Productivity Apps for Entrepreneurs

Getting more done throughout your day isn’t simply a matter of sitting down and working harder.  Instead, being more productive requires that you work harder on the right things, in addition to tackling them as efficiently as possible. Fortunately for entrepreneurs, there are plenty of apps out there that will help to both organize an overwhelming workload and provide the motivation needed to get things done.

The never-ending commotion list, the constant meetings, not to mention the endless travelling. We surround ourselves with mentors and colleagues to help and guide us. However, what is the handiest sidearm for any entrepreneur? It’s the ‘simple’ mobile device.
In a generation where we rely on technology so heavily, mobile apps have become tools of the trade for many entrepreneurs. With demand comes supply, and the two main app stores have become less like a tool box, and more like a man-drawer, cluttered with apps which often aren’t fit for purpose. Many are broken or are poorly designed.
However, some do stand out as shining examples of how apps should be made — apps that can almost certainly help you in your quest for success. Here are our top five:

Citymapper
When an entrepreneur first moved from Lagos to London a couple of years ago, he spent weeks wandering around as the proverbial rabbit caught in headlights. He had to carry a tube map with him everywhere and his Oyster card suddenly became the most important thing he owned. Transport in London confused the daylights out of him until he was introduced to Citymapper.
The app acts as your guide to London (and many more cities across the world), giving you the best route to your destination, the cost and journey time, as well as keeping you in the loop about delays or travel interruptions. Anyone who knows London knows how frequently these happen. Citymapper is easy to use and the appealing interface means that you can get the information you need in a hurry, and plan an alternative route to get to that meeting you absolutely can’t miss. It’s how transit apps should be made.

Clear
As an entrepreneur, you probably have hundreds of things to do on a weekly basis — from small things like clearing your inbox, to bigger issues such as changing the time of an important meeting. With so many things for your brain to juggle, it’s easy to drop the ball every now and then.
Clear makes it easy for you to see, in a snapshot, all the tasks you’ve got to do, when you’ve got to do them and how much of a priority they are. In a couple of swipes, you can add a task and set a reminder and due date. Once you’ve got your list set up, you can drag and drop each task in order of importance, and the app automatically colour codes them so you can identify your most pressing tasks in an instant. Clear is one the best examples of an app that’s clutter-free, but has enough features to do what you need it to do, making sure you never forget that networking event or essential email.

Dark Sky
As a nation obsessed with the weather, it follows logic that weather apps are two-a-penny on the App Store and Google Play these days. The thing with weather apps is that they are generally either too focused on design (and therefore don’t have enough features) or too focused on the features.
Dark Sky, however, hits a nice balance. It’s a beautiful app (you’re probably beginning to realise that I’m pretty obsessed with UI and design) but it also has some incredible features. Rather than tell you what the weather will probably be like over the next week, it focuses on telling you whether you’ll need an umbrella today, or whether it’s worth taking sunglasses. And it’s remarkably accurate. Using state-of-the-art technology it predicts snow or rainfall, right down to the last minute.

Mailbox
Many see e-mail as unavoidable. Some have tried to kill it off, and then decided not to. The fact of the matter is that we all use it, and that means it has become a true, multi-platform communication tool. The problem with this, though, is the amount and variety of e-mail apps on the two main app stores. It can be a bit overwhelming.
Mailbox could put an end to all that. The offspring of the hugely successful online storage, sharing and collaboration tool, Dropbox, Mailbox goes straight for the jugular of the habitual enemy of email — the cluttered inbox. With it’s ‘help me get to zero’ button, and swipe-based organisation system, it’s set the trend that many other apps have followed, but, in my opinion, Mailbox is the best. It’s been on my phone since day one, and is always one of the first apps I download when I get a new phone. Simply a must-have for the busy entrepreneur.

Wunderlist
In recent articles written by Syrah’s founder Josh Dickson and Eugene Kim of Business Insider, Evernote is in big trouble. As a long-time Evernote user, some people have recently started to become frustrated with the ‘darling of Silicon Valley’. In its bid to go public and become a ‘hundred-year company’ it’s left behind many of the loyal users it gained when it was a start-up, and, more importantly, put to the backburner many of the features that gave it such a committed following. With the announcement of job cuts and office closures, many are saying it could become the first ‘dead unicorn’. So, perhaps it’s time to find an alternative? Wunderlist is my pick. It’s designed around the use of hashtags (much like Twitter) and it’s comparison to the hugely popular social network doesn’t stop there. But beneath the surface, it’s a very well-designed, quick-syncing, handy note-taking application that, like Clear, isn’t cluttered with features. It knows what it’s used for, and sticks to it.

Evernote: 

The beauty of Evernote (which is available for free in Web, iOS and Android versions) is that it can be whatever you need it to be.  Need a simple place to store notes or track thoughts as they occur? Evernote has you covered.  Want to set up a complete David Allen-style “Getting Things Done (GTD)” environment inside the program?  Evernote can do that too.

Dropbox: 

As with Evernote, it probably isn’t a surprise to see Dropbox on a list of recommended productivity apps.  The program’s value has been pretty well-established, all though chances are good that, even if you do have this program installed on your computer or mobile device, you still aren’t getting as much out of it as you could. To expand your usage, check out Macworld’s article on “62 Things You Can Do With Dropbox” (many of which work no matter what platform you’re using).

Focusbooster: 

Plenty of entrepreneurs use the Pomodoro Technique (which alternates 25-minute long working blocks with short breaks) in order to maintain sustainable, long-term productivity. And while there are plenty of different Pomodoro timers out there, one of my favorites is the Focusbooster App.  It’s free to use and provides a simple way for business professionals to stay focused over long periods of time.

Leech Block: 

If you find that the Pomodoro Technique alone isn’t enough to maintain productivity (which – let’s face it – isn’t that much of a challenge in today’s digital world of easily-accessible distractions), you may need to call in the big guns. In this case, you need Leech Block – a Firefox add-on that allows you to lock down specified websites.  It’s easily customized to suit your unique working habits, and even provides a helpful reminder to get back to work when you stray to one of your blocked sites.

July 05, 2018