Yes, productive people use productivity apps. It’s as simple as that. The times have become a little too competitive thus it makes sense to get help from a myriad of productivity tools available in the market. We recommend that everyone should take advantage of productivity apps in their work or day to day life.

Productivity apps help you do three things:

1. Get organised
2. Improve habits
3. Increase focus

Here’s a list of 5 Productivity Apps To Get You Started

Wunderlist

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Wunderlist is a task management app with different kinds of advanced features. It focuses on To-do-lists and task management.

Free or KES 500 per user

Key features:

• To-do lists: Create to-do lists for individuals or teams and group them into folders for larger tasks or projects.
• Task management: Set deadlines, assign tasks, set reminders and add comments or notes.

Wunderlist is a seriously powerful platform that offers a lot of productivity features for free or a relatively small subscription fee. See which one you prefer. This app may now be non-operational in your area. However, here is a list of a few replacements for that,  including Microsoft To-Do List.

Slack 

Slack is a messaging platform designed for teams. Instant messaging is organised into channels, which team members can join and leave, as needed, so nobody receives messages or notifications irrelevant to them.

Team members can also chat outside of main topics in separate threads which prevents these messages from interfering with the most project-centric conversations.

Free, paid options from KES 600/mo per user

Key features:

• Instant messaging: Live communication between every team member for seamless collaboration.
• Statuses: Users can set availability statuses to focus on individual tasks as needed.
• File sharing: Drag-and-drop file sharing for PDFs, images, videos and other common files types.
• Voice & video calls: Voice and video calls directly within Slack.
• Screen sharing: Allows team members to show their work to others in real-time for stronger collaboration.

Monday 

Essentially, it’s a slightly more expensive, complex and powerful version of Trello, which is better suited to larger teams, more complex projects or teams juggling multiple projects at any one time.

Prices start from KES 1500/month for 2 users, KES 3400/month for 5 users

Key features:

• Project management: Monday is an advanced project management tool that helps large teams and individual team members complete tasks on time.
• Views: Multiple views allow you to check project overviews, timelines, individual workflows, checklists and reports.
• Track progress: Track tasks, update statuses, receive notifications when deadlines are looming and reassign/prioritise tasks with ease.
• Weekly task loads: Team members can work on multiple projects without getting lost by using Monday’s weekly overview.
• File sharing: Upload and share files so everyone has access to the resources they need via the same dashboard.

Pocket 

Pocket is a productivity app that lets you save web pages for reading later. In truth, it’s little more than a bookmarking tool turned into an application but it really makes a difference to how you work. Simply save the page (URL-based), assign a category if you want, and you’ll build a collection of resources in your Pocket account. The app essentially turns into a feed of things you actually want/need to read, learn or use for later.

Free

Key features:

• Save for later: Save web pages for reading when you have time or need them.

Forest and similar apps

Forest is a different kind of productivity app. Sometimes you need to get off of your phone and focus more on work. Apps like Forest can help. It basically gives you a reason to not use your phone. The app grows a tree that dies if you use your phone.

You collect various trees as you progress through the little game. Google implemented a similar idea with their Digital Wellbeing app and YouTube has a timer as well. We also really like 5217, an app that times you for 52 minutes followed by a 17-minute break. It’s an interesting genre of apps that can help increase your productivity if you find the right one.

Free / Up to KES 200 (varies)