21 Products for a Productive You Tools to help you manage your time better, remotely

Over-communicating is the key to working remotely in order to be productive but over-working is not. Sadly, the lines between office space and personal space get blurred and remote workers find it difficult to strike a balance between the two.

This, in turn, has a negative impact on both their professional and personal life, which ranges from being unable to focus on struggling to sleep. Further, the lack of physical presence of managers clubbed with the comforts of working remotely requires remote workers to make conscious efforts to ensure the same levels of productivity as their on-site counterparts.

For people who are employed by global companies, working from different time zones can be challenging. It is possible that your peers are free and hanging out while you are busy working till 11/12 in the night or beyond.

Since remote work with its immense benefits is here to stay and World 2.0 belongs to Remote, we need to get acquainted with tools and tips that can help us develop healthy remote working habits and make the most of our day.

A number of issues related to productivity can be handled to a great extent by tools that help us manage our time better and in keeping things organized.

Here, I'll focus on some of the handiest productivity tools that my team and I've been using over the past few years.

1. Roam Research

Note-taking is absolutely necessary for your own productivity. When you're in the office, there's some sense of social accountability but when you go remote, you have to be a pro at self-accountability. Having a to-do list goes a long way in helping you with that.

Roam Research is my favorite productivity tool that is designed as a note-taking application for networked thought, pretty much how thoughts are linked in our brains. The feature to connect various notes by defining a relation between them makes managing things a lot easier and the experience is seamless.

2. Usefyi

Finding files (and their multiple versions!) that keep getting shared between remote teams and that too on multiple platforms can be irksome. But with fyi, you can find any documents in 3 clicks or less!

It allows you to access the documents you need in a new tab and offers integration with G Suite, Slack, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive, and others.

I actually feel restless when fyi is not my default new tab on chrome.

3. Rescue Time

Rescue time is my go-to place when I feel that I need to be more disciplined or need to be at my best during Code Red.

It's a great tool to monitor where you invest your time and plan your week ahead. It runs in the background to track where you spend your time, it rates your productivity based on how much time you're spending on productive tasks versus unproductive ones in a day and organizes them into simple charts.

I read Deep Work which talks about working in sprints of high productivity zones with no distraction, Rescue time helps you achieve that. When you're getting started, you'll face this problem in a big way. I would recommend you to get a paid subscription for this tool especially in the initial days. Apart from deep work, it has calendar integrations that'll help you plan your week efficiently.

4. Figure it Out

For people who are employed by global companies (as is the case with many people working remotely), working from different time zones can be quite challenging. It is possible that your peers are free and hanging out while you are busy working till 11/12 in the night.

Figure it out is a simple dashboard and chrome extension that allows you to set up all time zones you and your colleagues work from and translate it in the current time zone which you're in.

It allows me to set up any cross-time zone meetings in a way that it suits everyone. You can also create an event and export it in any format suitable.

5. Gather

Missing your office buddies and all the hanging out together? With Gather, you can create a virtual space for all of your friends and colleagues to come together and host a party, or you can all sit by a campfire and watch your favorite movies together.

It replicates the real-world experience of people hanging out with each other, you can create a virtual office or your university campus and go about your regular business. It’s a great tool to counter the loneliness and isolation that remote workers feel.

6. Monosnap

Monosnap is a wonderful tool to help you communicate with images. It helps you doodle with images and add context to screenshots and share them instantly.

I would recommend you go ahead and get a paid subscription which will allow you to upload the image to the cloud and share it with others instantly.

7. Bubbles

Bubbles is a very useful tool for asynchronous collaboration that allows you to give detailed feedback on screenshots. In short, it makes contextual collaboration simpler.

You can comment directly on any digital asset, web page, or app and put an end to the feedback loop over mails and unnecessary meetings, making the reviewing process super fast.

I hope these productivity tools will help you manage your time better and maintain the work-life balance when working remotely. Let me know some of your favorite tools in the comments.

I've compiled a list of many more such tools that'll help you step up your remote game. You can find the full list here. I'll share collab tools next week, subscribe if you're interested in that.

Let me know if I missed the tools in the comments.