Seamless communication and access to instant knowledge should make our lives easier to navigate. However, for many people, the advent of digital technology isn’t as helpful as it should be or could be. Instead, it makes life unnecessarily complicated and overwhelming.
If you’re among this group of people, perhaps you just haven’t come across the right tools. Here are five apps that will simplify various facets of your life.
Organize Your Mind with Google Keep
There’s no shortage of digital tools to organize one’s mind. If you’re looking for a convenient, one-size-fits-all solution, Google Keep is as good as it gets. Why? The search giant offers just about everything else in terms of daily workflow tools, so you may as well use a Google product to organize your ongoing array of thoughts.
After all, not everything is to-do list ready (though Google Keep offers that, too). Some ideas need time to breathe, certain projects require a longer development lifecycle, and all of life’s thoughts deserve a place to rest that isn’t in our heads. Google Keep allows users to color notes depending on the life area it concerns. It also converts custom notes to Google Docs, and comes with the same sharing features as other Google workflow products.
Track Your Spending with Clarity Money
It’s easy to feel like there’s no best-case scenario when it comes to managing money. Either we stress over it, track every cent we spend — or take a laid-back approach, potentially harming our long-term financial health.
Plenty of tools have come along to simplify expense tracking, however, the best budget apps like Clarity Money go a step further by recommending how one can reduce wasteful spending. By tracking your expenses each month, Clarity Money will highlight unusual spending patterns, subscriptions that might be going unused and other personalized insights to improve spending behavior.
Manage Your Time with Focus Booster
We all have those coworkers who swear by the art of multitasking (maybe you’re one of them), but the truth is we as humans aren’t made to effectively handle two things at once. When’s the last time you were able to listen to a podcast and text your friend at the same time? The same is true when we bounce around from task to task, getting a little bit done on each.
Focus Booster offers a free version available for iOS, Android and desktop, incorporating the popular Pomodoro Technique to track work activity. But that’s just the start. You can link various types of tasks with Focus Booster so you can see where your time goes through simple dashboards. This tool is ideal for remote workers and freelancers whose per-hour income is dependent on how efficiently they can complete tasks.
Stay on Top of Your To-Do List with Trello
There’s no shortage of productivity apps on the market but Trello is one of the simplest, and therefore most popular, to use. Trello works on a simple card system. Users have cards in different columns. Each column can represent another stage of the project, signify different due dates or highlight priority levels. The simplicity and adaptability of Trello makes it a great app to track projects with other team members, keep yourself honest as a freelancer, or even for families to manage household duties.
Declutter Your Browser with OneTab
We’ve all gone down our fair share of internet rabbit holes. While there’s nothing wrong with a little spontaneous learning, even the most harmless of Reddit or Wikipedia clicks can end up stealing hours from us. This is especially detrimental before bedtime as the blue light disrupts our ability to fall asleep.
At the same time, it’s hard closing out of tabs with which we’re not finished. Instead of leaving all those tabs up, use OneTab to start the next day with a clean slate. Doing so will allow your computer to run faster, use less memory and last longer on the battery. OneTab comes as an extension for both Chrome and Firefox browsers.
No matter what our personalities or ambitions may be, we’re all happier with a clearer mind and strategies to stay on top of our hectic lives. Try these five apps on for size and then let us know what you think in the comments section.