Let me start strong: We HAVE TO stay productive if we want to achieve anything in our lives.
Not “should,” not “must,” not “ought to,” but “have to.” And this is especially important if you run any kind of business. There’s no such thing as playing it safe when it comes to your own business. You either give it your best or don’t go at all.
You just have to know what you’re doing and what tools to use to help you with that. Let’s face it, it’s the 21st century, and if anyone thinks that they don’t need software for this particular area of life then they’re clearly wrong.
This is the best mind mapping tool around. It’s free, easy to use, and powerful.
If you don’t know the concept of mind mapping let me just quickly say that it’s the best way of taking your thoughts straight from your head and putting them in your computer.
It works a lot better than simple text files, bullet lists, or anything like it.
I assure you that once you get a grasp of mind mapping and FreeMind, you’ll use this tool for every plan of action you build from now until forever.
RTM is the best way to manage your time. It’s provided in many language versions and works on various mobile devices apart from the main online version.
Basically, it’s a to-do list software. But it offers a lot of custom features like: multiple lists, tags, due dates, time estimates, postponing, priorities, keyboard shortcuts, and more.
To be honest, I am using this tool every day. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to organize my work very effectively.
This may sound obvious, but I want this list to be complete. Google Calendar is great for managing tasks that have to be done on a specific day and time. The secret is to use it for those tasks only.
Don’t place a given task in your Google Calendar unless you absolutely have to do it on a specific day. Otherwise, your calendar will quickly become unreadable because of the hundreds of entries there.
I’m sure you haven’t heard about this one before. This is a very handy motivational app, so to speak.
You can set a number of activities you want to be doing constantly, like: writing, exercising, cold calling, or whatever else feels suitable (use just the names of the activities).
Whenever you manage to do a task revolving around any of your activities, you click on a specific field and the tool gives you one point. At the end of the day (and the week) you can see how many points you’ve gathered. Really cool.
Do you ever wonder where all your time goes? I know I am. RescueTime is exactly the tool that can help you with that question.
It’s a small app that runs in the background and pays attention to whatever you’re doing on your computer.
It creates a report and tells you: what software you were using, how much time you spent on Facebook, how much time you were playing Diablo 3, and so on… Can be shocking, at first.
Teambox is a great team collaboration software. It’s online, and it centralizes your communication by taking email out of the equation. It tracks tasks across teams, enables you to share files, information (through Wiki pages), receive progress updates, and ensures strict data privacy through the trusted Amazon EC2 cloud.
This sums up the list of 6 handy tools for your productivity. But wait! Feel free to share and tell me what other tools you are using. Is there anything you’d like to add here?
Karol K. is a writer, passionate about productivity and GTD. He also shares various advice about WordPress. Connect with him at ThemeFuse.com, where you can also get some great premium WordPress themes.
Featured image on home page courtesy of sidduz.
