All good things come to an end, and so do the Christmas and New Year holidays. For a long period of time you have done nothing productive. You have woken up late, ate too much, not worked out, not thought too much or boosted your brain activities. And all of a sudden, you need to go to work. The first day you come to your office and sit at your desk you don’t even remember how to use a mouse, not mentioning that you don’t want to work at all. But the reality is that you have to. We present you with a list of mobile apps and services that can boost your productivity at work considerably; choose the right ones that will work the best for you.
Productivity booster and procrastination fighter:
Forest: Stay focused (Android, iOS)
This app is available for both Android and iOS users and it helps you to pay attention to your work and studies. The principle of its work is the following: you plant a seed in your personal forest and within 30 minutes the seed fully grows into a tree. If you start using other apps on your phone – the tree dies. Everything is that simple. You can see the survival rate of your trees and average time of your not paying attention to your phone. On the view of the forest there are numbers of the trees that grew and that didn’t grow. You can also add some apps to the program’s white list in case you use something for work, so the tree will still grow and not react to you using these apps in the same way as when you use messengers and other entertaining apps you have installed.
Build better habits:
HabitBull – Habit Tracker (Android)
This app is for tracking habits – you set any type of goal, enter the date or desired frequency of how often or until when they should be fulfilled and you try your best to follow the schedule. This app will remind you about your habits; you can see your statistics of success and motivational pictures that will help you not to give up. HabitBull has widgets so your goals can always be in front of your eyes as a calendar or as a list of your set targets.
Way of Life – The Ultimate Habit Maker & Breaker (iOS)
This app lets you set the goals and shows you bars and pie charts that show the progress on each good habit. The apps remind you about your currently set personal habits. Another great feature is the possibility to lock the Way of Life with a password so your personal goals will stay safe from others if you want them to.
Timeful (iOS)
This is a calendar plus a to-do list which makes it rather effective. You can choose default items or create your own, and add tags and labels to them which make sorting out of currents tasks very simple. Synchronize with calendars, set a frequency of reminders, and enter your personal schedule – the app will know your most productive time of the day, your days and hours of work, and sleep hours.
Calendars and reminders:
EasilyDo (Android, iOS)
EasilyDo is a calendar that can be integrated with your social networks and email. If you tagged a place where you need to do something, the app will remind you about it. The reminders can also be used as an alarm. It also tracks packages, checks your upcoming flights, reminds you when it is time for you to go somewhere, shows you the weather, schedules birthday greetings, creates to do lists, and much more.
Sunrise (Android, iOS)
Sunrise is an advanced calendar with a clear interface. To add a task, click on a plus button and fill in the next forms: title, start and finish time, location (will be shown on the map), description, people who will participate (they will be notified about it by email) and the time when the reminder for this item will go off (you can add several values for time). You can also integrate some other schedules to your personal calendar; in this case you will see the events from the integrated calendar marked on your personal one.
Alarms:
Alarm Clock Plus (Binary tactics) (Android)
With this alarm you can totally manage the way you wake up in the morning since this app is highly customizable. Some awesome features that are available with this app are fade, auto snooze and dismiss, flashlight and the possibility to skip the alarm once, a clock widget and an out loud time and weather announcement, a customizable snooze time and much more.
Nightstand Central – A Music Alarm Clock with Sleep Timer, Weather, and Photos (iOS)
This app is an impressive alarm with extended features and customization. It allows you to set your music or one of the default relaxing sounds, allows you to adjust the sound volume and snooze time, set the weekdays for the alarm to go off on, use one of 3 offered alarm modes (vibration plus sound, just vibration or just sound), a sleep timer, and wallpapers (default or your photos). What is also pretty cool – shake your phone to snooze. In addition to that, this app shows you the local weather.
Notes taking:
Simplenote (Android, iOS)
To write down all your brilliant thoughts wherever you are, use Simplenote – a virtual notebook for your phone. You can see all your notes or search in the existing notes by tags (you are free to add several tags to each note). You can pin some notes to the top of the list manually as well. This app has a cloud service so all your notes can be accessible through iOS, Android and Kindle devices, and on Mac as well.
Best motivation for work – personal finance calculator:
Mint (Android, iOS)
If you had a lot of fun during the holidays, most likely you now have no idea what your current budget is and, at this point, are probably too afraid to ask. Mint is your personal budget calculator that shows your currently registered in-app accounts, your monthly budget, and your cash flow. Mint will also give you advice. You can add locations of where the payments were sent, and if you change or lose your device, you can always continue using your personal account thanks to personal Pin codes of users.
The more relaxed your holidays were, the more difficult the struggle to get your productivity and efficiency back at work. Don’t fight laziness and procrastination alone – use any (maybe even all for better effect) of the listed above apps to help you.