10 Essential Time Management Tools for Increased Productivity

As the role of technology continues to accelerate the business world, smart use of time management tools can help you get the edge on your competition. While time management helps to achieve your primary goal of improving productivity, it also reduces disorganization and stress, making for a more pleasant working environment.

In this article, we’re going to give you a rundown of 10 essential time management tools for increased productivity. Our tools will highlight a variety of key time management tips so you can adopt a well-rounded strategy without relying on one silver bullet to improve your team’s performance.

1. Bitrix24: The ultimate all-in-one time management tool

Leading our list of time management tools is Bitrix24 — an all-in-one business tool that gives you a range of features to improve your productivity.

Take its task management platform for example. Filled with detailed instructions, task-specific notifications for those involved, and a vast array of time-saving automations to hold everything together. Gantt charts help team leaders and project managers to manage daily schedules for their team on both individual and shared calendars, while fully integrated time-tracking software allows you to monitor and analyze performance.

Bitrix24’s diverse toolkit also encompasses HR functions. With an online time clock, employees can clock in and out autonomously from their desktop or mobile. Each person gets a reminder to compile a quick work report that goes directly to their superior, who can assess them on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Efficiency reports are automated to evaluate individuals, departments, or the whole company. Showing a snapshot of workload, overdue and completed tasks, and a percentage of tasks with positive evaluations, you get a detailed, unbiased view of everybody’s performance with no need to chase up data.

The same framework functions as a work scheduler and absence chart. This allows you to see who is available as you schedule shifts across time zones and organize meetings. Employees can send an automated time off request which can be approved with a click, and you can check who’s at work at any time. These comprehensive time management tools allow leaders to track employees’ vacation time, sick leave, personal time off, and attendance all on one shared calendar.

All of these Bitrix24 features are designed not only to streamline active tasks, but they make planning both easy and effective too. As a result, you can reduce stress and keep everybody focused on what they do best.

2. Toggl Track: Measure performance and calculate billable hours

In this digital world, you can’t rely on guesswork instead of cold, hard data. Ever since the clock was invented, people have been tracking time to improve productivity. Where Toggl Track differs from a simple wristwatch is the amount of data you can add to each entry. With inputs such as clients, projects, descriptions, and billable hours, you can see which tasks provide the best return on investment, and which ones are holding you back.

With paid versions, you can open up insights such as project and employee profitability, as well as comparative analyses between your projects and employees. You can even use your copious data points to look into the future and predict the profitability of your project.

However, despite its excellent list of features and customizable UX, Toggl Track is focused on doing one task only — time tracking. This makes it more of an add-on to existing time management tools, rather than a stand-alone solution.

3. Freedom: Tech to keep you and your team on task

It’s no secret that apps like Instagram and TikTok are designed to grab your attention and hold it for as long as possible. This is catastrophic for productivity and manually reducing screen time is extremely difficult to enforce — especially for remote teams.

Freedom takes a step away from traditional time management tools and allows you and your team to block distracting websites and apps across all devices. It’s a simple tool that enables users to stick to their tasks and limit their own access to distractions.

The advantages of Freedom go beyond improved productivity in the workplace too. Many individuals take time management tools for employees and apply them to their private lives, spending more time focused on their family. Therefore, Freedom not only enhances productivity but also promotes digital well-being.

But ironically, it’s quite easy for your team to feel restricted by Freedom, which can lead to disillusionment and a refusal to use it. Be sure to focus on the digital health positives to keep everybody motivated.

4. Monday.com: Project management with a sleek UX

As we covered in the Bitrix24 section, well-organized task management is a common candidate for lists of time management tips.

When used correctly, Monday.com is a versatile tool packed with automations and color-coded progress tabs that managers can use to easily see the bigger picture and track progress. Customizable templates mean you can launch a project at the click of a button, complete with individual tasks assigned to the relevant person.

However, one problem that users commonly report is that the Monday.com learning curve is pretty long. Therefore, you have to be tactful about how you sell the tool to your team. Nobody wants to adopt time management tools that are so complex they end up wasting time, so run thorough training sessions on how to get the best out of Monday.com.

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5. Evernote: Outsourcing your memory

One of the most tried-and-tested time management tools for work is a simple pen and paper. By putting its note-taking app on the cloud, Evernote cuts out the downsides of a physical notepad such as losing it, having to flick through hundreds of pages to find what you want, and simple bad handwriting.

Evernote is great for capturing ideas and making to-do lists, so you’re never left scratching your head while wondering what that brilliant idea or important task was. One of the app’s key strengths is its searchability. It allows you to easily search for text within images, handwritten notes, and documents, so you can find the information you need when you need it. Furthermore, as it’s on the cloud, you can access it on multiple devices, so your notes are always at your fingertips.

Simple and focused on one task, there’s not much that can go wrong with Evernote. However, sharing your notes with non-Evernote users can be tricky. If you find yourself copying text into a collaborative doc to share your notes, you may ask yourself why you don’t just stick with the shared document instead.

6. Time Doctor: Monitoring and analyzing your team’s activity

You can’t increase your productivity if you don’t have the right data at hand. Time Doctor works like a time tracker but goes into more detail by analyzing every aspect of your workday, from the websites you’ve visited and apps used to the time you’ve spent on breaks.

Time Doctor is intended to offer a realistic overview of how you and your team actually spend time at work. There are a plethora of ways to interpret this data to improve productivity. For example, you may want to be stricter on break times or restrict access to certain websites that are absorbing too much of your team’s attention. However, it also helps to identify blockers in your projects that could be due to unclear instructions or your team not having the right resources.

A word of warning — if you rely too much on Time Doctor, you can easily fall into the trap of micromanagement. Focusing too hard on the metrics you’ve gathered can turn into a slippery slope toward an authoritarian management style. If people feel trapped and overwhelmed, you can expect a decrease in motivation and a spike in turnover.

7. Google Calendar: Basic time management tools made better

It may seem obvious, but calendars are among the most powerful time management tools out there. Google Calendar is especially good for teams that already work within the Google ecosystem, as it automatically syncs information across other tools, such as video conferencing.

Accessible from your phone and desktop, Google Calendar is excellent for scheduling your day and setting automatic reminders to keep you on track. As you can combine multiple calendars into the same visualization, small business owners can separate different responsibilities by color, such as client phone calls, internal meetings, and personal events. With all calendars activated at the same time, there’s no excuse for double-booking yourself again.

Be aware that Google Calendar isn’t a replacement for dedicated project management tools as it doesn’t offer the same advanced scheduling capabilities or workflows. However, for a calendar and scheduling tool with automated meeting invites, Google Calendar performs among the best.

8. Slack: Real-time communication for fast-moving organizations

Communication is a key element of time management, and Slack is among the most recognizable names in the sphere. Once almost exclusive to tech teams, this instant messaging platform has since spread out across industries, where it streamlines communication with channels for different topics, direct messaging, and group discussions.

The main advantage of Slack as a time-management tool is that it provides both in-house and remote teams with a rapid-fire service that really helps when deadlines are approaching. Although chats can get pretty crowded in extrovert teams, you can always search for keywords to get back to important points or files shared in the past.

One tip from Slack users is to try to be strict with each channel. When phones are constantly pinging with new notifications, it can be disastrous for focus and, therefore, productivity. In addition, Slack can get quite expensive for small businesses, which isn’t great for a tool that’s limited to one main time management feature.

9. Zapier: Bringing all your time management tools together

Zapier is an app that isn’t productive in itself. You can’t use it to finish a project or hire a new rockstar recruit. The magic of Zapier lies in its integration — the ability to connect different apps to each other. If you’re not going for an all-in-one platform like Bitrix24, you’ll have to integrate your time trackers with your project management software and your productivity analytics with your CRM.

Zapier is among the market leaders in integration and works with Bitrix24, Google, Slack, HubSpot, and many more apps on this list. By cutting out all the tedious and unstable copying and pasting between tools, you free up your team to concentrate on their area of expertise.

Although it is relatively intuitive, Zapier can be difficult to pick up if you’re new to integrations, and identifying gaps in your workflows is rather tricky. It’s not too cheap to accommodate robust automation either. Subscribing to a premium Zapier plan as well as all the apps you want to connect is far costlier than an all-rounder for time management.

10. HubSpot: Personalizing your customer interactions with zero effort

Before we talk about how HubSpot can boost your time management, we’ve got a quick warning for you. HubSpot is on the expensive side. Yes, there’s a free version, but to get hold of automation, workflows, templates, and the rest, you’ll need to bump up to the premium versions that don’t come cheap.

But let’s stick to the positive. HubSpot is a customer relationship management system (CRM) that saves you time by streamlining and organizing every aspect of your customer interactions. Click on a name, and you’ll get a whole host of data about them, including past interactions and groups that you’ve segmented them into.

Although it’s fairly standard among top CRMs these days, HubSpot allows you to feed new leads through several stages of your sales pipeline without lifting a finger. The algorithms behind the scenes can automate welcome emails, set up chatbots, and prioritize your leads — all fantastic elements of time management.

Choosing the right time management tools for work at your business

Now you’ve had a rundown of our top 10 time management tools, you need to think about how they apply to your business. Unless you’re a multinational with a bottomless pit of funding, the cost is likely to be among the top factors for consideration.

But before you choose the cheapest app and run with it, remember that time management tools for employees work best in combination. That’s why Bitrix24 is such a powerful option. Rather than paying through the nose for a bunch of different apps and connecting them with potentially shaky integrations, you get everything you need all in one place.

Don’t believe us? See for yourself. Sign up for Bitrix24 today and start managing time like a pro!

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