5 productivity tools for every young professional must know
Maximizing productivity is everyone’s daily goal at the workplace. Marking “Completed” on a planned task on your routine “To-do List” is a vital accomplishment; it’s a source of excitement and peace of mind. So many people experience burnout, stress and anxiety in failing to meet their set of daily tasks. Everyone has limited time to ace and excel in their professional or personal tasks, but with the excessive growth of information flood over social media, people are struggling to find flow in their work. The good news is that solutions have developed growing enormous pressure facing the young professionals in the workplace. Luckily, with the advancements in technology, there are countless productivity tools available to ease doing of work and optimize your efforts and time for better use. Therefore, in this piece, I will enlighten only 5 top productivity tools that will optimize your excellence in the work regardless of your industry.
- Google workspace
Previously it was known as Google suits; it is a hub of many other google tools including, Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Docs, Sheets and others. Only with your Gmail account, you can access all these brilliant and amazing tools. From customised business email to video conferencing, cloud storage or word processing. The google workspace is a free, innovative and friendly virtual workspace for every Gmail user. By using the workspace you can write reports, schedule meetings, store your data to could, host webinars, present presentations and more importantly collaborate with others through your email account. It supports both mobile and web versions. The workspace can use at any scale of the team from one to hundreds in real-time collaboration of tasks and projects. During the pandemic lockdown, I relied on almost everything of my work with the google workspace for five months with physically interacting with my teams and office environment. Additionally, the work is user-centred and designed for the fast-changing work dynamics and future of work.
- Asana
If you are looking for a project management tool, Asana could be the tool you should aim to explore and work on your projects. It is designed to manage activities, track tasks and reports, offer feedback and connect with teams timely. Also, the tool will give you the ability to create tasks with multi projects and track their progress in real-time among different team players. It simplified teamwork and fostered virtual collaborations.
Asana also adopts Kaban boards, scrum or agile tools which are used to visualize project progress and prioritize tasks. Additionally, you will be able to integrate other tools including ZOOM, Google workspace, Slack, Tableau, Figma, Salesforce and others. Finally, the tool supports both mobile and web services. In fact, this is a powerful feature if you care about integrating all your workspace into one portal and getting things done effectively.
3. Datawrapper
Almost every time you are getting ready for a presentation, you will need to grab your audience’s attention with data, not raw but cleaned, sorted and analyzed data which can be found as insights when well it’s visualised. Some people may not enjoy reading tables but charts since they simply demonstrate information. Dustwrapper is mong of the many tools to visualize data easily. You can create over 20+ interactive and responsive visualizations for free. You can visualise your data in maps, charts or tables.
I do enjoy visualizing my data through Datawrapper, it’s less sophisticated and user-friendly. You can visualise your data without even signing up, but it’s better to create your account so it creates a dashboard to collect all your data.
Additionally, If you want to upskill your team with this tool, you can simply download its training resources and adopt it.
4. Calendly
Does your work include meeting teams remotely? Do you want to automate booking meetings, reminders and follow-ups? I could recommend signing up for Calendly. It has the feature to handle all those tasks. If you have large teams with a growing number of clients to attend to, you can share a link to book meetings on their preferred dates, and your Calendly account will keep the record and send reminders.
I have been using this tool for some time, I saved lots of time and energy tracking meetings and appointments.
5. Canva
Did you ever want to design a poster or flyer? Most times you might encounter urgency in creating visuals for presentations, reports or events, and your graphic designer is not responsive or may need more time to deliver. Canva is a simple and user-friendly graphic design tool which you can use to design almost anything. You just name it. Similarly to other tools, it has both freemium and premium versions.
Creating high-end visual content with Canva doesn’t need either to undergo sophisticated training or acquire certifications. You design as you explore concurrently. It also has a learning feature where you browse blogs, tutorials and courses to master graphic design as a skill from beginner to professional. Additionally, you can simply create your team within the tool to collaborate on projects. With this feature, you can create brand visuals from top-notch templates and brand kits.
Conclusion
Productivity tools or software are more than just these five. The list is endless, it may go up to over 30 apps. Spend more time exploring their feature so you can pick the one suitable for your work.
Additionally, Getting things done is the end goal of every activity plan. It comes from you, not the tools. Tools are just a great way to maximize productivity, simplify your work, collaborate with teams and save time. The tools I just summed can be useful at some point for some people. Different industries use different tools. For example, if you are a data miner or cryptography engineer, you might need more dedicated and vital tools than these. But I picked these tools for average young professionals seeking to automate their work and collaborate with teams.
I originally published this piece in Somali Business Review