Unique Productivity Apps for Creative Focus

As you may or may not know, I regularly post productivity tips and tools on my blog and YouTube channel. So I thought it would be fitting to share with you my most recent article all about my current favorite apps in my ‘productivity stack’.

Introduction

As a full-time web designer and developer, I know that the your apps you use can make or break your creative output. Over the last few years I’ve spent plenty of time and effort getting to know all sorts of different tools, but for last 6 months I’ve settled on a nice toolbox of apps that have helped me stay more creative, focused and productive.

1. Notion

For those of you who may have tuned in from my YouTube channel, you know I’m a massive fan of Notion.

In its most basic form, Notion is a note taking app. But once you start to understand that every line you write in Notion can become its own page, you can start to creatively build your own productivity systems and personal wiki’s. I did a full introductory video to Notion which goes into more detail. Feel free to give it a watch.

I use Notion for a range of different things. Everything from planning and writing my blog posts, saving articles from around the web and organizing my daily to-do’s nearly single-handedly Notion has transformed the way I work and has really become my second-brain, freeing up my human brain power to focus on delivering what needs to be done.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Notion, you can also check out one of my previous blog posts on some of my favorite templates.

2. Forest

As you may have read in my previous article on how gamification can boost productivity — a product designers perspective, I’ve been using the Forest app for the last 2 or 3 months now and it has also been a real game changer for me.

What’s I love about Forest is that it builds upon one of the simplest productivity methods that most people have tried — the Pomodoro Technique. I posted a video on the subject before I started using Forest if you’re interested.

However, with Forest, rather than just being a nicely designed timer, the Forest features including different tree species you can unlock as you earn gold from each Pomodoro and awesome statistics.

The statistics in particular has provided me with some pretty neat insights as to what times of the day are my most productive. Here’s a glimpse of mine.

3. Apple Notes

Maybe a bit of a curve ball for some to use both Notion and Apple Notes, but I find for all my meeting minutes, quick notes and ideas on the go — Apple Notes has become an invaluable part of my productivity app stack.

I love that it’s just dead-simple and I can simple just take, lock and search through my notes with zero startup time.

Also, probably the biggest pull for me is that as I’m on the Apple ecosystem anyway, whatever device I’m using I’ve always got access to my up-to-date notes.

4. Bloo

The sister company of Mäd Creative (where I work) so I might be a little bias here, but Bloo takes all the best bits of Asana and Trello and blends them into a simple but powerful project management tool that can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be.

For work projects, sales CRM, content calendars and more we use Bloo to track progress, quickly and easily find all relevant project files and allows the whole team at Mäd to stay up to the minute with all our work stuff without the distraction and hassle of email chains and Slack messages.

With a bunch of super-exciting new features on the way like automations, web forms, custom fields and more — Bloo really has and will continue to streamline my work efficiency and our project management at Mäd.

Last words

There you have it! A few unique productivity apps that have become an integral part of my daily life as I strive to stay focused and more productive.

Make sure to stay connected with me by subscribing to my brand new weekly newsletter called Sunday Brief. Each week I share my thoughts, inspiration, life lessons, latest tools and tech and interesting reads from that week.

Want to get in touch about something else? Feel free to send me an email at kier.p.glover@gmail.com or follow me on my new Twitter account.