First things first, one can’t be more productive just by using a few apps. The way we use it matters more than the actual products themselves. Having said that, some products are better designed to nudge us in the right direction. Again, what suits me might not suit your style of working.
The motive of releasing a list is to help each other discover products that we might actually need but aren’t using already.
So without further ado, here my list:
- Evernote: For everything unstructured e.g. random note taking, book summaries, recording micro-thoughts, journal entries, bills, receipts, web-clipping notes/quotes and so on. It’s like my 2nd brain. Search to find when necessary. No structure needed. Although I use notebooks to segregate on a higher level.
- TickTick: The only ToDo that suits my style of work. Add tasks, add reminder, get things done. Just keeps my mind off smaller tasks. Also contains weekly/monthly/yearly reminders.
- Trello: To track bigger Objectives/Goals in life.
- Loop Habit Tracker: Open source, free Android app that keeps you going. Tracks my progress on a daily basis on habits that I’m working on the improve incrementally. Highly recommended.
- Pocket: Better than bookmarks. Maintains my personal repository of the articles I need to read later.
- Notion: Although it’s meant for teams, the personal free plan serves me really well to take structured notes with a lots of inner pages, links that look neat & structured.
- Amazon Kindle: Contains all my ebooks. Great for looking up words, taking notes, marking interesting quotes.
- Audible: Contains all my audiobooks.
- Google Calendar: Keeps track of all birthdays, events, scheduled calls etc.
- Nova Launcher: The best launcher you can get on Android that can make you more productive. (again, ‘best’ is subjective)
- Microsoft Swiftkey keyboard: Again, the best keyboard for Android? For me, yes!
- Google Assistant: Beats typing when you’re multi-tasking. Still exploring how it can make me more productive. Maybe a micro-tutorial on it later.
- Twitter bookmarks: I use Twitter to bookmark amazing tweets (mostly book recommendations) and quotes for future reference.
- IFTTT Pro: I pay for IFTTT because it’s that good. I’ve made personal applets that fire on ‘If This Then That’ formula. There’s much more to it actually, maybe a tutorial later.
- Bixby Routines: Much like IFTTT but tailored for (and by) Samsung. I don’t use Bixby as an Assistant but its routines are really nice. E.g. automatically disabling mobile data when WiFi is enabled and vice versa, automatically putting the phone on battery saver mode while I go to bed at night and much more.
- Microsoft SMS Organizer: It’s text messages on steroids. You can mute/block spam messages, it segregates your messages into folders like Primary, Promotional, Transactional etc. It also reminds you to pay your bills on time based on the texts you receive, quick OTP copy-paste and a bunch of other useful features.
Phew! That’s it, I guess. What are your favourite apps that help you stay productive?
Cover photo by Jonathan Kemper
About Tonmoy Goswami
Founder, Storypick.
Read • Travel • Create • Experience⚡
