Low productivity has undeniably been a major issue for the UK economy.
Now more than ever, it’s important to get ahead of the game and a solid move to improve your business workflow.
The following apps can play a crucial part in success by cutting out daily time-drains and boosting productivity, meaning that you and your employees can focus on the things that really matter for growing your business:
Forest
As an entrepreneur, you have to juggle a lot of tasks. Jumping from task to task can feel like you’re getting a lot done, but often you don’t progress much at all. In order to truly be productive and tackle the more important objectives effectively, you need to give them all of your attention.
Forest is a great app which gives you an incentive to cut out the number one distraction – your phone. Users build virtual ‘trees’ as part of their virtual ‘forest’ by staying off their mobile and concentrating on work. What’s great is that Forest is partnered with a real tree-planting organisation, and as users build trees, Forest donates more giving the user extra encouragement to focus!
Download for £1.99 on iOS and Android
Doodle
As a small business owner, you are going to be involved in a lot of meetings. However, trying to find a date that works for everyone can be a painstaking and time-consuming process.
Whether you’re meeting with clients, employees, or even potential new business partners, Doodle saves you time and stress that could be much better spent in vital pre-meeting preparation. Avoid the inevitable, endless and unproductive back and forth of WhatsApp messages and email chains when trying to find a date that works for all. Easily create a poll, let others vote, and get a date in the diary with just one message.
Download for free on iOS and Android
Cisco Spark
Once the date and time is sorted, time to focus on the meeting itself.
Meetings can be an unproductive for a number of reasons, whether it’s attendees coming unprepared, a lack of clarity on the key takeaways, or even the worst bug bear – people forgetting about the meeting altogether.
Cisco Spark Meeting Notes has a number of great features which help you overcome these irritating issues. The handy app allows you to collaborate and integrate calendars whilst reviewing and updating agendas for all to see. What’s more, the collaborative note-taking feature streamlines the meetings and ensures that everyone is on the same page following the meeting, boosting productivity going forwards as all those involved are clear on their actions.
There are also a number of templates to fit your specific needs so you don’t waste your valuable time messing around with formatting.
Download for free on iOS and Android
ToDoist
As a small business owner, balancing priorities can difficult and time consuming. Also, it’s easy to continually put off the less urgent tasks until they are eventually forgotten. This issue is compounded when working in teams as so much time is wasted trying to keep track of individuals’ progress and that of the project as a whole. Multiple catch-ups are required, often at the expense of completing your own work.
Complementing Cisco Spark, ToDoist allows you to create personal and shared task lists, assign tasks to individuals whilst tracking ongoing progress of all members of a team, and receive notifications when each objective is complete. This drastically cuts down the face-to-face time needed and you can be reassured that team is working productively and getting all tasks done. All you have to do is quickly check the app on your phone.
ToDoist is also fantastic when working alone, making sure that the less urgent, but still important, tasks don’t slip through the net.
Download for free on iOS and Android
Noisli
To work effectively, you need to block out all distractions from those around you. Although listening to your favourite playlist definitely blocks out others, it can in fact be a major distraction in itself.
This is where Noisli comes in. By offering a wide range of easy-listening and generic ‘background’ sounds such as wind, crashing waves, fire, thunder, and rainfall, Noisli avoids distracting the user, boosting concentration and productivity as a result.
Download for £1.99 on iOS and Android
