13 Time Saving Tools To Help You Work Efficiently
Ever feel like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew at work?
Struggling to complete things on time is highly stressful, and can lead to us feeling snowed under. Most of us are trying to do a hundred things at once, and particularly if you’re working in a small team or freelancing, you may feel like you’re spread too thin.
Luckily, there are many tools and software products out there which can help you stay focused, streamline processes, and save time.
Productivity is a huge challenge for a lot of people, so it’s no wonder it’s a large industry with many different methods to tackle procrastination and increase focus.
Using these time saving tools you can gain some hours back to relieve stress and put even more energy into the parts of your job that you enjoy most. Try and implement these programs into your daily routine at work, and see how much more organized you feel!
We’ve divided the best time saving tools down into their categories to help you increase efficiency across all areas of your work routine:
1. Project Management — ProofHub
ProofHub is best for teams to collaborate and communicate on projects in one place. It is a project management software to plan, collaborate, and deliver projects on time.
Managers and teams are using the tool to keep a tab on who is doing what, to know how much each team member is producing, prioritize tasks, set start and due dates, define clear deadlines, and to bring clarity to work allocation.
“Facing project management problems? Start with the free ProofHub trial!”
There is a lot more users can do — @mention people to bring them in the loop, proof designs collaboratively, have quick conversations with teams, create custom reports, and bring all the team and client discussions under one roof.
2. Time Management — Toggl
Sometimes the day slips away from us and it’s hard to know how we’ve spent so long on one task.
Whether you’re trying the Pomodoro technique or attempting to chunk your day to avoid procrastination, a time management tool will help you keep on track and work more efficiently.
Toggl is a simple time tracking app for desktop and mobile, which allows you to record how long you’re spending on certain tasks. When you start the timer on desktop, the Toggl tab will become a timer, so you can keep an eye on the time no matter what tabs you’re working on.
Tracking your time this way not only holds you accountable to what you aimed to do in a certain time limit but also allows you to discover what areas of work take you the most and least time. Toggl’s reporting features summarise this for you in a clear and visual way.
3. Buddy Punch
Buddy Punch is an online platform that simplifies employee scheduling, time tracking, and payroll processes. It offers features such as GPS attendance tracking in real-time, management of paid and unpaid time off, and integration with payroll software. The service aims to reduce the manual effort involved in managing employee hours and payroll, providing tools like customizable reports, geofencing, IP address locking, and support for remote employee tracking.
Buddy Punch also facilitates workforce management by providing features like easy login methods and QR code clock-ins to ensure accurate time tracking. These tools help in managing employees more efficiently, especially in diverse work environments, including remote work settings. The platform is designed to streamline administrative tasks, making it easier for businesses to manage their workforce and focus on core operations.
4. Social Media Management — Hopper HQ
Managing multiple channels (and multiple brands, if you work in an agency) is a huge undertaking, with 60% of social media managers saying they struggle with time constraints.
Social media management involves a lot of back and forth between desktop and mobile: copying and pasting, searching for emojis, and duplicating files for different social networks — all of which make it a very time-consuming task.
To streamline this process, you need to use a tool like Instagram scheduler Hopper HQ. Hopper HQ allows you to manage multiple Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts from one dashboard, and not be anywhere near your phone when the posts are published.
Scheduling social media posts in advance is a huge time saver, as you know exactly what is going out when and never need to rush last minute content.
You can also work collaboratively on Hopper HQ, with team settings and varying permissions available. This is an efficiency booster for multiple people working on the same accounts, as they can schedule posts to all of the social networks at the same time.
5. Time Tracking- Timely
Time tracking is the bedrock of business — essential for billing and compliance, to managing team performance. But that doesn’t stop it from being wildly unproductive.
Timely solves the inefficiency of traditional time tracking by completely automating it. It captures all the time you spend in different apps as you work — from documents and websites, to email, meetings and GPS travel. Using AI, it can even translate this data into accurate time sheets for you.
No timers, no interruptions, no mental energy wasted on time tracking — you can focus fully on the work that matters safe in the knowledge that every second is being accurately recorded for you.
6. Task Management — Trello
While to-do lists are all well and good, sometimes it’s not as simple as crossing something out when it’s done and don’t get us started on losing post-it notes.
Particularly for those working in large teams or with freelancers, there’s a lot of communication happening around tasks and things are constantly changing.
Trello allows you to manage all your projects in one place, with broken-down task lists for each thing you’re working on. You can work collaboratively on projects, adding team members and assigning tasks to each person. With complete customization options to suit your workflow, you can name progress columns and move tasks across when they’ve been completed!
Using a task management tool like Trello increases efficiency as individuals and teams feel on top of their work, and can visually see the things that need to be done in priority order.
7. Team Communication — Slack
Still using email to sync up with your colleagues and clients? Say goodbye to long threads, and losing track of conversations in your inbox.
Slack is the ultimate team communication and collaboration tool. With multiple customisable channels, you can keep relevant conversations in the right place with the correct people. Avoid notifying colleagues unnecessarily with things that don’t concern them, and save time on the back and forth.
Slack is a diverse and customisable tool that you can cater to your needs to get the most benefit for you and your business. With private channels, video calls, file sharing, and in-built reminders, you will be able to manage all day-to-day business via the tool, saving time having conversations across multiple different platforms.
“Do you know ProofHub is one great Slack alternative. Give it a try!”
You can also integrate multiple apps with Slack such as Google Drive, DropBox, Outlook and many more.
8. Distraction Management — Freedom
Are you guilty of online shopping, YouTube watching, or Solitaire-ing during work? It’s okay, you’re definitely not the only one.
Distraction and procrastination are huge factors for feeling time pressure and inefficiency at work, and it’s a hard habit to kick.
App and website blocker Freedom allows you to shut off any site that may be distracting your focus. If you find yourself opening a new tab or picking up your phone to look at something you shouldn’t be, Freedom will block your access — offering a friendly reminder to get back to work.
Freedom can sync blocks across all your devices, so no matter where you choose to procrastinate, it will keep you on track. You can even schedule your blocker timings, which is especially useful approaching a deadline, or at peak distraction times.
According to their site, ‘Freedom users report gaining an average of 2.5 hours of productive time each day’, making it a huge time saving tool.
9. Email Management — Superhuman
Too many emails to cope? Often when we’re inundated with emails, the important ones can get brushed aside and opportunities are missed, not to mention courtesy goes out the window.
Typically, conversations get lost in long threads, and spam and newsletters are mixed in with crucial discussions and projects. Backlogs are frequent, and it’s easy to feel like you’re spending most of Monday morning shifting through and catching up on emails. This takes up a huge amount of time and is often de-prioritized over other more pressing tasks.
Superhuman has rebuilt the way inboxes and emails look, feel and work — all to increase efficiency and save time. Rather than being greeted with a cumbersome and overflowing inbox, their smart design and speed (every interaction is faster than 100ms) make it the fastest email management tool of all time.
Setting out to change and subvert the email workflow norm, Superhuman is complete with keyboard shortcuts, automation, and a rare lack of keyboard activity. Give it a try to finally hit zero in your inbox!
10. Asana
Asana is a popular project management software that saves you from wasting too much time shuffling between meetings, email, chat, and spreadsheets while working on a project.
This robust platform offers you a set of powerful features and integrations within one software suite that helps you to stay focused at work and make your everyday job easier.
With Asana, you keep your priorities and deadlines organized, you keep your goals aligned, you share details and collaborate on work progress with others, you create visual plans, you track time and expenses, you identify and eliminate potential roadblocks, and you meet deadlines as planned.
11. Clarizen
Clarizen is a leading collaborative work management platform with enterprise-grade time management features. the software solution is designed to solve challenges far beyond traditional work, project, time, and/or resource management.
With Clarizen, you get to work with a customizable and friendly interface, ensure out-of-the-box project planning, be a part of the effective and result-orientated collaboration, experience powerful monitoring and tracking capabilities, collaborate with real-time information at your fingertips, generate accurate project reports, demolish time and geographical limitations, and do a lot more.
12. TimeCamp
TimeCamp is a cloud-based time tracking solution that makes it easy to track billable work hours and create invoices during project management. The software solution assists project managers and teams to collaborate, calculate billable tasks, generate accurate invoices, track attendance, and manage time better.
In addition to automated time tracking, TimeCamp also offers the advantage of automated weekly emails summarizing work completed, time wasted, productive hours and lists of time-consuming websites in one place. Also, TimeCamp integrates amazingly with other popular third-party apps, thereby making many aspects of project management easier than ever.
13. Remember The Milk
Remember The Milk is the smart to-do app that lets individuals and teams — experience the ease of organizing sublists within projects, manage recurring tasks and prioritize work, and enjoy integrations with their favorite online apps. Teams can use Remember The Milk on the Web, desktop (Windows, Mac, and Linux), and mobile devices (Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Amazon devices).
Overall, Remember The Milk is a versatile and highly capable to-do app with neat features. If you’re in the market for a to-do app with added collaboration and time management advantages, go with Remember The Milk.
Conclusion
Disrupt your current work routine by implementing some of these time saving tools to your workflow! Start with the areas you feel most time constraints in your week, whether it’s distractions, your email inbox, or time estimating, there’s a time saving tool that will be able to help!
The investment of some of the paid tools will show return by the increase in your efficiency, as well as the valuable hours in your day you’ll gain back.
Author Bio:
Nicola is a Marketing Manager at Hopper HQ, the visual Instagram scheduling and management tool. She leads on all content, creating resources to help business owners and social media managers succeed and grow on Instagram.
