When growth and success are the goals you want to achieve, it can become easy to give in to frustration over the simple fact that there’s always so much that needs to get done. Entrepreneurs all over the world are constantly searching for amazing productivity tools that will help them become more efficient at what they’re doing – not so that they can kick back and relax, but so that they can use the extra time they gain to focus on other equally important aspects of their companies. Programs such as Asana, Slack, and Dropbox all make for great productivity and project management tools, but they’re not the only ones at your disposal.
When looking for the best tools to improve the productivity of your startup, it’s best to start by doing a bit of reflection. Take a pen and piece of paper and write down your biggest challenges. These might be communication, accounting, or project management. Every company is different, and a great workflow can only be achieved through customization and constant reevaluation.
Once you have a clear idea of what you need to work on, you can look at the list below, and choose the productivity tools that will work for your specific needs.
10 Tools to Improve the Productivity of Your Startup in 2020
1. RescueTime
No matter how passionate you are about your work, or how disciplined, there will always be time-wasters within your working process that are taking precious energy away from tasks that truly matter. RescueTime is a great solution to analyze and eliminate those time-wasters.
This is a tracking software that works on all your devices and gives you data about how you’re spending your workday. Once it has helped you identify your biggest challenges, you can use it to set goals and alerts, block distractions, set your work hours, and even gain insight into how you spend your hours away from an electronic device.
2. Iris
Chances are, your entrepreneurial lifestyle has you spending a significant portion of your day in front of a screen. That’s why it’s not a bad idea to look at ways to protect your eyes from strain and the negative health effects of blue light. Iris is an eye protection app you can install on your computer or mobile device, that will make small alterations to your screen. The Pro version offers several modes of working, including health mode, sleep mode, programming, and biohacker mode. It also has a built-in timer feature that encourages you to rest your eyes, but can also increase productivity by forcing you to take a short break every 20 minutes.
3. Outlook Calendar
A number of entrepreneurs and freelancers are finding that a calendar can do a great deal to improve their productivity. The reason behind this is simple. By blocking out slots to dedicate to a task, they’re imposing manageable deadlines that can be a great driving force for those who tend to get lost in their work.
Microsoft’s Outlook Calendar is one of the most effective apps out there, seeing that it offers a number of extra features including email integration, bill reminders, automatically calculating travel times, etc. You can also integrate it with a number of apps, such as TimeTackle, in order to export all the data you need into reports you can use for invoicing or analytics.
4. To-do lists
There’s a huge number of to-do apps on the internet. If you own a smartphone, chances are one’s either already installed on it. How elaborate you want to be with these apps completely depends on you. It’s not a bad idea to remember that you can just use the Notes or Reminders apps on your iPhone or download something like the Microsoft To-Do app or Todoist.
If you’re a fan of offline planning, you could also look into Bullet Journaling, which combines productivity and mindfulness techniques.
5. Dragon
If you feel like virtual assistants are a godsend, you might want to give speech recognition software a try. Dragon is a speech recognition software that can help you significantly cut down on the amount of time needed to do tasks such as document typing, writing emails, updating social media statuses, or searching for something on the web. It’s supposed to be three times faster than typing, so you might just find that it’s an investment worth making.
6. Accounting apps
Most entrepreneurs aren’t fans of accounting. Unfortunately, it’s a process that’s a must for any small business, startup, and international corporation. To make things slightly easier, you can invest in tools that will automate at least a part of the process.
Apps such as Xero offer features that could minimize your time dealing with accounting tasks but providing you with a host of benefits. Track business expenses, enjoy better insights into your cash flow, and complete invoicing tasks in a matter of minutes.
7. Upwork
Sometimes, working effectively means letting someone else take care of certain tasks. Especially when they require certain sets of skills you may not have, or take up too much time that you could make much better use of. In these cases, hiring a freelancer or remote worker can be an excellent option. Upwork is one of the best platforms for finding online talent, as it gives you access to millions of experts in any field you can possibly imagine.
8. Buffer
Is your business reaching its target audience effectively? Often, a good content marketing strategy combined with smart social media usage can be all the advertising you need. But posting on multiple platforms can be a hassle, especially since a number of social media apps don’t let you post content from your computer (Instagram, for example).
In these cases, a solution such as Buffer could do a lot to increase productivity (and save time). In addition to publishing content, it also helps you with analytics, as well as managing engagement, which you should definitely be paying attention to.
9. IFTTT
Most startups can benefit from automation. With the wide availability of smart tech that can make your life easier (or more exciting), an app that helps them all connect is a must. IFTTT is a free tool that allows you to automate a number of processes at home, as well as at the office.
Turn on the lights at the beginning of the day, automatically lock doors at certain times of the day, set your Roomba to work while you’re away from your desk, have Spotify play your favorite music for concentration, make calls, improve the way your virtual assistant works, order lunch, sync to-do lists. The possibilities are endless. All you need to do is think of an automated process, and you can program it for yourself, without needing to actually write code.
10. Password
Last but not least, your startup should be taking security seriously, so invest in a software solution that helps you keep all your company data safe, alerts you about possible security breaches, creates an activity log, offers multi-factor authentication, and even helps you control what information team members have access to.
Summing up
As you can see, productivity tools don’t have to be complicated. They just have to work for you. Of course, the apps and programs listed above aren’t the only tools at your disposal. The web is full of excellent solutions, so the best thing you can do is try some of them out and see whether they satisfy your needs.
