complete tasks and meet deadlines. Lastly, it is worth mentioning the audio/video call feature, which enables you to save time by jumping on a call with up to 15 people without the need to switch from Slack to other platforms.
A 2015 survey conducted by the company indicated that teams using Slack experienced some major benefits: a 32% boost in team productivity, a 48.6% reduction in email use, and a 25.1% reduction in meetings. What we take from this is that Slack streamlines communication, has massive organizational potential, and facilitates integration, optimizing team members’ time and performance.
2. Spatial Chat for work integration
Because of the social distance imposed by Covid-19, many companies resorted to online meetings/calls via tools such as Zoom, Skype, or Google Meet. And, although those platforms are excellent, other options have gained popularity for their innovative take on remote calls. Spatial Chat was one of them. Why? Because this platform allows the creation of “spatial” rooms for meetings by simulating scenarios inspired by a real-life office.
Spatial seems much more team-oriented than other video call applications as it allows the user to see their co-workers (in avatar format) in custom rooms with objects such as computers, tables and frames, among others. It is also viable to share 3D models, projects, videos, images and pdfs in 2D. And the best: everything can be touched virtually, that is, it is possible to exchange your seat place, for example. At the end of a work meeting, you can still make a Happy Hour directly on Spatial.
It can make meetings more productive for remote teams as it brings a dynamic environment, avoiding that slow and uninteresting aura that regular meeting platforms may have. In a virtual space, people can form groups for conversations with different topics, avatars can move freely between groups, or form new groups, enter rooms to make the conversation private, or even take a coffee break at the digital equivalent of the coffee room.
If you need a simple and quick alternative for conversation and calls, Whereby is the easiest way to meet over video – with no app or software download required. The novelty is that it’s possible to choose your personalized URL and meet it in your browser, on mobile or desktop, with only one click.
But, the game-changer feature is the ”Breakout Groups”, perfect to run efficient classes, events, and workshops, especially because it’s possible to use Whereby’s YouTube integration. When it comes to work productivity, any time you save can make a difference. So, a tool that makes calls or meetings less complicated, is a great asset to any team, since people won’t have to worry about technical details, such as creating accounts, downloading apps, or even finding where the call will take place.
4. Mailchimp for assertiveness
Managing your time in a strategic, yet efficient way is critical when it comes to productivity. You need to take advantage of that time period to perform as many tasks or reach as many goals as possible. But instead of investing your valuable time into creating different messages or filling separate target groups, Mailchimp does the work for you. It is designed to generate mailing lists for different intentions, create and send messages, and also obtain all the engagement data to help you identify your contacts’ habits and moves.
One of Mailchimp’s features is the “subject line helper”, it can provide you with feedback on what works and what doesn’t, in real-time, as you’re writing. It can guide you on word and character count, punctuation, or the use of emojis. These will help you build an initial engagement and sustain it, as you’ll be receiving recommendations on the next best action to take.
So, if your work productivity depends on sending assertive messages (especially for marketing or commercial teams), Mailchimp might be your perfect match, because you will be ensuring your communication follows best practices, becoming even more powerful, efficient, and time-saving.
Evernote is an application that allows us to save all and any information within it, such as annotations, web links, files, text documents, or spreadsheets. All those data and documents can be saved and organized inside the app. Not only that, but users can also locate any content in a very easy way since it enables comprehensive searches and has an efficient tag system.
It is ideal for writing ideas, creating checklists, saving information, and keeping them available at any time. The note-creating feature allows the insertion of scanned documents and images, so all your ideas can be written down and illustrated for a better understanding of their content. The organization is pretty simple, essentially containing notebooks and the tag system, which helps to minimize the time you spend searching for what you want.
Evernote is a great asset for work productivity because it reduces the time spent on looking for information, and allows it’s users’ to quickly write down relevant ideas and important visual details to serve as a reference in the future. It’s also a practical way to prepare and store documents, concentrating a large amount of data in one place.
6. Coggle it for collaboration
Coggle is a digital mind-mapping tool that can be used to facilitate brainstorming in a central, online, location. It is aimed at helping individuals take notes, brainstorm ideas, visualize connections across concepts, and collaborate with others. Coggle gives users a clear way to share and understand complex pieces of information and, at the same time, simplify them. By using collaborative mind mapping, it is possible to do real-time brainstorming, add references and, when you’re finished, you can use the mind maps as documents.
This tech tool is particularly useful for ideas that require creative and critical thinking input, as it facilitates free association and the linking of text, images, and video in one place to form rich resources for project work. These will help you create, discuss, and especially visualize, relevant information for projects, or tasks in a shorter amount of time.
Mind Mapping is a method that can help real-time collaboration, scheduling, visualizing concepts, and developing ideas to the fullest. For example, when we divide a project into smaller parts, we can get an overview of what is a priority, what is missing, and what must be done. With these insights in mind, it becomes easier for us to start working on things that really are important.
7. Nutcache for project management
Nutcache is an all-in-one project management tool committed to increasing work productivity by enabling team collaboration, time tracking, project monitoring, and task management. Nutcache helps teams to successfully deliver their projects on time and within budget. Amongst the tool’s several features, the ones previously mentioned are key when it comes to productiveness. The platform allows businesses to organize tasks according to the urgency of execution, to take into account budgets in order not to exceed costs, and to be in contact with employees and customers to exchange on projects.
All those resources and features make it easier for everyone to dedicate their time and get more done since the project’s life-cycle is already defined, all the information is available with a few clicks and the user can document each step that has been completed, concentrating their efforts in moving on to the next goals.
By choosing Nutcache, the user automates their daily tasks, including the ones that are low-priority, to save more time to do the most important work. Nutcache can help users handle time tracking and invoice generation rather than putting a valid effort into creating their own invoice on Microsoft Word. Counting on software to simplify the work process for you, allows more things to be done in the same amount of time. Not only that, but assignments that are more complex and require more strategic thinking won’t have to compete with simple, but mandatory activities. This way, work productivity is not the only consequence, but also bigger accomplishments.
Bonus tips for work productivity
For some people, once they “get in the zone” productivity skyrockets, they’re able to concentrate and execute everything with perfection. But, usually, the same people have a hard time staying in that zone for longer than a few minutes. If that’s also your case, we may have the perfect and most simple tool to recommend: TomatoTimers. It is inspired by the Pomodoro Technique, in which a person works on sprints of 25 minutes with total focus, then takes 5-minute breaks between each sprint.
The tool is a customizable and easy-to-use looping Pomodoro timer to boost your efficiency and track your time. Users set out a talk list, work on it during the timed period and, after each sprint is completed, TomatoTimers allows them to put a checkmark on a personalized to-do list, according to the assignments previously defined, to record the progress. It combines everything that work productivity is about: smart use of time, focus, task execution, and, of course, completing a job. TomatoTimers can be a great asset to a team or a member if they’re struggling to stay concentrated or and need to take breaks every so often to stay productive.
Another common problem is that, although technology has facilitated work processes and habits are changing quickly, we still face bureaucratic duties, especially when it comes to documentation. Considering this, our last two tools can be life saviors to optimize practically every necessity that requires paperwork. And we all know how much these administrative tasks can get in the way of us using our limited time to really be productive.
The first one is Docusign. It allows users to increase operational efficiency and reduce the time it takes to prepare, send and sign documents. DocuSign says that customers regularly see immediate productivity gains, decreasing the time it takes to prepare documents by 90%.
Our second suggestion is Camscanner, a free app that scans and helps organize any physical content that the user wants to preserve in digital format, it could be a document, a contract or college work, among other examples. Then, these documents can be saved in PDF or JPG format and shared with other people, whether by social networks or e-mail.
Imagine the time you would waste if you had to scan every paper manually in a printer machine and go through several steps to share with different people or channels? Talk about unproductive, right?
Conclusion
In the last decade, society has reached big milestones in developing solutions to facilitate all sorts of aspects of our lives. Indeed, some people are still suspicious and unfamiliar with technology, but most of us are open to discovering the wonders it can do in our daily chores, especially when we’re talking about our work routines. The truth is, using digital tools while performing our jobs is inevitable, but we are free to choose which solution becomes part of our day and how it can impact our productivity and better our accomplishments.
