7 Best Tools to Create a Highly Productive Work Environment

Most businesses work on several projects and the work requirements keep on changing every now and then. The real challenge kicks in when you need to work on multiple projects having tight schedules. With so many tasks lined up for you, it becomes difficult to manage work and get things done within the predefined time frame. And with the pandemic, it’s even more difficult to accomplish your career goals. Here are the seven best tools to create a highly productive work environment.

Often, the stress of work and the demand to stay productive throughout the work hours may result in your overworking and losing your efficiency.

However, things do not need to end this way always as there are tools that can help you get over such difficult situations.

I am talking about productivity tools that are powered by modern technology and designed specifically to make your professional life easy. These tools will help you create a productive work environment by promoting effective task management and team collaboration.

Why You Should Use Productivity Tools in the Workplace?

As the name suggests, these tools are capable of injecting productivity in the workplace. They have a wide range of features that tends to improve the output of users.

Most productivity tools address the blockades that restrict you from giving your best at work and help you in eliminating them.

Below are some of the most notable benefits of using productivity tools:

• Streamline the work process and finish projects on time
• Task allocation becomes easy and fair
• Optimal utilization of resources
• Effective and meaningful team communication
• Becomes easy to manage distributed teams
• Better control over project-related data

What to Look for in Productivity Tools?

If you search for productivity tools on the web, you may get overwhelmed seeing the innumerable options. However, just to make it clear, not every tool out there can help boost your productivity at work.

What you need to do is to look for some basic characteristics in a productivity tool before considering it as a good option, which are:

• Interactive User Interface
• Comes with a Set of Practical Features
• High Performance
• Scalable to Meet Growing Needs of Business and Teams
• Affordable Pricing Plans
• Good Customer Support
• Available Across Multiple Devices

Best Productivity Tools To Use

Finding the right productivity tools that can meet your requirements as well as budget is a tedious task. To help you out, I am listing the 7 best and most desirable productivity tools that can be a perfect fit for you and your business. Here goes the list:

1. ProofHub

A centralized place to manage projects, tasks, and team is what defines ProofHub the best. It brings together all the essential tools that you and your team need to be productive and stay on top of work. The software comes preloaded with Kanban boards and Gantt charts that you can use to define project workflows and keep an eagle eye on the progress of each task.

ProofHub also makes team collaboration effective with features including online proofing, team announcement, and built-in chat interface. There’s a dedicated space to carry out real-time discussions. Simply put, this project management software can help your team to be on the same page and carry out their tasks to bring in the desired results.

Recommended Plan:

Ultimate Control – $89/month (billed annually), $99/month (billed monthly) with unlimited users.

2. Zapier

Zapier is an automation tool that connects the apps you use every day, such as Gmail, Slack, and Mailchimp, to make your workflow more efficient. For example, you can create a Zap — automated workflow — to save attachments from Gmail directly into DropBox, which saves you time and reduces the possibility of documents slipping through the cracks.

Zapier connects more than 2,000 apps — making the number of possible workflows virtually endless.

Recommended Plan:

Starter 19.99/month (billed annually), $24.99/month (billed monthly)

3. Todoist

Managing tasks becomes easier when you have the Todoist app on your side. With this app, you no longer need to remember tasks and their due dates as you can transfer everything onto to-do lists. Thus, you can channel your focus on executing tasks rather than remembering what lies next on your work schedule.

You can even create subtasks for a task, add comments, prioritize, and track activities associated with a task, and visualize all such information conveniently in the Task view. You can also delegate tasks to members and make sure that everyone is well aware of what they need to accomplish.

Recommended Plan:

Business – $5/user/month (billed annually), $6/user/month (billed monthly)

4. Slack

Slack is a popular and reliable tool designed to make team collaboration successful for any organization. Staying in the loop is of the utmost importance when multiple people are working together on a common project and Slack is just the perfect tool to make this possible. By using this tool, your team can stay connected with each other and start productive conversations instantly.

One of the key things that make Slack ideal for collaboration is the flexibility that it offers in terms of communication. Apart from direct messaging and group chat, you can use Slack to switch between audio and video conferencing. Moreover, the tool also supports file sharing as well; you can send documents, PDFs, images, videos, and more to your teammates without any hassle.

Recommended Plan:

Plus – $5/user/month (billed annually), $6/user/month (billed monthly)

5. Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud storage service that allows you to keep all your documents, designs, and all other work-related files organized. For becoming productive, it is important to keep a check on time wastage caused when searching for files in a clutter. Dropbox provides you a secure space where you can bring all your work together.

You can also create files and edit them directly within Dropbox – there’s no need to switch between different apps. You can also choose people with whom you want to share your work with and collaborate effortlessly. Another feature that you will find useful when collaborating with your team is Dropbox paper, which lets you create and share project timelines, to-do lists, etc.

Recommended Plan:

Dropbox Business (Advanced) – $20/user/month (billed annually), $25/user/month (billed monthly)

6. Toggl

Time tracking is extremely important when you want to maximize your productivity at the workplace. Toggl is a simple yet powerful time tracking tool that is going to make time management a painless process for you.

With Toggl, you can start or continue tracking time for a task with just a single click. All the time data is stored on a secure server and you can get detailed time reports to assess which projects/tasks are taking too long to get completed. If you wish to have a tool that lets you see how you and other members of your team are spending your work hours, then Toggl is just the perfect choice.

Recommended Plan:

Premium – $18/user/month (billed annually), $20/user/month (billed monthly)

7. GanttPRO

GanttPRO is a Gantt chart based tool that you can use to manage your tasks as well as your projects in an efficient manner. The interactive Gantt charts offer a timeline view of projects that will help you manage your resources smartly. You can also set task duration and create dependencies among tasks on a Gantt chart.

The tool also has a board view using which you can organize tasks as cards. Additionally, GanttPRO is a great tool to use if collaboration is what bothers you the most. Attaching files with tasks, adding comments, getting notification for task activities are some features that you’ll admire while working in a team.

Recommended Plan:

Team – $7.90/user/month (billed annually) (minimum 5 users)

Conclusion

Whether you are a manager who needs to lead teams and drive projects towards success or an employee who needs to finish all the assigned tasks before due time, there are tools that can help you out. Pick a suitable productivity tool from the ones listed above and start managing your office work like a pro.

Image Credit: Elly Fairytale; Pexels

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