We live in a time when there never seems to be enough hours in the day. One way to combat this is to try to be as productive as possible with what time we have. Thanks to the latest technology, we now have a variety of apps for mobile devices, which are designed to help us do just that. Here’s a sampling of productivity apps for iPhone and Android.
Image Source: Flickr
Alarm Clock For Me
Personalize the way you wake up in the morning and how you go to sleep at night with this app from Apalon. Awaken gently to the sound of your favorite music and drift off to sleep at night with relaxing melodies or white noise, for a preset time. The alarm clock app also features weather, different clock faces, and a built-in flashlight. You can get it on Google Play.
Priorities
It takes good organizational skills to design an effective daily schedule. The important thing to know is how to budget and prioritize your time. Some tasks need to be done sooner than others. The key to optimum productivity is to get things done in the right order. The Priorities app can help you manage this by showing your upcoming deadlines and which projects you can take a little longer on. This will allow you to focus on the important tasks and prevent you from wasting time on trivial matters.
Problem Solving
While there may not be an app that will give you the solution to the exact problem you’re mulling over, there is an app that will train your brain and help to increase your problem-solving skills. Lumosity gives you sets of three games or puzzles at a time. The more you play, the more agile your brain becomes. The app has more than fifty brain games designed to exercise and improve your attention, problems solving, speed and flexibility.
Increasing Focus
When you’re bombarded with calls, emails, social media, and meetings with co-workers, it can be difficult to remain focused, which in turn can make getting things done on time almost impossible. Maintaining good focus skills takes practice. A distraction reducing app such as Freedom. Designed to prevent you from becoming distracted by social media or spending time browsing the Internet while you’re working, this app allows you to block websites and apps from your device’s dashboard. You can also create scheduled focus sessions. For example, if you want to avoid Facebook from 9a.m. to 11a.m. you can set up a Freedom session. During that time, Freedom won’t allow you to receive any Facebook notifications or to connect to the app.
Staying Positive
Maintaining a positive attitude is important when you want to stay productive, especially when you encounter problems. Keeping an upbeat mindset can help you find a way to make even the most tedious of tasks interesting, so your attention won’t drift, even if the chore at hand is under stimulating. If you’re struggling with this don’t worry. Being positive is a learnable skill and Happify will help you build up your strength in positivity.
With a little help from these apps, you’ll soon find that your productivity and focus increase significantly.
Janet Kennedy is a Mom who seems to be constantly on the go yet never achieving as much as she needs too; there’s always a pile of laundry to do, a meal to be cooked and paperwork to be sorted.
