The 13 Best Productivity Tools In 2022

Ever feel that there are just not enough hours in the day? It’s a feeling that many of us can relate to. This is why you need to have the best productivity tools at your disposal!

What are the best productivity tools?

The best productivity software solutions need to:

1. Encourage employee engagement – according to Gallup, highly engaged employees are 21% more productive.
2. Support remote working – 61% of the workforce is working remotely and 65% of employees who work from home reported that they are more productive than when they are in the office.
3. Help with time allocation, team collaboration, or file and information management.
4. Provide good value for the price – must be feature-rich, integrate with existing workflows, and be reasonably easy to learn to navigate.

Now that we have the criteria set, let’s dive in and look at some of the best productivity software tools.

1. 10to8

It’s great to be available for internal chats with colleagues and external meetings, but being available all the time can significantly decrease productivity. With the 10to8 daily appointment planner, you can share your availability calendar with others and schedule meetings. Take control over your schedule, wave goodbye to ad hoc interruptions and get things done.

Simply define hours in 10to8 when you are available for meetings and specify who can grab a slot with you or what service types are open for everybody. Adding 10to8 to your productivity tools stack will not only save you time, but with its generous Free Forever Plan, it will save you money too.

2. Zapier

Zapier is an online automation tool that connects over 1,500 apps so all your favorite software tools communicate. Syncing up your favorite everyday apps with each other can help you to de-stress and get your business to full capacity!

If you thought you need to be a software engineer or developer to sync up apps, Zapier will help you realize that’s not the case. You will need to go through a simple step-by-step process, choose an app that triggers the automation and an app where the action happens. If you don’t know where to start, you can check out our list of the best Zapier integrations.

3. Shipright

Shipright is a fantastic piece of software for gathering, categorizing and analyzing customer feedback.

Be it a comment on social media, a review of your business or a useful comment during a phone call with a customer, Shipright can capture it for you. Once you have the information, you can easily categorize and analyze it.
Better organizing customer feedback better can lead to an exceptional product-market fit and therefore revenue growth.

4. Happeo

Happeo is a social intranet solution that connects employees and increases productivity. In current times, remote work has made it harder to interact with your colleagues.

The tool combines intranet, enterprise social networking, collaboration, and targeted distribution of news into a single digital workplace. It fixes a lot of problems that workers face and is described as the ‘happy marriage between communication and collaboration’.

Happeo differentiates from the traditional intranet category —by focusing on the social aspects of an organization. Designed to both keep workers in the loop and inspire a productive environment, Happeo helps to drive engagement, alignment, and employee retention. Whether your colleagues are behind a screen, or on the other side of the world, this clever tool helps bring everyone together.

5. LastPass

With LastPass forgetting passwords and spending time looking for that scrap bit of paper with your passwords on it is a thing of the past.

To use LastPass you only need to set and remember one master password to login to your vault, which essentially is where all of your passwords that you have chosen to be saved are stored for easy access.

For added convenience and ease of use, LastPass has a browser extension for Chrome and many other popular internet browsers. With the extension installed and enabled, you’ll be able to simply add login details to your vault at the click of a button. How cool is that?

For the security-conscious among us, it’s good to know that LastPass also supports two-factor authentication, which is an extra layer of security that you can simply set up too.

6. Asana

Asana is arguably the holy grail when it comes to task and project management productivity software. The project management tool is great for teams as you’ll be able to seamlessly create project workflows and create tasks which can be assigned to members within your team.

With the added benefit of being able to add notes, upload files, and set deadlines for tasks, Asana will help you see the big picture, and easily collaborate with colleagues.

Finally, it’s worth noting that are over 100 app integrations; popular integrations include Slack, Google Drive, and DropBox.

7. Google Drive

Google Drive is a versatile cloud storage solution, which is a great resource to use when sharing files and documents alike with teams. Of course, with the Google suite, you will benefit from Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms.

No longer will you have to attach and store large files your computer, with Google Drive you simply need to share a link with your colleagues to grant access, which can be ‘Edit’, ‘Comment’, or ‘View’. Truly a great time-saving solution.

8. Time Doctor

Time Doctor is an accurate productivity software tool on the market that can be used to track the amount of time employees are spending on specific tasks and projects. It tracks the time worked by everyone on your team and gives you a breakdown by client, project, and task.

With its robust integration, Time Doctor can sync up with all leading project management and accounting tools including JIRA, Asana, Trello, GitHub, Basecamp, Slack, Salesforce, Teamwork.com, Todoist, Podio, QuickBooks, Freshdesk, Redmine, Google Apps, Zoho, Yammer, and more.

9. Switch Extension

Do you ever find that you have too many tabs open when you’re working? Do you find it impossible to find what you’re looking for in your browser? Well, this handy app can help remedy this!

Switch Extension is a productivity app that helps users accomplish their daily tasks more productively in a single browser. It allows you to instantly switch between workflows, tabs, and apps, to avoid tab overload and keep you working effectively. You can see and manage everything from a simple list-view UI.

Features such as multiple tab and multi-account management let you log into lots of different accounts in a single browser. Once you can organize your workflow your way, you’ll definitely notice a boost in your productivity.

10. Drag

Drag is a relatively new app but has already been featured in Google Chrome Store, on the first page. Drag is a Chrome extension that turns your individual Gmail inbox or your team’s separate accounts into one big task management tool.

Gmail will get a so called ‘Kanban’ layout, which means it displays boards. This layout can help be more organized and efficient. Emails often come with a task to get done, and with the extension, you can simply drag and drop emails to different boards, create tasks and put due dates on them.

Drag, of course, also allows you to import tasks from outside of Gmail. If you have multiple email accounts that you want to handle at once such as support inbox, press related inquiries or marketing emails. Drag is a great alternative if you don’t want to use different apps for task management, CRM, sales and messaging.

11. Proofhub

ProofHub is an online project management app that helps you get work done. The software provides all the basic and advanced tools that an organization or team needs to stay on the winning streak.

ProofHub assists as a centralized workspace where managers, teams, and clients can plan and collaborate, in order to seamlessly manage, track, and deliver projects. It’s highly customizable and designed to fit within any growing business’ needs, small or large.

No longer will you have to invest in too many different tools to visualize projects and tasks. You can streamline communication, distribute resources and identify overdue tasks. Furthermore, the app helps you track time, review files and create reports. With ProofHub, recognizing achievements and running a business is much easier.

You can do it all under one roof, using one tool—that’s ProofHub.

12. RescueTime

Ever wondered how much time you actually spend responding to emails, or maybe how long you spent on Facebook when you know you shouldn’t? Wonder no more. RescueTime is an innovative tool which will help you to understand and measure how you spend your time online throughout your workday.

RescueTime is designed to run securely in the background on your computer and or mobile device to provide you with a detailed time measurement analysis of the apps you use, the websites you visit.

While granted this may not immediately save you time, in the long term this handy tool could alert you to the fact that maybe you spend just a little too much time on Instagram, or looking for cat memes, but then again…

13. Serene

Serene is the all-in-one productivity tool for macOS. Serene was built to make deep-focus work easier to attain. Whether you’re writing a long-form blog article, finishing a project, or developing software, Serene will help you stay focused by combining three proven techniques:

1. Dividing your day into focused sessions of work with regular breaks
2. Blocking distractions once you enter Serene sessions
3. Organizing each day with a plan

With Serene, you can integrate your task-list from the apps you use to plan your day, you can set daily routines, track your productivity with the reporting feature or use the focus music tool to get into the zone. It’s your all-in-one productivity tool to help you get focused faster and stay productive longer.

Bonus productivity tips

Organize your work environment

While the above tools will undoubtedly save you time, you should also ensure that you have an organized work and desk environment.

Know when to say “no”

Another skill is knowing when to say “no”. Which can be easier said than done. However, sometimes circumstances dictate in work and personal life that you must simply say no. For a great guide on this topic take a look at the Gentle Art of Saying No.

Set deadlines

It’s always advantageous to set realistic deadlines. Regardless of the task or project at hand, setting clear deadlines will help you to better prioritize and dedicate your time. Furthermore, if you work and collaborate within a team environment, then, of course, this will also be a great signal to your colleagues, as they’ll know the proposed task completion date.