Introduction to Productivity in Android
In this article, we will discuss an outline on Android Productivity. As a professional with a busy corporate life, an entrepreneur managing numerous tasks or a student, it is often a challenge to chase all the demands of the day within 10 or 12 working hours. You see seconds ticking away and minutes turning into hours, as you are still surrounded by piles of work.
Most of the time you wonder, whether you are managing your time properly. Time Management is an art all of us are not well versed with. Is it the domain of only highly successful people?
Well, there is help on the way, for those of us who feel this way. And it comes in the form of your Android phone. Yes! Your Android phone will help you manage your time most effectively and spend your working hours more productively so that you do not lose even a single minute of your precious time.
In this article Android Productivity, I am going to tell you about the various time management and productivity apps available on the app store. This is yet, another unique way to use technology to your advantage. Let’s go.
Top 10 Productivity Apps
Below we will look at the most popular apps to increase Android Productivity.
1. Pomodroido
You must have heard about the Promodoro technique. For those of you who haven’t, let me explain.
It is a time management technique for Android Productivity that became very popular in the 1980s. According to this method, one divides his work into 25-minute slots that are separated by short breaks of 5 minutes. This helps you to focus better, and keep aside procrastination. It has been proven that we can be more productive if we take short breaks between periods of work. This refreshes our minds and gears us to take on fresh challenges.
So, Promodroido is your Promodoro Timer designed for Android Productivity. It tells you when it’s time for a break and when is the time to get back to work.
- You can customize the time slots for work and break depending upon the type of work you take up.
- The paid versions give you access to advanced features for increased productivity.
- Works best with a planner or organizer app.
2. Rescue Time
Rescue time works by keeping a tab on how you spend every minute of your time. It alerts you when you are not using your time judiciously and sends you reports on the same. The analysis helps you learn and realize, how much time you wasted on unneeded distractions. Thus, you can be more focused and productive.
- Rescue Time is always at work in the background, hence always keeping an eye on your activities.
- Get a detailed report on time spent on each app on the phone or other physical activities such as meetings.
- With rescue time, you can also block websites that distract you during work.
- If you do not wish to let Rescue time play boss over your head, you can pause or quit it.
3. Hours Tracker: Time Tracking
Do you charge on an hourly basis? Do you find it hard to keep track of chargeable time? HoursTracker is an ideal tool for tracking your time and earnings for single or multiple jobs.
This app will surprise you with its simplicity and great functionality. Simply log in to your start and stop time to track your total working hours. It doesn’t end here. Have a look at what more it does for you.
- Automatically records your arrival and leaving time by using your location and send notifications for the same.
- Add any number of jobs.
- You can easily review the time spent on various jobs on daily and weekly basis and also track your payment
- Backup data by sending an email to yourself or for invoicing to the employer using the email option.
- Extremely user-friendly interface that takes ayyeny=tion away from its average looks.
- You can start by downloading its free version now.
4. Pushbullet
Most of our productive time is wasted checking our phone for messages and other notifications while working. Taking calls in-between can be another great distraction.
With Pushbullet, you can keep track of all the activities on your phone, without leaving your work or disrupting your flow. It lets you attend to calls, send messages and manage other notifications on the phone while you continue to work from your desktop, avoiding any interruptions.
Pushbullet works as a link between all your devices by syncing to hem together. It helps you push text, links, files, images besides other things from your computer to your phone and related devices such as tablets and also from your phone to your computer. What’s more, you can also with your friend’s device to push data from or to it.
- You can not only receive but also send text messages and WhatsApp messages through your computer.
- Share files from your phone to the computer and vice versa.
- View and manage your phone notifications from your computer monitor.
- Receive phone calls from your desktop.
5. Google Drive
All the documents are saved digitally and can take up huge space on your devices. We use cloud storage to save these files online. We all know about Google Drive- a cloud storage service that lets you save your documents and other types of files, scans, etc. on cloud. It is also best known for its synchronization features, as you can access and share your files across devices and users.
You can view or edit and even create new files on Google Drive using Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. It keeps your files absolutely safe and secure.
- Get 15 GB of free Google online storage to store your pictures, videos, articles and text documents.
- Access your files from any device such as phone, tablet, or personal computer.
- You can also give access of certain files on the drive to your friends to enable them to view, download, and collaborate. This feature is email free.
6. Shoeboxed Receipt and Mileage Tracker
Personally, I get the most unproductive, when searching for bills and invoices to claim warranty or repair. They are tucked away in the remotest corners of drawers and wallets and can never be found on time. The filing also requires you to be punctual, else the receipts can get lost.
Let me introduce Shoeboxed, a wonderful app that manages all your invoices and receipts. It’s a quick, hassle-free way to document receipts digitally in a safe location.
You can use it in a jiffy. Just click the image of the receipt and Shoeboxed will extract the data and perform human verification. It will then convert the receipts into digital information duly classified and organized, making information easy to search. No more cataloging of receipts is required. Access them from anywhere, anytime.
Shoeboxed performs another important task for you. It acts as a mileage tracker for you by making use of GPS on your phone.
- The information on the receipts is sorted into various heads namely – the name of the vendor, amount paid for the transaction, transaction date, mode of payment.
- Tag receipts as tax-deductible or reimbursable.
- Create and send expense reports directly from your phone with a tap of a finger.
- Generates complete trip summary including details such as date, distance covered, route is taken, total mileage, etc by just pressing ‘Start Trip’ and ‘Stop Trip’ buttons and save as receipt.
7. Easily Do Smart Assistant
EasilyDo is just the assistant you needed. It is less of an assistant and more of a genie that is capable of managing and organizing almost all your schedules, calls, emails, appointments, travel plans and much more automatically. It balances your professional and personal life by restructuring all your tasks such that you have plenty of free time on hand.
This smart assistant does not need to be commanded; it knows what needs to be done with it’s 43+ automated features. It syncs itself with all the important apps & services on your phone such as your email accounts, Gmail calendar, contact list, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. What’s more, it keeps your data completely safe and secure.
Have a look at its endless amazing features:
- Merges all the duplicate contacts on your phone.
- Automatically isolates emails that require an action such as sending a reply, meetings committed in the emails and creates calendar events and also sends alerts.
- Automatically adds travel dates and other important meetings to the calendar.
- Adds ‘to-Do’ tasks to the organizer.
- Replies to invitations and sends Birthday greetings.
- Backs up contacts, emails, downloading attachments, etc.
- Manages email contact list and clears old calendar events
8. Asana – Team Tracker
We all know the importance of team coordination to achieve positive outcomes. Asana is a powerful app that helps you to track teamwork to get optimum results. It keeps complete track of projects, tasks, team discussions, attachments, and all-important notifications, right from the beginning till the task gets over.
It helps you to remember tasks, hold discussions and share information to complete deadlines and accomplish your targets.
- Stay connected with your team on any Android device while you work on your tasks.
- Real-time updates for the web and Android apps, in order to automatically link your tasks and chats across devices.
- Allows the team to function seamlessly, without any interruption, irrespective of your physical presence.
- Create tasks and projects- add to-dos, reminders, and project due dates. Also, add comments remotely.
- Free of cost for up to 15 member team.
- It sends notifications in your Inbox and enables you to send replies to teammates directly from the Inbox.
9. Last Pass Password Manager
Every web service you register with requires you to create a password. Is it possible to remember all the passwords? Is it safe to note down all passwords in one place? How to securely keep your banking passwords, email passwords, wi-fi passwords and also remember them when needed?
Now imagine the time that is lost every time you search for a password. In quest for saving it securely and secretly, you forget where it has been saved. A password manager is what you need, to take care of this problem. That’s why we are talking about LastPass here.
It is a wonderful app that manages all your passwords. These are in-turn secured by a single password that gives you access to each one of them.
- Assesses the strength of passwords and generates secure passwords for you. It can also create profiles when you register with a portal.
- Keeps all your passwords and banking PINs securely with a single pass-key.
- You can also secure notes & photos and sensitive information with a password.
- Sorts all passwords into various categories viz. Social, Shopping & in separate folders.
- You can access your LastPass account from multiple devices such as smartphones, tablets and personal computers on buying the premium package.
10. IF by IFTTT
How nice would it be, if all the apps on your phone could converse with each other. And voila! IFTTT is here. IFTTT- If This Then That’ is an app that powers your online life through its numerous ‘recipes’. These recipes are actually sets of some wonderful triggers that lead to certain actions such as getting reminders. This means in case of certain events, certain actions will take place.
It links together apps such as Gmail, Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
- It has many such recipes that tell you how to create links between important services to automate your life.
- Simply click on the “Use Recipe” link on a particular recipe’s page to add it to your library and it will be automatically initiated.
- You can also create your own recipes.
- Automatic email alerts when your search matches criteria on a job search or other related sites.
- Save and manage money through some wonderful recipes. Find deals or split expenses.
- Automatically save your favorite Facebook posts or top tweets.
- It is FREE of cost and is a great help for Android Productivity.
Thus, proper use and configuring of these apps can increase your android productivity and make your life much simpler and save you a lot of time, making you much more productive.