There are many productivity apps out there that claim to be the solution to all of your entrepreneurial problems. Sometimes it’s hard to know which ones will actually benefit your business and what apps you actually need on your phone.
Productivity apps every Boss should have in 2017:
RescueTime – this productivity app runs in the background of your day to day tasks! It can track what you do (to the second!) on your Mac, PC, Android and Linux, all at once to let you know where that 40 hour week actually goes. You can get a lite version for free or the full version for a small annual fee. This productivity app will help you to block distracting websites, and personalise the dashboard to suit your role. At Boss, I use it to maximise the chargeable hours we have and to assess where tasks (or clients!) are becoming more time-consuming than others.
2. Wrike – This wonderful productivity app comes with a dashboard that will help you to streamline your manual weekly project status report, to an incredibly user-friendly, virtual task version. Each member of the team is emailed their daily tasks each morning, and you can receive a project status report delivered to my inbox once a week. You can use Wrike to organise your to-do list, assign tasks from your email inbox, and chat online. You can add any dependencies and break tasks into subtasks to get them done more efficiently. You can even integrate your business tools including Google Apps, Microsoft Excel, Dropbox within Wrike, to make everything so much more productive!
3. Money Hub – if your 2017 business goal to keep better track of your finances and your retainer flow, then you’ll love Money Hub. It takes some time to set up, but once you have done so, it’s so worth it! You can monitor your cash flow from different accounts, all in one place. This is one of the greatest productivity apps for budgeting your month around your business needs.
4. Productive – every Boss needs time in their day to work on personal development, or to read up on the latest Google trends, or to head to the gym for a mid-afternoon refresh. The Productive app is the perfect productivity app for those of you who want to make more good habits. If you want to spend an hour each day on writing a blog, then Productive will help you do it by tracking your productivity habits, your daily goals and help you to keep on track.
5. Photoshop Fix – Hi Designer Boss, are you stuck in the passenger seat on the motorway, on your way to a client meeting? Then wave your phone around a bit, and find that M4 4G, and get yourself Photoshop Fix. With this app you can retouch, liquify, smooth and paint your images straight from your phone or pad. Who knew the commute could be so creative?
6. Uber – You’ve probably heard of this one, but if you haven’t, Uber is a free app that can be the difference between you making 2 client meetings in London today, because of underground delays or traffic, and 5 client meetings in London today because of the affordable, and quick taxi service that Uber provides. Be aware though! If rides are in high demand, then prices often double.
7. Flipboard or Instapaper – looking for easy reading to do on the way in to work? Flipboard can be personalised to suit your industry and your interests, so that you can get bitesize blogs at the click of a thumb. Similarly, Instapaper offers you the perfect reading experience, by collecting all of the possible reads and serving them up in one app.
8. Magisto – Video marketing is all the rage right now, with cost per engagement being so low, who doesn’t want to uplift their content with some smartly edited video? Magisto makes editing look extremely professional in just a few moments; this productivity app uses artificial intelligence to edit your photos and videos together, and has the option for you to add music and share your videos online or privately via messages.
9. Forest: Be a focused and present (and fun) Boss by steering clear of your mobile phone. Forest works by ‘planting trees’ every time you want to focus. In the time from when you plant your tree, the tree will grow, but be killed if you leave the app! The gamification in this productivity app makes avoiding your fun so much fun.
Aside from these productivity apps, there are other apps that are just as useful and maybe more underrated, but here are a few Boss productivity apps that you should always have on your phone:
- Google Drive, Hangouts, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Calendar
- Slack
- Slideshare
- Dropbox
- SEO News
