Developing time management habits is not easy. Key problems are not understanding where the time goes, dealing with distractions, failing to remember everything that needs to get done and forgetting important details.
Thankfully, there are time management tools that can be installed on your devices and help you manage your time more wisely. We’ve collected the most helpful apps that will allow you to develop efficient time management habits sooner and with less effort.
Time Tracking Tools
Streamlining and optimizing various work-related operations and knowing where your time goes is key for successful time management and better productivity. Time tracking tools help understand how you’re spending your time, see what tasks are most time-consuming and identify possible overwork. Here’s a list of tools that help keep track of time you spend on work, understand your productivity trends and improve your time management habits.
1. actiTIME
This high-quality time tracker contains two main features that will ensure a quick productivity boost: a timesheet where you can make daily time entries and comprehensive, customizable reports that allow for a clear review of your performance trends for any selected period. To start using the tool, you simply need to create tasks with the project management feature and then record the time spent on their performance every day. After that, the submitted data will be available for review at any moment in beautifully designed and simple charts or in a more detailed report of choice.
What’s also great about this time tracker is that it suits self-employed workers and teams of any size. It can be applied as a cloud service or as an on-premises solution. Besides, the actiTIME mobile app includes a timer and allows tracking time on the go, from remote locations.
We reduced payroll processing to 45 minutes per week
actiTIME is very robust, integrated well into your business process, and most important, helps you focus on your business instead of monkeying around with technology. actiTIME has reduced our payroll processing from 4-6 hours per week to 45 minutes per week.
2. Due Time Tracking
Due is a time tracking and accounting solution for small teams and self-employed individuals. It helps calculate billable time, create invoices based on the collected time tracking data and get paid faster.
The platform is designed to assist freelancers and small business owners handle billing, invoicing and accounting tasks. Alongside with this, the tool also helps understand productivity trends, increase accuracy and transparency of time estimates, and speed up work process.
3. On The Job
On The Job is a simple and straightforward time tracker for Mac. It allows tracking time and expenses, creating professional invoices and billing customers. The app provides a timer for counting and recording billable time, as well as idle time detection. Manual corrections of automatically captured times are possible.
The app supports customizable billable rates and invoicing in multiple currencies. For invoice creation, several built-in invoice templates and an invoice editor are included. On The Job also allows to create multiple user profiles and handle their time-track and invoices separately.
To-do Lists
When you have many tasks on your plate, it’s more than easy to forget something important. That’s where to-do list apps are of help: organizing your to-dos in a single list or breaking them down by topic or importance helps you achieve goals faster and with less effort. Here’s our list of to-do apps.
1. Things
Things is a Mac and iOS to-do list app that helps organize everyday life, plan vacations or get work assignments done. It supports multiple to-do lists sorted by topics or by time and allows to create categories or milestones for your to-dos. If you’re preparing for any event, you’ll definitely find another feature helpful: checklists that can be created directly in Things or imported from another app.
2. Ike
The app is named after Dwight ‘Ike’ Eisenhower whose quote is the basis of the app’s concept: “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” This to-do list app visually represents the famous time management matrix: it allows dividing your upcoming to-dos into four categories by urgency and importance, and prioritizing them accordingly.
3. Todoist
Todoist keeps all your important to-dos and reminds you of them. It helps organize and prioritize tasks and projects, map them out, highlight the most important ones, remember deadlines and check off what’s done.
The app also supports collaboration and progress measurement: share and delegate tasks to others, and use Todoist Karma module to gain points and levels for completing your to-dos.
PIM and Organizer Apps
In time management, one of the most important things is not letting chaos overpower you. Organizer and PIM (personal information manager) apps help you stay organized, get more done and never forget anything important. They are great assistants for those who deal with many different tasks and need to remember a lot of important information.
1. MyLifeOrganized
Whether you’re planning a trip, getting prepared for an important event or just struggling with many different tasks, the app helps you get organized with minimum effort. Easily create checklists and to-do lists, set hierarchy and use the lists from anywhere – the app is available for multiple devices. Create flexible hierarchical lists with as many levels as you need, and MyLifeOrganized will automatically generate a smart list of actions that need your attention.
2. AnyTime Organizer
AnyTime Organizer is a powerful tool to manage everything in your personal and professional life that requires close attention. It provides quick and easy access to calendars, to-do lists, contacts, passwords, expenses and more. The tool helps you work more productively, remember important things and schedule your events for future.
3. LeaderTask
Leader Task provides all features necessary to get things done on time and not to forget anything. It helps organize work, reminds of important to-dos, keeps ideas, shows overdue tasks, prioritizes and allocates work. The tool is great for teams that work in busy and hectic environments – it is simple, effortless and robust enough to handle planning and teamwork.
Distraction Blockers & Focusing Apps
What do we say to efficient time management when distractions get in the way? Not today, – that’s the usual answer. So, blocking out social media, unnecessary email checks, and other distractions is key when working on productivity and improving time management habits. And, thankfully, there are tools that can help you with that.
1. Freedom
Freedom helps focus on what matters and eliminate distractions from your daily routine. Set a schedule or start sessions on the fly – and make productivity a habit. The settings you’ve set up sync across all your devices where Freedom is installed. The app can block websites, apps or the entire Internet, so that you can focus on your work or take a break.
2. Cold Turkey
The app helps you go cold turkey on everything that distracts you from productive work: it blocks applications, websites, specific webpages or the entire Internet, allowing you to stay focused. You can set timers for blocks and create block schedules for future periods. For additional motivation, Cold Turkey can be set up to show you inspirational quotes about wise time management and productivity instead of blocked pages. It also collects statistics of how productive you’ve been and allows you to see your progress.
3. Focus Booster
Focus Booster app is based on the Pomodoro technique: it divides your work time into sprints with short breaks and helps you use your time more wisely and overcome distractions. The app has a small and unobtrusive timer that shows you the progress in your current work sprint. It also analyzes how your time is being used and prepares charts that visually represent your productivity.
Note & Reminder Apps
Brilliant ideas, important dates and details of what needs to get done are so easy to forget – especially in a busy environment when you are physically not able to remember everything. Note and reminder apps help you write them down and provide with pictures and necessary details. Here’s a list of the most helpful apps that keep your ideas and to-dos recorded.
1. Reminder alarm clock
The app shows exactly what you need to do, reminding you of upcoming meetings, deadlines, birthdays, calls, etc. It also allows creating shopping lists. It reminds you literally of everything, providing a straightforward navigation and intuitive interfaces. Being simple and functional, the app is a great help for busy people.
2. Color Note
A nice, simple and functional notepad app. Create notes for your to-dos, add details and check them off when you complete them. Write memos, to-do and shopping lists, emails, call reminders, etc., and use the sticky note widget to see the most important reminders on your home screen. Notes taken in the apps are encrypted and, if you choose this option, can be backed up and synced in a cloud service.
3. ClevNote
ClevNote is a memo and checklist app that won’t let you forget important to-dos and ideas. It can be used to manage bank account numbers, create checklists, manage birthday lists, store website IDs and write regular text memos with reminders or important information. The app has a reminder function, a widget for home screen and an option to store and backup the data in the cloud.
