The Best Apps and Tools to Work From Home

Whether you’re quarantined at home due to a global pandemic, or love the freedom that comes with working remotely, it’s important to make your #laptoplifestyle as productive as possible.

Many people claim that there’s no substitute for being in the office and the face to face interaction that affords, but these tools come pretty damn close…

For video meetings- Google Hangouts and Zoom

Working from home doesn’t mean all your meetings and catch-ups need to be canceled, it’s just as easy to book in a quick video call using either Google Hangouts or Zoom.

Both tools allow you to invite attendees by email, schedule a time in your calendar, and all that’s left to do is click the link in the calendar invite to begin your call.

Video conferencing is a great way to minimise the back and forth of endless emails, and still feel connected to your team while you work remotely.

For collaboration and communication- Flock or Slack

Sometimes you need a quick way to chat with the team in smaller groups, which is where a messaging service like Flock or Slack comes in handy.

You can add all your team members, then create smaller group chats, send files, photos, and tag members when you need a response ASAP.

Both work pretty similarly, they just need to be installed on your desktop or downloaded as an app, and you can instant message to your hearts content.

It’s also worth having a back-up in case one of the apps shuts down or stops working, so that your team can quickly transfer to the next best options. Better to get it set up now and have a smooth transition, then be stuck if the worst happens!

For project management- Trello

If you’re trying to coordinate a massive project with several moving parts, Trello is the name of the game.

It lets you create tasks, assign them to users, track completion, organise by urgency, and allows you to drag and drop tasks wherever you want on the interface, so you can customise it however works best for you and your team.

For file sharing- Dropbox and Google Drive

Most businesses use one or the other anyway, but working remotely means you need a file-sharing system in place now more than ever.

Whether it’s documents, videos, PDFs, images or videos, it’s crucial to have a secure way of sharing them with the rest of your team.

Both Dropbox and Google Drive let you drag and drop files online, so it’s user friendly and won’t clog your desktop with huge downloads.

They even have mobile apps so you can work across devices in a pinch.

For eliminating distractions- Strict Workflow

I’m a huge fan of the Pomodoro technique of time blocking – 90 minutes work, with a ten-minute rest.

Strict Workflow is a browser extension that allows you to schedule a time for work and time for breaks, with the added benefit of letting you block websites that might distract you or lead to procrastination (cough, Reddit, cough).

When you’re working from home it can be easy to feel like you’re on a regular day off, so it’s important to put schedules and boundaries in place to ensure you stay productive.

For keeping track of tasks- Evernote

If you’ve been keeping up with my content for a while now you know that every day, my team and I plan out all our tasks, progress, and bottlenecks so we have a game plan for the day ahead of us.

A great tool for that is Evernote, which allows you to make to-do lists via desktop or mobile. It functions like a virtual notebook where you can add new pages for each day or week, checkboxes, and save as a template for easier use.

So, there you have it, your complete working from home toolkit. Now you’ve got all the resources and no excuses, so get to work NOW!

If you’ve read through and want some extra guidance, I am offering a limited amount of #CoronaReady Strategy Sessions with my senior consultants.

But, they are filling up quickly so be sure to jump on it quickly – only the strong will survive!