Whether you are a university student who gets easily distracted when essay writing or a business owner who finds it difficult to keep up and wants to more effectively manage their time, it can be difficult to find a time management method that works for you. Busy people have busy schedules too and finding the time to juggle tasks can be physically and mentally draining.
Often, technology can be one of the many reasons we get distracted, from flicking through social media or completing just one more level of Candy Crush. However, technology can also be hugely beneficial in helping us to more effectively organise our time and workload.
There is a range of great apps available that can help to boost your productivity levels and focus on ticking off your to-do list.
FocusList
FocusList is a daily planner that helps you to break your workload into manageable chunks. The app is based around the Pomodoro Technique, a management method which breaks down tasks into a 25-minute time frame to help boost and maintain productivity and focus.
The idea is that by working in smaller, more manageable time increments and taking regular five-minute breaks, it helps us to complete tasks faster with less fatigue. FocusList allows you to input tasks and tracks your time. Once you start a task, the app starts a timer to countdown the time you have left before taking a break.
It also allows you to input an estimated task completion time and then compare it to the actual amount of time the task took to complete. At the end of the day, you can track how much time you spent on each task and analyse where most of your time is being used over weeks and months.
Buffer
If you run your own business or work in a social media role, then you may be familiar with Buffer. Managing social media platforms can be extremely time-consuming and overwhelming.
Buffer is a social media management tool that allows you to more effectively manage all our your social media profiles in one place. Not only does it allow you to schedule content for the coming weeks or months, but it also tells you when your followers are most active and therefore, more likely to engage with your content.
The app also allows you to track and analyse engagement and interactions on the posts you have shared so you can easily identify the types of content that work for your business and are more likely to drive sales.
RescueTime
If at the end of the day you find yourself wondering where all your time has gone and why you haven’t achieved as much as you would like yet can’t quite put your finger on why then RescueTime may be a useful app for you to use. The app runs in the background of your device and tracks all the applications and websites that you use as well as the amount of time that you spent on them.
So, if you’re spending a little too long scrolling through social media, RescueTime will know. It then allows you to generate reports and set goals to more effectively manage your time. If you want to spend an hour less a day on social media or limit the time spent on shopping websites to two hours a week then you can easily manage your goals, track your usage and even put blocks to certain websites in place.
Often, the environment around us can act as one of our main distractions. Being able to concentrate is the only way we can work to be more productive. Research has found that it isn’t really noise which is the most distracting element, rather, unwanted speech noise that individuals deemed to be a distraction.
Noisli is an app which is focused on white noise. White noise is a type of sound that masks out background noise. A lot of the time, people use white noise to help them sleep or to prevent them from waking up during sleep. The function of white noise and its ability to mask out distracting sounds makes it a great tool to help you concentrate and focus. By adding a low-level, ambient sound to your workspace, it can help to make conversations and other unwanted noises easier to ignore.
Noisli is filled with a range of sounds which people typically tend to find relaxing, such as crashing waves, rain or a burning log fire. If you find yourself in an environment filled with distractions and you are unable to concentrate, or you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed with your workload, download Noisli to bring a sense of calm, drown out distractions and help you to get on with the task in hand.
Trello
Trello makes managing your workflow simple. It is used by many well-known companies worldwide, such as Google and Adobe, and is one of the best project management tools around. You can create boards, lists and cards based on different projects and tasks and arrange them to easily organise and prioritise your to-do list.
Whether you work on your own or part of a team, Trello is a great visual tool that helps you to easily see work to be completed, the level of priority assigned to a task and deadlines, making it easier to schedule your workload accordingly. It also has the ability to help you break down tasks into smaller, manageable chunks so you can easily see where you are up to. For anyone with a long list of tasks and a busy schedule, Trello is a must-have app to help manage your time more effectively.
In a world where smartphones and other devices can become an obsession and a distraction to everyday life, it has become more apparent that mobile app development can be used in a positive way to develop apps that are also beneficial to everyday life and productivity. By using productivity-boosting apps you will soon be on your way to a more organised, stress-free and manageable workload.
