• Google Calendar. It may seem dull, but it keeps track of both personal and professional events. If you have a lot of call and meeting requests, you can upgrade to Calendly and avoid all those back-and-forth emails to schedule a time.
• Email management with Gmail. Unsubscribe from 99.9% of automated emails and make use of filters for the remaining 0.1%. Don’t waste time with tags or folders - Gmail’s search function is powerful enough.
• Asana, the best lightweight project management tool. It offers a free tier that’s more than enough for personal and most professional use.
• RescueTime helps track your productivity. It takes a couple of weeks to train it to your workload, but once it’s set up, you can compare your productivity across days and hours and make adjustments as needed.
• One of the Pomodoro apps forces you to take a short break every 25–30 minutes. This break is crucial to stay focused and energized.
• Keyboard shortcuts. Learn them in the applications and OS you use the most and make a habit of using them. You’ll be surprised at how much more productive you’ll become.