Despite the rapid digital transformation in the workplace, we continue to lose a significant portion of our time in activities that could be easily avoided if we leverage key technological tools such as time management software.
In this article, we’ll explore together some tools that can help you make the most of your work time and eliminate productivity thieves.
It’s worth noting that technology has generated bad habits for us, some of which are difficult to eliminate, such as constantly checking notifications on our smartphones. Additionally, we often lose a substantial part of our work time on distractions and manual tasks that could be more efficiently handled. However, solving these issues is possible thanks to time management tools.
8 Time Management Tools
The best way to combat time thieves is undoubtedly to analyze our habits and eliminate all the bad ones. But to facilitate this process and make your day more efficient and productive, you can rely on time management tools. Below, we provide you with the best options on the market.
Performance Management Software
Performance management software is a productivity measurement tool designed by WorkMeter specifically to optimize workers’ time management and increase their productivity during workdays.
Through automatic data collection, it offers you a clear picture of how you manage your productive time and allows you to optimize your work. You’ll see a series of indicators about your activity and productivity, as well as the distribution of time between different tasks, projects, and applications.
Performance management software facilitates self-assessment so you can make decisions aimed at your own development and improvement. Self-analysis helps you become more autonomous and participatory.
Objective data about your own performance allows you to flexibilize your workday by discovering when during the day your mind is most active, to distribute your time among the most difficult or profound tasks and leave the superficial or simple ones for those moments when you identify, thanks to the tool, that your concentration is dispersed.
Performance management software, besides being part of the most useful work time management tools, also has automatic digital disconnection systems, as it’s very important to know when to stop. Digital disconnection is necessary to improve your productivity and resume your tasks with a clear mind.
Another benefit of this tool for companies is its completely automatic time clock, which allows compliance with time control and telework laws.
Time Management Tools
Google Calendar for Time Management
Google Calendar is one of the most widely used time management tools worldwide, both personally and professionally. It facilitates communication between professionals, allowing them to share their calendars, appointments, and meetings, keeping everyone updated. You can see the availability of each member and add reminders.
Google Calendar allows you to manage your tasks and projects on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis and intelligently to save time.
You have five options to organize your day or week, thus communicating to your collaborators when you are busy or available: Event, Out of office, Reminders, Task, and Available hours.
Its interface is intuitive and customizable, besides having numerous useful functionalities, it synchronizes with other applications, task managers, and calendars so you can centralize all your information in a single application and manage your time better.
Usage Time App
How many times do you unlock your phone during the day to check notifications? How much time do you waste scrolling through your Instagram feed? This tool prevents precisely that.
Usage Time is an application for your smartphones that, once installed, begins to track the activity and interaction you have with your phone: how many times you unlock it in a day, how many hours you use it in total, and how much time you spend on each application.
Additionally, it allows setting time limits for the use of each application. For example, you can decide to give a 30-minute limit to browsing within your favorite social network, thus ensuring that it doesn’t consume hours of your day.
Trello
Trello is one of the simplest and most intuitive project and task management tools.
It’s a great time planning and management tool as it allows organizing different activities by boards with lists of cards. Each tab can be a task to be solved, but also a note, a link to save, a task done, or anything else, depending on how you organize the boards.
It also allows assigning boards to one or more people, giving them a deadline and adding tags.
By noting each task, you won’t lose any along the way. Additionally, if you manage a team, you won’t distract anyone by sending emails or verbally communicating new tasks or status changes: just update the boards on your task panel.
Google Task for Time Management
One of the many Google time control tools to mention.
Google Task allows you to track your daily activities, organize multiple task lists, and monitor important deadlines.
This tool synchronizes your tasks across all your devices and with applications like Google Calendar and Gmail. That way, you won’t risk forgetting them.
TaskBoard
An application that allows organizing tasks added to the Google Task list in a Kanban board. It facilitates communication and collaboration between teams, all in real-time.
It follows the dynamics of Trello, but its advantage is integration with Google Workspace tools. This allows connecting activities to Google Calendar, adding or linking documents through Google Drive, or assigning responsible parties and notifying them quickly via Gmail.
TaskBoard saves time, optimizes project organization, and benefits work productivity. An effective time management tool.
Bitwarden
Bitwarden is a password manager. It’s available as software, extension, application, or web version.
Its function is simple: it stores usernames and passwords when entered on any website or application, encrypting them for your peace of mind.
It has an internal password generator that creates random and secure passwords, saving you time.
In the paid plan, it also allows you to share the credentials you want with your team.
Forest
The last tool we recommend is Forest, a unique and fun application that will help you stay focused and on track during your workday or any activity.
The concept is simple: every time you want to concentrate, plant a virtual tree. If you stay focused, the tree will grow. If you lose focus, the tree will die. As the name of the application implies, you can grow several trees to create a virtual forest.
In addition to being a fun and original time management tool, its user experience reinforces the need to maintain concentration for a certain period of time on an activity, task, or project.
It also reminds workers to take a few minutes of rest once the configured time is up, as it follows the Pomodoro technique strategy. However, you can configure more than 25 minutes of concentration time.
