One of the most challenging things about having to either work remotely or function as part of a team is how to handle all the distractions that can occur.
It could be having talkative co-workers, phone notifications from other departments like human resources that just keep on going, dirty laundry to sort, or your favorite show being on right at the time you want to do some work. Whatever it is, task management affects both personal and team productivity. If you’re looking for productivity tips to help you stay on track, you’re in the right place.
The most effective way to stay on track and increase your productivity is to enlist the help of the following productivity management tools and systems.
Scoro
You can describe Scoro as an all-in-one tool for productivity management software.
The tool aims to streamline workflow and ensure that routine tasks are taken off your hands, giving you more time to concentrate on the most important things.
Scoro also enables you to manage an employee team, track time, and create and send invoices.
There is a team dashboard among its most useful features. On the dashboard, users can see everything they need to check on the ongoing projects, including budget updates, profits, project steps, and a lot more, streamlining project management and time management and supporting productivity growth.
All of this information is available to every member of the team in real-time, ensuring that it is much easier to stay on track and work within approved budgets.
RescueTime
RescueTime is a productivity management tool you can install on a computer to track the websites and programs a user spends most of their time on.
It can be quite an insightful tool as it shows what apps and websites are taking most of your time and your most and least productive hours. It also shows your worst and best days of the week and, of course, the month.
The premium upgrade to the free version allows users to block distracting sites and set up additional filters.
While it is easy to think that the free version is a watered-down version of the premium RescueTime, that isn’t the case. The free version can give you many insights that can effectively improve your personal productivity and point you in the direction of what you need to cut out to make productivity gains.
Toggl
Toggl is a time tracking app that lets users track the amount of time they spend on tasks. It lets freelancers record the time spent on different projects, helping them create accurate invoices.
The tool is an easy way to track how much time you spend completing certain tasks. Toggle also lets you view reports to measure how much time you have spent working on various projects over the week.
SaneBox
SaneBox is a productivity management tool that analyses your previous and present email activities, allowing the tool to recognize and filter the email messages that matter to you.
The tool moves all your not-so-important emails into the SaneLater folder created in your inbox. You can retrieve, review, and sort the emails in the SaneLater folder at your leisure.
Ultimately, SaneBox hides the unimportant messages that typically create distractions and take away from your productivity.
Calendly
Calendly is a productivity management tool that’s a must-have for everyone interested in increasing their personal productivity. It is useful for marketers and small business owners as it eliminates the distraction, associated with booking work time and scheduling meetings.
With Calendly, you can set up events using an existing calendar while blocking out busy times to improve organizational performance. You can set employee meetings by reserving a time on the app without requiring an emailed calendar request.
Calendly is especially useful due to the number of buffers it has. Users can create buffer times such as 10 minutes between meetings for things, such as stretching or travel time. This enhanced functionality ensures that your day is not packed with last-minute events that end up affecting your productivity.
Pushbullet
Most people switch between devices throughout the day, going from a smartphone to an iPad to a computer and back. If this sounds like you, you are opening yourself up to having a day full of distractions, some of which can make it quite difficult to concentrate on your project.
Pushbullet offers a way to get back to your project without any distractions. It does this by connecting your devices. With Pushbullet, you can view your phone’s notifications from your tablet, send texts from your laptop and even instantly share files and links without having to first email them to yourself, leading to increased productivity. This app is the perfect productivity management tool for any multi-device worker.
StayFocused
StayFocused is a Chrome extension that is meant to measure and limit how much time you spend on websites that waste time, such as Facebook.
StayFocused is an extremely customizable tool as you can select the websites or even particular pages you want to block. You can also select the duration of the block, blocking things when you’re meant to be focusing on an important task or during a specific hour when you have a meeting with your manager or specific goals to meet.
Freedom
Distractions come in all shapes and sizes, effecting productivity levels in many ways. They range from checking social media to surfing from one website to another, or worse, delving deeper into weird conspiracy theories on YouTube and tanking your efficiency.
Each of these distractions makes it quite difficult to maintain multi factor productivity and meet your deadlines since you are constantly pulled away from the optimal concentration zone.
The Freedom app is a productivity tool that checks all of that by blocking alerts, websites, and any other distractions, helping to keep your attention and focus on your tasks.
Freedom goes a step further, blocking websites on various devices so that you don’t simply get your phone and browse around the block created on your laptop. When using Freedom, you must let your coworkers and manager know that you are entering a concentration zone, so you won’t be able to respond to their messages.
Conclusion
There are a plethora of productivity management tools available. The ones listed in this article are some of the best at improving productivity and shutting out distractions.
