10 Digital Tools To Increase Productivity In Your Daily Life

How many times have you set the goal of being more productive and efficient in your day-to-day life?

Surely you have many goals and plans in mind but you feel that there are not enough hours during the day to do everything you want. Certainly, time limits us, but if you change the approach with which you execute your projects you can be more productive.

Productivity is also about prioritizing, organizing, and working. No success is achieved overnight and we need to be disciplined with ourselves to take those small steps that allow us to achieve great things.

One of the main enemies of productivity is procrastination; the fact of continuously postponing a task that ends up taking you longer than usual.

The basis of productivity is found in small details such as:
• Visualize positive results that motivate.
• Organize our time.
• Teamwork.
• Learn to delegate tasks.

Now that technology is so ingrained in our daily routine, why not take advantage of it to increase our productivity?

In this article, I want to show you 10 digital tools to increase productivity, mostly free, that you can have on your mobile, tablet, or computer. They are designed to help you organize your time, your mind, and your work habits.

How can the internet help us improve productivity?

Throughout our day we tend to be connected for a long time to devices with internet access. In fact, they have become so important that you are more likely to forget your keys at home than your mobile. They practically represent an extension of our body and in many cases a distracting element that keeps us from being more productive.

The Internet is an infinite world of possibilities and most people access this resource only to consume content. However, there is a range of options that the internet offers us to help us complete projects and tasks in the best possible way.

We can find applications and programs that help us organize our time and our tasks. Being the mobile an accessory that we carry everywhere, the idea is to take advantage of the use we give it during the day and the frequency in which we review it.

In this way, technology and especially the internet allow us to maintain a much more interactive and dynamic personal agenda, giving us a panoramic view of our daily productivity.

In addition to this, there are complementary applications that help us and encourage us to stay focused on each activity we do, which is a fundamental step to increasing personal productivity.

Digital tools to increase productivity in your day-to-day

I am going to review the different digital tools that can help you improve your daily productivity.

Each one with a function that you can combine as much as you consider so that you can organize yourself better from now on, without excuses!

1. Google drive

When you use several devices at the same time for different tasks, it is best to have all the information synchronized. For this, Google Drive is a very efficient tool, since, in addition to synchronizing all your files online, it offers you 15 GB of free space in the cloud.

This tool works through your Gmail email. One of its great advantages is the fact that it can update the information in real-time and view the history of changes and modifications.

At an academic and professional level, you can also get the most out of Google Drive. With its feature to create a “shared folder”, you can make group assignments and monitor the participation and functions of all team members. In fact, it also includes an internal messaging service where all members with access to a document can participate.

2. Microsoft To Do

Or what was previously known as Wunderlist. Who doesn’t love making a to-do list and checking off the ones you’ve completed? Although it seems absurd, making lists stimulates our brain to want to see the finished projects to eliminate each item from the list. Microsoft To Do is the ideal application for this purpose.

You can install it on your mobile or computer and create different categories for each of your activities. For example, you can create a section for your trips, supermarket purchases, personal matters, work projects, etc. If you write the day on which the task must be ready, the application takes care of reminding you.

Best of all, select it once you’re done and watch it disappear from the screen. Its interface is very easy to use. It is extremely important to keep you motivated and make you see that the organization is easier than it seems.

Complex applications, beyond helping us, generate confusion, but with Microsoft To Do everything is very clear from the start. Regardless of the theme or the number of activities, you can group your tasks in a simple and effective way. Thus, you will better visualize what you have to do during the day or week.

3. CRM

For those who lead a business, large or small, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool is ideal. With this, you will be able to keep all the information that your company handles in order. These applications are based on collecting data about your current and potential customers. And with it, prepare reports and analyzes that help you make better business decisions.

They function as a centralized database in which you can integrate the social networks of your business, the messaging services of your website, and the projects that you want to execute. They also allow you to automate processes such as preparing invoices, receipts, budgets, order tracking, sending documents, messages, etc.

They are very versatile and you can find different styles with specialized functions for each area. Among the most common we have:

• Social CRM.
• Collaborative CRM.
• Operational CRM.
• Sales CRM.
• Analytical CRM.

Most of these tools work with a cloud storage system, guaranteeing the security of your company’s data in case of accidents or errors. In addition, it is you who decides what type of members access each section of the database.

4. Trello

Trello is an online task manager that makes teamwork and collaboration easy. It works through boards that you can organize according to different categories. In each one, you can create sub-boards with cards corresponding to activities or reminders. You can add a deadline, attach documents, add comments, etc.

This tool uses the Kanban method to manage projects, organizing different boards with cards that go through different lists depending on their status. It also integrates a calendar where you can view all your cards along with their expiration dates.

The best thing is that when any update occurs, all team members are notified, making the workflow much faster and more efficient. You can choose the members with whom you share each board and thus monitor the progress of your projects.

5. Slack

This is another ideal option for working as a team, especially if the members are in different parts of the world and work in different time zones, I personally used it, and it is great. Thanks to its messaging system, you can comment on different topics according to each project, or send messages to certain members.

The best thing about Slack is that it has a mobile app version that prevents you from depending on a computer or a certain schedule to be aware of how your projects are progressing. You can set notifications that alert you to the tasks that require the most attention and choose whether you want to receive them on your computer, smartphone, or via email.

6. Google calendar

Google Calendar is very easy to use since it works like an ordinary calendar. However, you can sync your trips, medical appointments, meetings, and activities from other apps to this tool.

From your mobile, you can add the corresponding Widget to the application to always have a preview of the calendar with the important events at hand.

7. Evernote

This tool is ideal for sharing files, managing notes, and archiving relevant information. Evernote also works as a to-do list but is much more dynamic because you can attach documents, and audio notes and share this information in real-time with other users.

Students take great advantage of these tools when organizing their notes or their classes. If you prefer to work flexibly, this tool is ideal. It allows you to digitalize everything that is going through your mind and that you would normally write down on paper so that you can carry it out. Among its most important functions we have:

• Schedule Organization.
• Attach reference images to a project.
• Organize documents to read later.
• Interesting links you find while browsing.
• Useful ideas.
• Posts to read later.
• Notes on a project in development.
• Work meetings.

8. MakeMe

If procrastination is one of the main challenges you struggle with every day, MakeMe is definitely for you. It is an online tool that allows you to enter goals and measure the progress of your progress on a daily basis. Best of all, this application detects if you are working on it. If not, it will notify you if you are running too late to jeopardize compliance.

It also serves to create group goals and see how each team member is progressing in their respective tasks. On a daily basis, MakeMe will suggest small actions that you can take to reach your goals. Many times, it is that impulse that we sometimes need to start something.

9. RescueTime

Distraction is also one of the biggest obstacles to productivity. We know that today we have become very dependent on mobile devices. Although they are our work tools, we have at the reach of a click an infinite center of distractions on social networks and the Internet that take us away from our goals.

The RescueTime application is designed to reduce the time we spend in front of the mobile or computer and identify which applications we spend more time on. Best of all, you can set notifications to alert you when you’ve reached a certain usage time.

10. Headspace

No matter how many applications and digital tools you find to organize yourself, none of them will work if you don’t train your mind to be focused and attentive to the present moment.

Headspace is a very dynamic and engaging guided meditation app. With practical exercises and short meditation sessions, it helps us clear all those useless thoughts that come to us when we are about to undertake something important.

In addition, the application integrates notifications to remind you that you can dedicate from 3 to 20 minutes of meditation before going to sleep or at the beginning of your day. It gives you very useful advice to disconnect your mind from any stressful thought and focus it on the here and now.

The Internet can be our friend or our enemy when it comes to increasing our productivity. It all depends on the approach we give it and how we take advantage of being connected to our devices most of the time. We can take advantage of this and use them as personal agendas that, beyond distracting us, allow us to organize our time efficiently.

These applications or programs can help you take a project from start to finish in the work, personal or professional field. Taking into account our selection, you do not need to install each and every one of the mentioned applications, since some complement each other and others have very similar functions.

Maybe a couple of tools are enough to handle your current projects. However, I recommend that you try most of these options so that you can choose the combination that works best for your lifestyle and needs.

And you, do you use any of these digital tools to increase daily productivity? Do you use others that are not on the list? You can share in the comments. 🙂