Most of us don’t have the time to spend in the office doing pointless, unproductive work. I’m not saying this stuff is pointless. But is it truly productive? Maybe if you were saving the world it would be useful, but since most of us are not, we can use our free time better than churning through life with our noses pressed against the grindstone.
Here are the best 2022 productivity tools you will live to enjoy.
Office 365
You may not realize it, but the tools you need may already be available in the apps you use every day. If you’re paying for Office 365, you may as well get the most out of it. One of the best features of some versions of Office 365 is that you can access your files across multiple devices. Install a copy on your phone and work on that PowerPoint presentation while you’re stuck in traffic or in the waiting room of the dentist’s office. While you’re doing that, though, there are a few other productivity boosters built into Office 365.
- Microsoft Flow – There are things you do every day that zap your time and energy. Flow lets you automate those tasks, creating “workflows” that run while you’re doing other things. You can save email attachments to OneDrive, send an approval request when new items are uploaded to your SharePoint list, get email forecasts, sync files with Dropbox, and much more.
- MyAnalytics – How much time do you waste each day on social media? What percentage is devoted to reading and responding to email? MyAnalytics runs in the background, learning your work patterns and making suggestions for improvements you can make to work smarter, not harder.
- Teams – If your work involves more than just you, Teams can help. You can chat, meet, call, and collaborate directly within the app. If you have employees who need to log their time, you’ll love the included Shifts app (not to be confused with our own Shift app), which lets you add shifts and have employees sign up for them.
1CRM
While project management and office tools will boost your productivity, your entire team will benefit the most from an all-in-one CRM. If you’re ready to take your small business past the never-ending spreadsheets and shared documents, an all-in-one CRM is the next step. A central hub to manage all of your sales leads and customers in the cloud will save both time and money.
With 1CRM you can manage every aspect of your small business. From a complete CRM with team collaboration, lead forms and ecommerce integration to a customer-connection portal and marketing automation you can manage your entire sales and workflow. 1CRM is a great way to streamline your sales cycle, track every customer from beginning to end, nurture your contacts, and reduce costs while increasing revenue.
Gmail Templates
You may think of Gmail as a productivity zapper since you probably find notifications disrupting you just as you start to get work done. But what if there was a way you could make Gmail work for you rather than against you? We have it. It’s called Templates, and it’s a little-known feature that lets you save templates for frequently-sent responses to call upon whenever you need them.
Here’s how you get templates working:
- Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of your Gmail inbox. Choose Settings.
- Select Advanced.
- Scroll down to Templates and select Enable. Save changes.
- Start a new Email. Compose the body of the email and click on the three dots in the bottom-right corner. Here you can give the template a name and save it.
- Now that you have your template, whenever you need to respond or send a new email using it, you’ll simply click on the three dots and select Templates, then choose the desired template from the list. Create multiple templates to cover the emails you send most often.
Trello
Trello is a project management tool that is built with an easy-to-understand and visually intuitive interface.
This tool helps you and your team collaborate, organize, and prioritize projects and the tasks that fall within them. You can assign jobs to team members, monitor their progress, add comments, create visual workflows, automate recurring tasks, and much more.
Find out more about Trello here.
LastPass
LastPass is a password management tool that allows you to create a master password and then stores all of your passwords in an encrypted database so you can log in to everything with ease.
As I’m sure you can relate, forgetting your password for an app you use every day is frustrating. It can take minutes, sometimes longer, to reset the password and continue on with your day. A massive productivity killer! LastPass solves that problem.
LastPass also allows you to generate strong passwords automatically, share passwords with team members without showing the details, and numerous other valuable security features.
Find out more about LastPass here.
Zapier
Zapier is an app connector. It enables you to automate workflows between the apps you use on a daily basis by creating workflows, so you can focus on other important tasks on your to-do list.
Always manually entering data into a Google Sheet from another source? Zapier can do it for you. And that’s just one very simple use-case. Zapier works with over 2,000 apps including Trello, Gmail, Slack, DocuSign, and many many more!
You can get started with a pre-designed workflow automation or you can create a new one yourself, it’s really simple to use. Zapier eliminates an enormous amount of “busy work” from your day.
Find out more about Zapier here.
FollowUpThen
FollowUpThen is a secret little productivity tool that could be a gamechanger for your sales team or anyone looking to build relationships over email.
It’s extremely simple to use. All you need to do is put one of their time-based emails in the BCC field, such as “3days@followupthen.com” and the app will do the rest for you. You’ll receive an automated email in 3 days’ time reminding you to follow up with that recipient. It really is the simplest way to schedule an email reminder.
The coolest thing about this tool? You don’t need to install anything in your inbox. Simply type one of their emails into that BCC field and they’ll prompt you with a follow up when the time is right.
Google Workspace
Google Workspace was formerly referred to as G Suite.
It’s the perfect hub for businesses to manage, share, collaborate, and secure files and documents.
Workspace brings together a range of tools that you are probably already using and integrates with other apps to significantly increase your team’s efficiency when working on projects.
With Google Workspace you’ll have access to Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Gmail, Chat, Calendar, Drive, Meet, and more.
Find out more about Google Workspace here.
Evernote
It may not make it onto everyone’s productivity tools list, but Evernote is the ultimate note-taking app for those that like to capture ideas on the run.
Rather than jotting down your ideas on a notepad, use the Evernote app and have access to those notes across multiple devices whenever you need them. Evernote also helps you tag your notes and find them quickly with a robust search functionality.
The cool features don’t stop there… With Evernote you can upload files, clip screenshots from the web, scan documents, and share everything with those that matter in your team.
Find out more about Evernote here.
RescueTime
RescueTime is an application that allows you to track your time, block distractions, and access reports so you can optimize your day. It’s all about focussing you (and your team’s) energy on the right things at the right time.
With this tool, you get a rating based on your daily productivity and how much time you’ve spent on important tasks, compared to time-wasting. In short, it gamifies the day-to-day productivity of your team!
Find out more about RescueTime here
Evernote
Best note-taking tool for employees who constantly need to jot things down.
Evernote is a centralized place to store all your notes, documents, images, and brain dump into. It’s accessible on all your devices, so you can see your notes and make new ones from anywhere. The Evernote Google extension even lets you clip information from web pages right to your Evernote notebook.
You can take notes either by typing them or through voice-to-audio. Evernote will automatically save and sync your notes to your account. This increases productivity by eliminating the need to cover your monitor with sticky notes—you can simply use the search function in Evernote and find exactly what you’re looking for within seconds.
Because you can access Evernote from anywhere, you can jot things down as they come to your head so you won’t forget them by the time you get back into the office. This is especially helpful if you’re constantly jumping between devices.
Integration ideas:
- Integrate with RingCentral and simply attach your Evernote notes in your RingCentral conversations for quick reference.
- Integrate with Gmail or Outlook to save documents directly from your emails to your centralized Evernote notebook.
- Integrate with Google Drive to drop your Google Drive files right into Evernote to add context to your documents.
Magical
Magical is a new calendar application trying to bring the world’s attention back to the calendar as the hub for managing work, meetings, notes and tasks. This calendar app is coming soon and recently raising $3.3M investment funding. Touted as the Superhuman for Calendar.
Conclusion
In an age of endless distractions, productivity can seem like a distant goal. But it doesn’t have to be. We’ve created a comprehensive list of the best productivity tools and apps to help you stay focused and get more done. We grade products on their ability to improve your everyday life and overall perspective on work and life.