It often happens that I’m working on something and I use some cool software or iPhone app and I think to myself: “How have I been working without this all this time?”. We all have our favourite tools that help us in our daily tasks and if you think about it, some of these tools are actually changing the way people work around the globe. I decided to write a post about my “Top 5" productivity tools, so here they are!

1. Spotify
   OK, Spotify isn’t a productivity tool…but I really can’t live without it: music has always been a big part of my life, I listen to music all day long! Commercial music, club music, classical, whatever…when I’m working on some project I’m always listening to some music, so I LOVE Spotify! With less than 10€/month you can listen to literally millions of songs, browse through playlists, create your own playlists, listen to your music offline from your iPhone…and the sound quality is amazing. So…thank you Spotify!
2. Dropbox
   Dropbox is the easiest way to share files between different devices and between people: I currently have 18GB of free space (yes, free) in my Dropbox account and this software is just amazingly easy to use. When I want to share something I just right-click on the file and click on “Send to Dropbox” and in a few seconds my file will be available on all my computers, servers and mobile devices.
   I also use Dropbox to share large files with my teammates, because it just takes too long to open up a browser, log-into Gmail and send an email!
3. Evernote
   If you don’t know Evernote, believe me, you should check it out. Evernote is the best tool to capture, manage, organize and find your digital information. Essentially it organizes everything in notes, that are grouped in notebooks, but you’re not limited to text, you can save just about anything in a note: photos, animations, links, code, etc. When you save a note, Evernote syncs it with all your devices. Right now, for example, I’m writing this post on Evernote from my iPhone. When I want to publish it, I just need to open the desktop app on my PC and my note will be there, waiting for me! Probably the best thing about Evernote is that it can be whatever you want it to be: you can store notes, pictures, link, to-do lists….whatever! And best of all….it’s FREE! Free is good… ;-)
4. Safari Books
   This is probably the tool I use the most: Safari Books Online is simply amazing. It’s a subscription-based digital library that contains more than 40 thousand books and thousands of training and conference videos. Books are available in the library right from the publishing date, so you can find all the latest books and sometimes you can even read “rough cuts” before the final version is published. The books can be saved for offline reading and you can also read them from your mobile devices, like an iPad or an iPhone. You can easily create bookmarks, save favourite books and search inside them. If you haven’t tried Safari Books yet, there’s a 15-days free trial available, so go try it now! It’s an amazing service and most importantly, you don’t have to steal eBooks anymore to study programming ;-)
5. Instapaper
   Every day I come across tens of interesting articles, but I don’t always have time to read them so I add them to my favourites. The problem is that when I add a link to my favourites, my brain classifies it as “read, done, forget it” so I just forget about it! The solutions is Instapaper: when I find something interesting and I don’t have time to read it, with one click I add it to my Instapaper account, that saves the page for later browsing and syncs it across all my devices. When I want to read my saved articles I open the app on my iPhone or iPad and Instapaper shows me the articles I haven’t read, displaying them in a reading-friendly format.

These are my “Top 5" tools that help me be more productive!
What would I do without them?

Source: http://coffeevangelist.ghost.io