There are days it can feel like there's a never-ending list of things that you need to get done. Many work professionals seek tools to help them manage their careers, which can help them succeed.
With the technological advances that have taken place in the last few years, developers have created many platforms and apps to help you manage any part of your professional life. Whether you're self-employed, a small business owner, or have a senior-level position within an organization, some platforms and apps can help you improve your productivity.
1. Dropbox
Dropbox is a platform that provides you with secure storage. You can save documents and images and access them from anywhere. This is a better option than mailing yourself files when you need to work on files away from the office.
If you're working with others on a project, you can make files sharable, so they can access them easily. Job seekers can take advantage of this app by saving a copy of their resume in Dropbox, so they can apply for a job from anywhere.
Dropbox is available on the web and via the mobile app. You can use up to 2 GB of space for free. If you require more space, Dropbox has monthly or annual paid subscriptions that start at 2 TB for personal use and 3 TB for business use. Other versions of Dropbox include Dropbox Family, Professional, Standard, and Advanced.
Download: Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
2. Todoist
Todoist is a task management app available in mobile and web versions and works with Microsoft Outlook. You can assign tasks and subtasks to others and yourself.
There are multiple ways to establish projects and work with others. The app integrates with platforms such as Sunrise Calendar, Cloud Magic, Google Drive, Zapier, and IFTT, which allows you to link two different services together in an interactive, automated way.
Using Todoist gives you the certainty that everything's organized and accounted for, so you can focus on the important work you need to achieve. You can personalize how you view your tasks and simplify your workflow by connecting Todoist to your email, files, and calendar. You can also view your progress in assignments and productivity trends.
The free version of Todoist provides you with 5 MB of file uploads, five active projects, five collaborators per project, three filters, and a history of one week's activity. Plans for power users and teams are available for a fee. You may be interested in learning how to organize any project with a work breakdown structure.
Download: Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
3. Evernote
Evernote is available as a web-based and mobile app. You can use this platform for note-taking, and Evernote allows you to clip articles you come across while searching the web.
The app allows you to create to-do lists and tables, share notebooks and notes and attach documents. If you have an upcoming meeting, you can create a template for a meeting agenda and add external links for attendees to review. You may be interested in learning how to set up appointment slots in Google Calendar.
Evernote has integrations with apps such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Salesforce, Google Calendar, and Gmail. The free version allows you to attach PDFs, receipts, files, photos, images, and images. You can clip web pages, find items quickly with tags and search, stay up to date with in-note tasks, sync with two devices, and have a maximum note size of 25 MB and 60 MB monthly uploads.
Download: Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
4. Camscanner
Camscanner is an excellent app for anyone who doesn't have the budget for a scanner. It's ideal for anyone that needs to scan and store documents and share them with others. Using your smartphone camera, you can scan business cards, invoices, notes, and receipts.
After you've scanned PDFs, you can edit them. You also can remove messy backgrounds in pictures and generate high-definition images. Camscanner also provides a feature that allows you to create PDF files. You can print wirelessly and send a fax to over 30 countries globally from your phone. The app also has text recognition, allowing you to quickly extract large amounts of text from images, and 40 languages are supported.
In addition to the PDF editor, you can split and merge PDFs, delete and sort PDF pages, add an image to a PDF and convert PDFs to Microsoft platforms like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and vice versa. You also can scan books and ID cards. If you're looking for collaboration tools, you may consider an app between ProofHub or Asana.
Download: Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
5. Brainsparker
With life's hectic pace, it can feel like there's never any time for creative thinking or brainstorming ideas. Brainsparker is a mobile app that uses prompts to ignite your imagination, stimulating creativity.
You can use the app anytime you need a spark of creativity or when you're suffering from writer's block when doing creative writing. While the app is currently only available on Apple devices, Brainsparker's website notes that they are working on an Android app they hope to launch in the next 12 months.
If you don't have an Apple device, you can subscribe and get daily prompts, or you can go to their website, where they have different sets of cards to choose a random card from. There are seven packs of cards, including the kids, spark, journal, imagine, and infinite. You also have the option to make your own cards with the blank template available on the website.
Download: iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)
6. Toggl Track
Toggl Track is an app to help you get organized by tracking and managing how you spend your time. If you use Google Chrome as your browser, you can add the Toggl Track extension, which adds a timer to any web platform to help you track how much time you spend on each platform. This feature can make managing and organizing how you prioritize and spend your day easier.
Toggl Track offers advanced features like idle detection, which helps you monitor what time of day you're most productive and when you're not. The app integrates with Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Evernote, Asana, Salesforce, Jira, Notion, GitLab, and GitHub. If you're looking for help to schedule meetings, you may be interested in learning about the best free meeting scheduling apps to find a common time slot.
The app provides you with summary, weekly, and detailed reports and project and revenue tracking with a project dashboard that helps you forecast timelines and budgets and track your progress. You can assign billable rates by workspace, team member, project member, or project to get a clearer picture of the activities that generate revenue. Add a fixed fee budget to see if you're billing enough for hours put in.
Toggl Track can send you an alert when a project comes to its estimated end, so you know if you will make the deadline. You can get an idea of profitability with the Insights feature that defines labor costs for each team member to see how expenses measure up to billable rates.
The app is free for up to five users with unlimited time tracking, projects, clients, tags, exportable reports, automated time tracking triggers, idle time detection, Pomodoro time, CSV imports, personal activity tracking, and monitoring your time in over 100 popular tools. You can sign up with Google or via Apple.
Download: Android | iOS (Free)
How Will You Manage Your Career?
Numerous apps are available to help you increase productivity and manage your time. If you collaborate with others often, it's helpful to use an app where you can add team members, and everyone can see what the responsibilities are and where there are gaps.
Whether you're looking for a promotion or seeking a new job, employers like to see that you are organized, and using any of the apps mentioned in this article can help you achieve that. You can use these tools to keep yourself and those you work with on track, making any project run smoothly without problems.