Best Productivity Tools out in the Market Today

I'll start it off with my recommendation for the best productivity tools out in the market today.

 

Lawrence Tam – Website – Facebook

Retired Engineer at the age of 33 when he discovered the power of blogging and internet marketing. His focus is on small business wins using Instagram mobile traffic, new people starting their first profitable business online, and building a lifestyle that isn't confined to the 9 to 5. An oh, I own and run this blog you are reading now 😉

“So I've used a variety of productivity tools over the years and the ones I use the most is probably the Google Apps family. The combination of Google Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Voice, Google Slides, Google Sheets, and Google Drive. The ability to have multiple people work on the same document on the cloud is crucial if you plan to remove yourself from “day to day” activities and start acting like a boss.

• Google Gmail – Sending emails regardless of the ISP I'm using
• Google Calendar – Mostly to sync to my phone and computer. Apple iCal has poor weekly views plus switching between iphones and androids made more sense to stick to a 3rd party calendar app
• Google Voice – I don't share my personal (real cell phone) for business. This allows me to screen my calls without picking up. Pretty nifty tool I've used for years.
• Google Slides – I build presentation on this or Keynote. I generally do 3-6 presentations to clients per year from 10 people to 5,000 people.
• Google Sheets – How I work with numbers and allow my assistant to fill in data we need for projects.
• Google Drive – I use this to organize and store a ton of data. Dropbox is probably right up there but with Google Drive I can have multiple people in my company working on the same document seamlessly and in real time.
• Google Keep – This one has been interesting and is pretty easy to use on multiple platforms like (iphone, android, and computer). I use this for quick notes and reminders. I also dump my ideas into an “Ideas Parking Lot” there. It allows me to be creative while not trying to retain all of the ideas in my head.

I've used them for a variety of reasons but one is not having a standard office where I work 9-5. I needed the ability to work from my phone or on a laptop (not the office machine). This then allowed me to build my schedules with clients and do consulting all on the cloud. Storing data that I can access anywhere and keeping organized has helped me grow from a struggling wanna be “work from home dude” to actually making it happen and building my first million dollar dream home in 2015.

Organization, process flow, and keeping the schedule on time has been the best things I've done for my personal business and what I've been teaching my clients who I coach and mentor. The cool thing about the Google family of apps is that they are basically free (more if you need more space) but for the most part it's not a burden on your business.”

 

 

Visual Boards

Milanote is a tool for organizing your creative projects into beautiful visual boards. Created to replicate the feeling of working on a wall in a creative studio – visual, tactile and sometimes a bit messy – Milanote is a great fit for freelancers in both the marketing and design spaces. Milanote has heaps of built-in templates to help you get started with a variety of different projects, from creating a moodboard to set out the visual direction for a project, to writing that perfect creative brief. Its sharing features make it a great option for those who regularly provide work to clients for feedback.

Milanote's basic plan is available for free with no time-limit.

I personally used it to build a promoter flow training diagram to better understand at a higher level where there are hangups in our training process.

 

Best Productivity Tools out in the Market Today – Entrepreneurs Speak

Alecia Stringer – Blog – Facebook

If you would like to connect, reach out to me on Facebook. Alecia Stringer is known as a Internet marketing pro, SEO Video Mastermind, A dedicated Christian, mother, piano and voice teacher, and network marketing coach. Yes! A master multi-tasker!

“As far as productivity, I look at it as what helps me accomplish the tasks in an efficient manner. Chunking things together that work well for you is so helpful when you start to look how you can become more efficient.[pullquote]Chunking things together that work well for you[/pullquote]

My favorite tools is scheduling out my social media with Hootsuite and Mass Planner. Then I use Evernote to make my brainstorming lists and spur of the moment ideas. Keeping a to do list everyday is helpful and it seems like I can access it on my phone when I need to, especially out and about being a busy mom!

Another tool that I feel that helps me be real efficient with my productivity is with videos. All my videos and pictures are automatically backed up in my dropbox and when it gets full I transfer them to an external drive.

You can’t miss out on tracking what you do in RescueTime in the Chrome Extension as it helps you monitor how much time you are really being productive! I notice more bonding time is spent when my daughter and I watch too many funny cat videos!

Make sure you have the most important auto-responder for your business to be productive in making sure your subscribers are up-to-date with your most recent offer.”

 

Leslie Lane Peabody – Blog – Facebook

Leslie Lane Peabody is a busy single Mom. She can help you get THE RIGHT THINGS done more quickly in your small business – giving you time to spend with your family. Create a business that works – even when you don't!

“Is your email like the monster book in Harry Potter? Does it eat your email so you are never able to find it again? At least not at the right time?

(Cue the hero music) Enter Boomerang.

Boomerang works on Gmail and Outlook and it is AWESOME! I've just been using it a few days and ALREADY I'm more productive.

I no longer have to worry about tracking projects. Boomerang does the worrying for me! Boomerang has a feature that let's me track a response to my email. I set Boomerang to notify me if, and ONLY if, no one responds. If someone responds, I continue the project when I get the response. If not one responds, Boomerang reminds me to follow up. It's automagical!

Another great feature is the remind me feature. When I get an email and I don't have time to work it until this afternoon, I simply set it to come back into my in-box that afternoon. It disappears until I have the time to work it. This is saving me countless hours setting up tasks or color coding my e-mail. I'm not losing things in my in-box anymore!

Boomerang is also very inexpensive for a small business or personal owner. There is a free version that allows you to get your feet wet, a low cost version (the price of a cup of coffee once a month). A pro version which is about the cost of a lunch once a month, or the Premium version which costs about the same as a nice dinner with a drink and dessert – for one!

I'm loving this tool and the time it has saved me in just a few days. I can't imagine what it will save me as I learn to use its features even better.

Hey – leave me a comment and tell me what you liked best when you tried it! Let's compare notes!”

[bctt tweet=”Followup using Gmail and even get reminders if you forget. #email #boomerang” username=”NinjasHighHeels”]

 

Meylysa Duldulao – Blog – Twitter

Meylysa “Mey” Duldulao helps working moms create passive income so that they can spend more time with their families and pursue professional careers part time from home. She's a loving wife and mom, ocean sports lover and blogger.

“Have ever felt busy but realized you didn't get anything done? I used to have this problem before I learned how to prioritize. The best tool is a notebook and pen, or the calendar app on your smartphone.

Write down the most important tasks that must be accomplished the next day. Rank them in order. Then the next day only focus on Priority #1 until it's done!
Then move on to Priority #2, and so on.

Turn off distractions such as e-mail and social media notifications. Schedule your high priority tasks first thing in the morning in your calendar. Set up a reminder for you to look at them before you do anything else.”

 

Ken Pickard – Blog – Facebook

Ken Pickard is The Network Dad. Entrepreneur, Social Media Jedi Master, evangelist of YOU inc. Helping small business owners and entrepreneur rebels, leverage the power of social media through strategic marketing and branding processes. Always empowering others to be servant leaders. All this and 5 kids!

“Best productivity tool out there would have to be a concept I heard about 15 years ago. I’ll get to it in a second…

There are hundreds of systems and gadgets to help you increase productivity. For each…there are thousands of people who still don’t complete the tasks at hand for whatever reason. Personally I think it’s being overwhelmed or lack of clarity on their goals. But let’s dive into the first issue and leave the second for another day.

What’s the first thing you reach for when you need to get something done?

(hint is in the picture…but you already knew that)

You go for a pen and paper…you write down your list of to do’s and you get to work on them.

Now let’s take it one step further…

You’re leveraging online space to help find customers for your business. You’re learning and growing a skill set. You’re putting out content to attract your target audience. You’re learning more and more and somewhere down the road you notice things are not working out as you thought they should. Maybe you’re not hitting the financial goals you set for yourself.

This happens to just about all of us. You know to much. Weird huh?

Enter…

The information suck zone!

The concept is this…you have a task and can only look for the exact information you need to complete the task. The information you seek is literally at your finger tips AND…without looking at anything else…you get back to your task.

The challenge is we sometimes get distracted online by all the cool quotes, images and puppy videos. STOP IT!

Input…output. Write down your task, find ONLY the information you need, and then complete the task.

Power of the check mark is now yours!”

 

Jordan Kasteler – Website – LinkedIn

Jordan Kasteler is a freelance marketing consultant, entrepreneur, author and speaker. He has a history of co-founding and serving in-house, agencies, and startups in the digital marketing industry.

“My favorite productivity tools is Evernote. My entire life is in Evernote. I track prioritized tasks that need to be done, ideas, call notes, bookmarked URLs, articles, etc in there. By keeping a daily to-do list, putting urgent/important items first, I can accomplish my day easily.

It also helps keep inbox zero by moving emails, that need to be tackled as a
project, out of my inbox and in to Evernote as a to-do.

Also, WasteNoTime helps track time spent on various URLs and block them out if you're spending too much time.”

 

William Jackson – Website – Facebook

William Jackson was born in Denver Colorado in November of 1984. He started his online blogging business and is now able to experience the freedom and success he has always dreamed to have. Which comes from helping serve others and giving positive and beneficial value to the marketplace.

 

“The best productivity tool I have found so far is instagress. Which I use for Instagram and it allows me to automate most of my business and marketing, where really all I have to do is post everyday.

My account grows on autopilot from it, and I have been able to get leads/conversions within my online business from this method.

Which is really awesome.

I have also come to find that hootsuite is another awesome tool to automate your marketing and social platform via Twitter. I used to use it a lot until I found more results and success with Instagram, now most of my focus is on using and optimizing my settings accordingly with instagress.

With that being said. I believe these two tools alone or even just one of them if focused only on using when starting to build, has the ability to explode anyone's business. With enough time and effort on doing the right things consistently.

Constant perfecting of your craft in every other aspect, if you keep being a student, learning from the top “dogs” in your industry and or niche, success is inevitable, this goes for any business opportunity if one wants to build it on a solid foundation which will stand through time and with what we do as bloggers, we inspire other people to follow there passions in life, as well as educate and inform them with good and useful/beneficial info and recourses when they search online. This is one of the things I love about building a brand online. “

Dave Schneider – Website – Twitter

David Schneider is the cofounder of Ninja Outreach, an innovative new Blogger Outreach software for marketers. He writes about business and entrepreneurship., and enjoys travel.

(Update – Dave no longer runs these websites, but can be found at lesschurn.io and daveschneider.me).

“My favorites are Trello and Evernote. Trello is great as a way to manage a process or a flow. The bucketing system is perfect for teams working together who immediately want to get a visual sense of their progress on a task.

Then I like the additional features of being able to drill down with labels, checklists, and member assignments. However I find that for capturing information, Trello is not particularly scalable, which is what I like Evernote as basically a file dump to put everything interesting that I find.”

 

Bryan Collins – Website – Twitter

Bryan Collins is a writing coach who helps writers become more creative and productive. His free email course will help you launch your writing career and Become a Writer Today.

“The best productivity tool on the market today isn't a technical one. It's a whiteboard. You can draw on it, use it for mapping out your ideas, create a To Do List or simple pin pictures to it with magnets.

And if it's not working for you, you can simply wipe the board and start again. But what
about a close runner up?

Well that's got to be Evernote. It's an awesome tool for capturing ideas on the go and as a writer I count on it every day.”

 

Tabitha Jean Naylor – Website – Facebook

Tabitha Jean Naylor is the Founder of Successful Startup 101, a digital magazine that provides answers to today's most pertinent questions facing startup founders, and the Owner of TabithaNaylor.com, a marketing firm that delivers ‘big agency’ quality at rates that are affordable for startups and small businesses.

Well there are lots of really useful tools out there that are designed to help people keep to a schedule and make their day work process more efficient.

But it really depends on the kind of person you are. For example, if you are always late to meetings, then you need an app that gives you reminders well in advance so that you’re hyper aware of the meeting time.

I have three go-to’s when it comes to productivity tools: Basecamp, Freshbooks and Dropbox. I use Basecamp for project management, because I have so much content to deal with on a given day, and it makes it very easy to know what’s due, what’s been done and what’s overdue.

I use Freshbook to organize my accounting, and Dropbox is really fantastic for file sharing and collaboration. Without those three tools, I’m not going to get anything done, but I also use Google chat and Skype to communicate with clients and contractors, just to make sure we’re all on the same page.

With all the productivity apps that are out there, you shouldn’t have any excuses not to hit targets every day.

 

Felix Tarcomnicu– Website – Twitter

Felix Tarcomnicu is the CEO & Co-Founder of Cross Promo, a cross-promotion platform for SaaS and online businesses.

“I use several productivity tools, but the following are the ones that I use most often. My favorite is Google Calendar.

It helps me organize everything and get reminders of the next tasks & events across all devices. I can't imagine my life without using this tool.

Google drive is also great as it makes it easy for me to create Documents, Spreadsheets and then share it with everyone very easily.

Another tool that's great for keeping everything organized is WunderList. For work, I use Trello and it's awesome because you can easily communicate and collaborate with the whole team.”

 

Susy Simc-Geissinger – Facebook

Susy Simc is an Internet Marketer, sharing online marketing strategies with those interested in leveraging their time while growing their business.

She loves reading, experiencing new places, and relaxing by the fire with her husband and a good glass of Cabernet.

“We’re bombarded with productivity tools, from social media marketing tools to productivity planners.  There are definitely a myriad of options to increase your efficiency though I personally believe that the first step is organization.

We’ve all witnessed the cluttered home page screen. Heck I think we’ve all been there at some point, saving files on the desktop so they’re easier to find.   Trust me, left unchecked it will ultimately lead to clutter, wasting time and maxed out computer storage.

I’ve turned to “tried and true” (and free) Google Services and Apps to help me stay organized and productive. They effectively departmentalize my information for quick and easy reference, at the same time let me share with my team.

Narrowing down the list was hard but some of my favorites include:

Google Drive, a cloud storage and backup service that stores all of my files at the same time giving me access when I need them from any device…and the best part it comes with 15GB of free storage which has helped speed up (if that could be possible) my MacBook Air,

On the topic of storage, a new app I’ve become fond of is the Google Photos App.  It has unlimited photo/video storage and backup, organizes and groups my photos, while syncing with all app devices.  Aside from its organizational properties, its freed up space on my iPhone (no longer a need for local photos).  The app also has a movie creation feature, too fun.

As I’m composing this guest blog quote, I can’t forget my fondness of Google Docs. This free online word processor allows me to create, store as well as share documents with my team.

And last but definitely not least, there’s the unpopular subject of tracking.  Every business tracks its performance and an online business shouldn’t be any different. That’s where Google Analytics is perfect. Connecting to every page on your website, it tracks and website traffic showing page performance….more importantly, identifies what needs to be improved.

You guessed it, I’m a Google fan.  In my opinion Google has really thought of it all when it comes to online productivity and if it missed something, I’m pretty sure it’s in the works…and did I mention these tools are all free.”

 

Kat Zapanta – Website – Facebook

Kat Zapanta has been helping entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level through personal development combined with unique and strategic marketing techniques to help them “create a version of their own freedom”. She has been job free & living on the beaches of Costa Rica for 5+ years now with her husband Romeo and their many cats!

“As an entrepreneur online, one of the primary methods of creating engaging content – whether it’s a social media post, blog post, email or even video or webinars – is by incorporating IMAGES into my content.

I am NOT a design person and it used to take me hours when I first got started online to make images that frankly looked like a little kid made them. (Actually, probably a small child could have made better ones!)

Well, ever since I started using a design platform called CANVA, it has drastically reduced the amount of time it takes me to create images, that now, make me look like an image design PRO.

Whenever I create content, I hop on canva.com and put together a quick image in just a few minutes and BAM – my engagement and interaction on my content increases, my brand continues to build off of powerful imaging and design across all my content modalities…and I’ve become somewhat of an image geek.

If it wasn’t for CANVA, it would take me FORVER to design my content. Now, not only has my productivity skyrocketed but i have also improved across all of my marketing content with high quality and engaging images.

In a day and age of short attention spans, I continue to grab my audiences attention thanks to CANVA with only a few minutes of work, I highly recommend it!”

[bctt tweet=”Do you say – I am NOT a design person and it used to take me hours.. – Me too until I used this app. #design #creatingthings” username=”spooon”]

 

Wya Bijma-Douma- Website – Twitter

Wya is helping people like you to find ways to work from home by teaching strategies that can help you generate passive income.

“My best friend here is just my notebook and my pen. Not only do I write my daily, weekly and monthly tasks, I also add a time investment at each task. So I know how long every task will take and how many hours I can work.

Income productivity tasks I do first and after that the other tasks. When I'm working on a task I turn off all the tabs I don´t need otherwise I end up on fb to see the newest post from everybody in my timeline, or watch beautiful pictures on instagram.

Best feeling I get when I can write a little cross on my paper when I have finished my task.

Woohoo, and so happy when my whole paper is full of crosses.”

 

Valerie Jampolsky – Blog – Facebook

Mom of wonderful twin boys, here to Serve your Vision, Live ABUNDANCE NOW & Shift The World

“But I find THE most powerful “tool” for productivity
where I actually get the most important tasks accomplished

and even tasks I may not have “planned” but ultimately
are THE most productive thing I could have done that day..

is to start and end the day with a Powerful Positive Mindset.

I personally start and end my day with meditation,
affirmations and watching powerful inspirational video.

One of my favorites is in the free streaming archives at AgapeLive.
Powerful guided meditation, affirmation, affirmative prayer and inspiration as well as the life visioning process.

I ask myself throughout the day, what gift do I have to share
in this moment?

And remain open and available to inspired right action
to guide my steps of “how” I do the tasks on my “list.”

I start my day and end my day with the intention to
be open and available to a moment of inspiration
that can guide me beyond my “list” to
the content of what I do each day.

So, the days I am most grounded in a powerful
emotionally positive space when I wake up and
when i go to sleep..

result in me taking the most powerful
productive actions in my day,
regardless of the “List” I have.

You truly are more than you can conceive and have
access to infinite wisdom if you allow yourself to be open
and available.

Love.Peace and Blessings”

 

Linda Kapani – Facebook

Linda Kapani had been empowering women of all walks of life in her country (Papua New Guinea). She has a vision to build a team of women to do their business smart on internet. She had her own mentorship program that trains the mind of her participants and help them live their life and dreams today!

“The world changes every day in the internet technology world and with having to live in a developing country, we have to play the catch up game.

As an entrepreneur offline I had to do my best with coping with the internet world in a productive manner.

I had sleepless nights answering questions from clients manually, and time was becoming a disaster for me.

When taught on how to master and manage income producing activities, this is when I seriously took action to measuring my time.

Time is an asset to your business and life, even a second of it. Use it wisely when it comes to your business.”

 

Now there you go. The above authors, experts, and bloggers have chimed in on some of their best productivity tools out on the market today and that's how they support and build their own businesses.

Leave your suggestions in the comments below.