Amid all the changes that the pandemic brings, working from home seems to be the one thing that is here to stay. Though most companies only recently adopted hybrid and flexible working arrangements, it can take some time for some people to adjust to the different working structures. Unlike working from the office, working from home would require us to keep track of our daily tasks independently.
Thankfully, today’s technological advancement has made it possible for us to obtain tools that can help bring back structure to our daily lives. Instead of solely counting on our own sheer will, now we can also enjoy a hand or two that can help us increase our productivity.
But where do I start? Well, worry not! We have here some of the best tools to help boost your productivity, let’s check them out!
Todoist
Much like its name, Todoist is an application that keeps track of your daily to-do lists. Thanks to its amazing natural language engine, you can literally type in your daily tasks just as you think them in your head, and they would organize them for you. Say bye to extra work!
Todoist also lets you share the activity on your list with your friends and team members at work. Besides downloading it through App or Play Store, you can also access Todoist through their website from your trusted work laptop.
Otter
At its core, Otter is a transcribing tool that helps you turn your voice or video recordings into text. This tool provides you a searchable playback of your recordings and also the speakers’ ID. It also comes with the ability to edit the errors in your transcriptions. Though more than that, with Otter’s Chrome extension, you can also enjoy a live caption of your meeting by simply clicking a button.
Otter gives three free file transcriptions daily, for up to thirty minutes of recordings. It also allows you to export your transcriptions into other formats, despite the limitation on its free plan. Though you can enjoy more transcription hours and exporting options to your favourite format, such as PDF files, with their premium plan.
Adobe Acrobat Reader
On another episode of the side effect of technological advancement is the rather faster-paced world that we all live in. With everything having to be available in an instant, hassle-free seems to also come hand-in-hand as the anthem of our daily lives. In this case, Adobe Acrobat Reader comes as an answer to our ever-pressing and rising need to deal with digital documents.
Often used to deal with PDF files, Acrobat Reader is also known for its efficient e-sign feature, readily available on your favourite mobile phones and laptops. More than that, this tool also allows you to highlight, edit, and fill out forms by simply typing into the provided field.
24me
From your appointments to to-do lists and even your thoughts, 24me as your own 24/7 personal assistant is here to note them down. Its ability to synchronise with various calendar tools such as Google Calendar, iCal, and Outlook, is the main charm of this application. As the name suggests, you can enjoy less time checking on different calendars and instead dedicate the 24 hours in a day for yourself.
24me is currently available only for iOS, free of charge. However, its premium plan would give you access to various customisations throughout the app. One of them is the nag option, which will allow you to be “nagged” to do a certain activity through multiple notifications sent, based on a time interval that you have set.
Habitica
Games and sticking into a new habit are the two things that cannot be more different than they already are. But, put them together, and you might just find the perfect way to create a new habit. More than your typical habit tracking app, Habitica understood the struggles of adopting a new routine, and used gamification to help make it easier.
Available at no price on your iOS and beloved Android cellphones, this tool gives you points when you have done your listed activities for the day. As your level progresses, you will get to unlock new features and upgrade your customised avatar. However, in retrospect, you will also lose health when you do not do so which might get downgraded to your previous level.
Forest
Forest is a time management application that uses the Pomodoro technique to not only boost our productivity, but also break our ever-present need to check our phones. Leveraging gamification, each time we manage to not play with our phone for time that we have set, our tree would grow, along with some coins that we gained. Much like its name, the goal is to then collect these trees and create a forest.
Though more than an in-game currency, the coins that we gained from each set of time that we completed can then be used to help plant real-life trees. Boost your productivity and help save the planet? What more reason do you need to use the app?
Weava Highlighter
Just like a physical highlighter, this Chrome extension allows you to highlight important texts that you find on the internet. All you have to do is drag the texts that you want to highlight. Afterwards, Weava would automatically pop up to give you the colour option to choose from, and voila!
More than a mere highlighting tool, Weava also automatically bookmarked the texts that you have highlighted into a list. You can access them by simply clicking Weava’s icon from your Chrome extension bar. Weava comes at no price, but you can pay a monthly subscription for their unlimited storage.
Mercury Reader
Have you ever found yourself distracted by ads while reading something on the internet? Or has the content you read ever got covered by advertisements? Worry no more because Mercury Reader is here to smoothen your reading experience.
Free of charge, Mercury Reader comes in the form of a Chrome extension. This tool allows you to turn a website into reading mode, where only you and your reading object would exist. You can now enjoy a world without distractions with just one simple click.
What Font
Besides a high-resolution monitor, you need a font identifier tool while designing a poster or content for your social media. We have all been there, we see the perfect font for our project on the internet, yet we can’t find it anywhere. Well, worry no more, as What Font is here to assist you!
Comes as a Chrome extension, What Font is free of charge. All you have to do is install it from Chrome Web Store, activate it from your extension bar, and hover over the text you want to identify. What Font then would automatically tell you the font of said text, and you can design away.
In today’s day and age, especially with the rapid pace of the world and the higher expectations put on our work, it is important to not only work hard but to also work smart. So, why not try these tools to help ease your workload?
Santosh Kumar is a Professional SEO and Blogger, With the help of this blog he is trying to share top 10 lists, facts, entertainment news from India and all around the world.