Still Working from Home? Here are 11 Apps That Will Help You Stay Productive
There are certain types of real estate professionals that I have truly admired during my career—specifically I was always intrigued by mega agents closing hundreds of deals each year. How did they stay on track? How were they able to balance family time with the career?
Now, during the pandemic, my new real estate crush is the stay-at-home parent with school-age (or younger) children. Having raised two boys I often reflect on how I would have managed the pandemic 10-15 years ago and still been able to run our real estate brokerage business at the same time.
With those folks in mind and also keeping in mind those people that are easily distracted by little things that need doing around the house, here is a handy list of apps that will help you to maintain productivity despite the challenges of staying at home.
Apps that Block Distractions
Video from Serene
Serene prompts you to define one goal each day and then break your day down into sessions. It also shields you from distractions by blocking distracting apps & websites. Serene can also silence your phone, control Philips Hue lights, update your Slack status, play focus music while you work and more, to help you create your optimal deep work environment.
Image from Forest
Whenever you need to focus on your work, open the app, and plant a tree. It will keep growing as long as you don’t get sidetracked. Leave your phone alone with the app open, but once you quit it you’ll kill the tree. Plus if you get enough credits, you actually get to plant real tree care of Trees for the Future.
Video from Krisp
Krisp auto-syncs with your calendar and connects to your Zoom, Webex or Hangouts meetings with just one click. You can also make outgoing calls to any phone number and from any country all while being noise-free.
Image from Daywise
Choose the times of the day when you want to get notifications so you can protect your work, sleep and personal time. Your batched notifications are neatly organized all in one place. See notifications when you want to, not when apps want you to. Daywise also allows you to select which of your friends can interrupt you, batch the rest for later. You decide who gets your attention.
Video from HazeOver
HazeOver allows you to turn distractions down and focus on your current task by highlighting an active window or app when you switch windows. The less important things are dimmed in the background.
Video from Brain.fm
This app has focus-boosting soundtracks that uses science-first approach to create music that sounds different–and affects your brain differently–than any other music.
Apps to Help Organize & Communicate
Video from Slack
With channels in Slack, you and your team know where to go to ask questions, share updates and stay in the loop. When organized properly, communication among team members is way more efficient and you can confine all of it to one app. No more trying to remember whether you sent someone a text or an email and then searching both.
Video from Zoom
You are probably familiar with this one. Video and voice calls for groups and one-to-one. You can add virtual backgrounds too! It’s the app of the pandemic!
Video from Spark
This smart email client that stops your inbox getting in the way of productivity. Spark intelligently prioritizes your email. It bubbles important messages from real people to the top. Pin and reply to those, and batch archive the rest. You can also schedule your email to be sent later, which is an amazing feature if you are a person that works early mornings or late nights and wants to disguise that fact from the public. Spark allows you to create, discuss, and share email with your colleagues.
Apps to Help Automate
Image from Zapier
Save time on repetitive tasks and switching between apps by automating processes (e.g., automatically saving Gmail attachments to Google Drive, adding email addresses from a Google Sheet to a MailChimp email list, etc.).
Video from IFTTT
Just like Zapier, IFTTT (If this, then that) has many of the same features as Zapier. You can become your own hacker, and create personalized operations or hacks that make your daily life a little more productive and efficient.