This is a guest post by Kayla Matthews. She is a productivity blogger and efficiency enthusiast. You can find her on ProductivityTheory.com, on The Huffington Post, and on Google+ and Twitter.
No matter what kind of job you have and how many hours per week you work, you probably frequently feel frustrated because you don’t believe you got enough done. Maybe you ran out of time or energy, or perhaps you struggled more than you should have because you weren’t well organized.
The good news is that all these problems are very common, and there are many tools that can help.
Who Needs These Tools?
Today’s productivity tools are very useful if you have trouble getting or staying organized. Besides assisting with organization, some of them also cut out unnecessary steps, reduce distractions, and generally make life easier. That means even if you feel you are well organized and highly productive, you may still benefit from the tools available. They could teach you how to do everyday tasks in better ways so you not only get more done, but also make fewer mistakes.
Finally, productivity tools are excellent helpers if you consistently juggle many projects at once. The more things you do simultaneously, the greater the likelihood is that you may overlook easier ways to accomplish tasks, simply due to mental fatigue.
Regardless of the specific ways productivity tools could improve your life, the list of suggestions below is well worth a look. Even better, you can try these options for free, and some of them offer full functionality without making you pay a dime.
- Hemingway
This web-based and desktop app is a must-have if you write content for a living, or just like to make sure your emails are as clear as possible. It offers some proofreading tools similar to popular word processing programs, but uses a color-coded system that makes it much faster to spot errors or areas that need improvement.Just paste text into the window, and you’ll get an analysis in seconds. Phrases or words that are very hard to read get highlighted in red and yellow, while uses of passive voice are marked in green.Also, the right side of the app gives the total instances of potentially problematic content. It allows you to see at a glance whether you often lapse into bad habits like using too many adverbs when more descriptive words would work better, or if you frequently pick complex words when simpler choices exist.The readability grade also may be worth noting if people often complain your messages aren’t clear enough and cause miscommunications. Click on the Write and Edit tabs near the top of the Hemingway window to swiftly switch between composition and editing modes. The app even has formatting buttons so you can add bullets, links, and more as you write.
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