We know that productivity is important to our businesses and our lives. We only have so many hours in a day. But focusing on productivity without thinking about how it affects your well-being can make it feel like a chore. We gathered 5 productivity tools that will also help you be a happier person.
Momentum
Momentum is a handy Google Chrome extension that puts everything important right in front of you in a new browser tab. A beautiful, calming photo is the backdrop for today’s local weather, a clock, your main focus for the day, an inspiring quote, important links, and your to-do list. Momentum gives you a reminder of what’s important to you that day each time you open a new browser tab.
Momentum is free to use, but a $30 upgrade for the year to plus ($4.95/month if billed monthly) gets you even more customization and integration with all your favorite task management platforms. Plus even allows you to import your to-do list straight from Asana, Trello, Todoist, Wunderlist, and more.
One Tab
Having 30 tabs open on your browser at once is completely distracting. It’s also eating up your computer’s memory and slowing you down. But it’s just so easy to keep opening one tab after the other, especially when you’re doing research across multiple sites. In fact, Lifehacker insists that you should never have more than nine browser tabs open at once.
One Tab is a clever Chrome (and Firefox) extension that allows you to only have the tabs open that you absolutely need in the moment. After installing One Tab, a single click on the funnel icon in your browser, and all your open tabs are condensed into – you guessed it – one tab! It keeps a running list of the tabs you visited and allows you to reopen the tab just by clicking on the list.
One Tab doesn’t share your URLs visited with anyone, not even their own developers, so you can browse with peace of mind. All that and freeing up 95% of your computer’s memory will leave you wishing there was One Tab for the human brain!
Calm
We could all use a quick break from stress. The Calm app allows you to practice mindfulness throughout the day, meditate for better sleep, and more. Mindfulness and meditation can change your mind and body, allowing you to be more productive as you go about your work.
Each day features a new “daily calm” to help you get grounded and stay focused. Breathing exercises featured in the app can be a useful tool to combat daily stress. The Calm app even features a section with content appropriate for children called “Calm Kids.”
A subscription to all of Calm’s content costs $12.99/month, $59.99/year or $299.99 for a lifetime subscription. A small price to pay for a happier, more productive you.
RescueTime.com
RescueTime will open your eyes to how you spend your time on your computer or phone. The app works behind the scenes, tracking your time on various apps and websites. The information is then presented in real time in a user-friendly dashboard that will give you a “productivity pulse” for the day.
RescueTime allows you to set goals for productivity and time spent on certain tasks. You can categorize the productivity level of websites that you visit frequently for work-related tasks or research. For $72/year or $9/month, you can upgrade to RescueTime Pro, which allows you to block websites that frequently distract you for a set period of time.
Flora
Do you have a serious smartphone addiction? Research suggests that screen addiction has serious consequences, including lack of restorative sleep, eye fatigue, and more. Flora is here to help.
Using the free Flora app, you can plant a virtual tree that will die if you navigate away from the app. You can even use Flora to stay focused with friends or family members, by planting a tree with other users, and the first person to navigate away from the app kills the tree. It’s a surprisingly effective tool for accountability thanks to the gamification (and the guilt trip doesn’t hurt either).
If you need to up the ante even further, using “Flora Real” you assign a dollar value to the tree – and whomever is the culprit must pay the fee. The money is then used to plant trees here on Earth to cool down all those greenhouse gases.
