What Is Your Favorite Productivity Tracker Software Or App?

[Joseph Maynor]

I need a good one.  

[Principium Nexus]

I think you are better off making a paper scheduel of things you want to do at certain times through the day or week. You can then see how many boxes you can check off and see how productive you are.

I think productivity and smartphones dont go hand in hand. You are really better off without. Set proper goals, watch how much time you spent and stop distracting yourself from anything but the thing you put up for completetion. 

[TeamBills]

@Joseph Maynor What is a productivity tracker?

[Cass Cassini]

@Joseph Maynor

Office Suites

Google Drive 
 
free
The free and very accessible Google Drive (formerly known as Google Docs) is the obvious choice among collaborative office suites in the cloud. You can create and edit documents, solo or with others, in real time and see everyone's changes as they make them. Google Drive is accessible wherever you have Internet access and a Web browser. There's also an optional, downloadable component, too, that enables file-syncing directly from computer. Other online-only suites, notably Zoho, have bigger feature sets, but Google Drive comes close to the ideal balance of features, speed, and convenience. 
Platforms: Web, Windows, Mac, Android, iOS


One Drive 
 
free
With apps for more platforms than many of its competitors, Microsoft's OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is one of the most flexible cloud services for storing, syncing, and sharing files. On Windows 8.1, you no longer have to install a syncing utility for the service to work on the desktop and in File Explorer—it's just there. OneDrive Mobile apps for iPhone and more recently for Android have gained the ability to automatically upload (privately) any photos you shoot on the smart phone or tablet—and not just photos, but videos, too.
Platforms: Web, Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Windows Phone


HyperOffice

from $5 per user per month, plus $49.99 set-up charge
HyperOffice is a slick online-collaboration service that lets you store and access files, tasks, contacts, links, an documents—almost any digital file—on a HyperOffice-hosted website. A fully hosted alternative to building your own Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers, HyperOffice is feature-rich, but it has a few minor interface glitches that need to be worked out. HyperOffice is easy to set up as both an intranet and an extranet that lets co-workers, customers, and clients see specific data. If your company is thinking about cloud-based collaboration, you'll be impressed with this inexpensive product. 
Platforms: Web, Windows, Linux, Mac, BlackBerry, iOS
 

Office Suites, Desktop

Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium 
 
from $69 per year
A $69 per year subscription to Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium lets you install a full copy of Office 2013 on one device. For another 30 bucks a year, you can install it on up to five devices, including Apple computers. Plus, on any Windows 7 or 8 machine, you can temporarily download Word, Excel, or the other Office apps for use on other machines. Office 2013 looks better than Office 2010 and includes new convenience features, with a minimal learning curve for existing users. Microsoft's flagship office suite remains one of the most powerful productivity software bundles on the market.
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Windows Phone


OpenOffice.org

free
OpenOffice.org is a free, open-source replacement for Microsoft Office—and the only application suite that can be seriously considered a substitute for the massive power and flexibility of Microsoft's suite. OpenOffice.org used to look clunky and work slowly, but the current version is sleek and fast. OpenOffice.org doesn't include all of Office's features, but it adds some conveniences that Office can't provide, such as built-in PDF export and a single interface for opening and editing word-processing documents, HTML files, worksheets, presentations, and drawings.
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux

For more tips on choosing between office suites, see our guide for How to Buy an Office Suite.

Small Business

Abukai Expenses
 
Prices vary
Abukai Expenses, a mobile app, is a wonderful reminder of the usefulness of business solutions on the go. Available for Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry, Abukai suits anyone who has to perform the mundane task of filing expense reports, because it lets you take pictures of receipts, submit them, and receive a finished report. Customization capabilities and integration with back-end financial systems makes this one of the neatest mobile apps and cloud service solutions for businesses. It's not cheap, but if you have a lot of expenses to track, it's a great buy.
Platforms: Android, iPhone, BlackBerry


OfficeTime
 
$47
Freelancers, contractors, and others in the ranks of the self-employed grapple with the administration and paperwork that comes with running a small business. OfficeTime ($47) is a small business owner's best friend. This highly practical yet relatively simple program helps SMBs keep track of their billable hours and other expenses, and it generates invoices for their work. OfficeTime tracks how much time you spend on various projects and tasks while you're working, and it shows the minute-by-minute costs as they accumulate, or with numbers rounded however you choose. And whenever you can decrease the time spent managing yourself, you're likely to be worlds more productive.
Platforms: Windows, Mac, iOS (sold separately)


Planet Soho (formerly SohoOS)

Prices vary
Planet Soho (formerly SohoOS) has set out on an understated undertaking: to create an online operating system for the small office/home office (SOHO) market. This online system bundles all the tools you need to manage your small business—project management, inventory management, invoicing, payments processing, CRM, reporting, and more. The package used to be free, but that's no longer the case, with prices starting around $9 per month.
Platform: Web

Prezi

free to $159 per year
Prezi.com is one of one of a new generation of cloud-based presentation apps. It uses Adobe's Flash technology to create animated presentations with a few clicks and drags. Instead of creating a series of separate slides, you put all your content—text, graphics, captions—on a single canvas, and then you trace a path from one item to another. There's a free version to try, but all the presentations you make with it will be public. To keep them private, you need to pay. 
Platforms: Web, Chrome, Windows, Mac, iOS

VisualBee

free to $79.90 per year
A good-looking slide deck, filled with images that pop or induce giggles, can help capture your audience's attention and keep them tuned in to your ideas. VisualBee Premium (free light version available, with Premium subscriptions starting at $39.90 per year) can be a savior for the design-impaired. The small downloadable product is a plugin for Microsoft PowerPoint that handily adds design (template styles), effects (slide transitions), and pictures to your files. It has a cache of images it that it matches to keywords in your text. And you always have the option to override or tweak the suggestions VisualBee gives your presentation.
Platforms: Windows (requires PowerPoint)

Plug-Ins

NoteControl

$49 per year, per user
No more jotting notes and sources by hand. NoteControl is an app that equips scholars, students, educators, and business professionals with a simple way to capture and organize their research. Many scholars will be smitten with NoteControl's ample support for different types of research—including text, images, Web, audio, and documents—WorldCat search, popular style sheets—MLA, APA, and Chicago—and a familiar Outlook-style interface. The floating toolbar NoteControl Capture can collect text and images from websites or files, snap screenshots, and take down audio notes. However, Mac support is restricted to the Web browser (notecontrol.com), searching for sources can be cumbersome, and some aspects of capturing research feel counterintuitive.

 

SaneBox

from $7 per month 
SaneBox is a service that goes into your email and automatically sets up rules so that email from very important people goes straight to your inbox while other messages are diverted to new folders SaneBox creates. In essence, it manages that "signal to noise" problem we've heard so much about. You always have total control over what gets filtered and what is left in the inbox. SaneBox works effectively without creating confusion about what it's doing to your inbox. It provides a long list of controls, settings, and features should you choose to complicate the matter. SaneBox simplifies email, and in that sense, it helps you stay highly productive.


Smartr Inbox for Gmail

free
The free browser plugin Smartr Inbox for Gmail by Xobni (which is now owned by Yahoo!) dives into your contacts list and pulls up pearls of information, like the date you first communicated with a person and who is frequently CC'ed on emails. It's an efficient way to search your list of contacts, while also keeping an eye on Twitter and Facebook, two other features that are built right into the plugin that displays in Gmail. If you're ever felt your productivity dip as a result of searching through emails, trying to remember which person at a company you usually ping, or looking for the most recent email thread with a certain group of people, Smartr can resolve most of your problems and with more information than you get from Gmail's search results.


Stayfocusd

free
URL blocker Stayfocusd enforces discipline better than Captain von Trapp for when you're on the clock. With deep and highly customizable settings, countdown clocks, and a self-imposed lock-out feature that's very time-consuming to undo, you'll never dilly-dally online while you should be working again. This browser plug-in very simply prevents you from going to websites that waste your time, and you have complete control over what is and isn't on that list.


Xobni (for Outlook)

free to $48
Xobni is a free Outlook plugin that helps you search faster, communicate better, and just get more done. If you're like most professionals working in Microsoft Office, you spend hours a day in Outlook—the touchstone of the modern professional work day—managing your email, appointments, and contacts. But as indispensible as Outlook is, none of us are completely happy with it. That's where Xobni (free, $48 Pro version) comes in. It's one of the best tools for getting Outlook to be more productive for you. Just beware that Outlook 2013 is not currently supported.


Zotero
 
free
For students, scholars, and those conducting research for business, Zotero 3 is a reliable companion for tracking, managing, and sharing citations. While the tool is billed as a Mozilla Firefox browser plugin, users can also take advantage of Zotero Standalone, a desktop application for Mac, PC, and Linux; Zotero Connectors, plugins for Google Chrome and Apple Safari; and Word Processor Plugins, designed to integrate Zotero Standalone with Microsoft Office and LibreOffice/OpenOffice. Zotero is free of advertisements and has wonderful integration with the online scholarly database JSTOR.

Web Apps

Asana
 
Prices vary; free version available
Asana is a Web app for managing tasks, projects, and teams. Its thoughtful design, fluid interactive elements, and generous member allotment in its free version make it a powerful productivity tool for personal projects and light teamwork. The paid version provides the few extra features you'd need to use it for more complex project management. But for the low, low price of nothing, Asana doles out some pretty extraordinary services. The free account supports up to 15 members and unlimited projects and tasks. Paid account holders get a few additional features, such as project permissions and priority support. The Premium accounts cost $100 per month for 30 members, $300 per month for 50 users, and up from there.


Doodle.com
free
Doodle has long been my go-to tool for scheduling with large groups of people, whether I'm planning a virtual meeting with people from around the world, or just trying to find a suitable night when all my friends are free to have dinner. With a free Doodle account, you can create simple polls where invitees mark themselves as free, busy, or available-if-need-be. There are more features and functions, too, especially if you pony up for a paid account, but Doodle's scheduling capabilities eliminate so much back and forth that this one feature alone makes it an essential tool in a productivity lover's kit.


Basecamp
Prices vary
Basecamp is an online project-management platform that lets a number of people collaborate on a project. It's especially helpful for managing projects that are both collaborative and visual in nature because of the way it makes large files easy to see online. Team members can comment on files, assign tasks to the appropriate person, schedule deadlines, and more. Basecamp no longer offers a free level of service, with prices now starting at $20 per month (which includes 10 projects and 3GB of space).


Evernote
 
free; $45 per year for Premium
Evernote, which has apps for just about every platform you can imagine, has a handy and simple Web app that lets you get at your notes no matter where you are and no matter what kind of Internet-connected device you have. From Evernote.com, you can find all the notes you've ever uploaded, from text notes to audio memos to photos and more. It's one amazing service, and the apps will help keep you productive by always making your notes accessible and searchable no matter where you are.


Podio
 
Prices vary; free version available
Podio straddles two worlds, online project management and business social network, with alacrity. It's one of the most comprehensive tools there is for small business communication and work management. Inside you'll find message boards, a chat function, and plenty of tools for managing projects, as well as an app store where you can leverage templates for common productivity functions small businesses need, such as invoicing and deliverables. It's free for up to five people to use, but for more users (and a few more features), you'll need to pay for an account, starting at $9 per month per employee.

Windows Apps

 

ABBYY FineReader 11 is optical character recognition (OCR) software that can handle difficult and massive jobs, like converting complex tables into usable spreadsheets, or scanning a hundred-year-old book into a searchable PDF. It even masters oddball typefaces. If you often need to copy text from images found on the Web, you need to get the most accurate possible text out of images on your disk or documents that you've fed to a scanner, or you want to convert a scanned document into HTML or into the ePub format used by e-readers, the app that gets those jobs done best, too, is ABBYY FineReader.

 

 

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 Premium
 
$199
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 is an extremely accurate dictation-transcription and voice-command tool from Nuance Communications. With Dragon and your voice, you can control virtually any computer program, after getting over an acceptably small learning curve. Loaded with features that you didn't know you needed, Dragon NaturallySpeaking solves so many problems: it makes writing faster, relieves carpal tunnel syndrome and other mobility issues, creates closed-captioning for lectures, removes spelling anxiety, and on and on. Dragon is ripe for being co-opted for many purposes far beyond dictation/transcription, making it an amazing productivity booster.


Evernote for Windows
 
(free to $45 per year)
Evernote's motto is, "Remember everything." The company likes to think of its namesake product as "your second brain," a place to store all the things you need to know, recall, or remember. In a nutshell, Evernote is a syncing and storage service, with a number of apps (including mobile ones) from which you can access your files or create new ones. In addition to the Windows desktop app, there's also an Evernote Web app and Mac app. You can type notes, record a voice memo, take a picture of a whiteboard during a meeting, or clip a Web page and save it to your Evernote account. All the files are searchable, including handwritten text and text that appears in images. As far as productivity goes, being able to remember everything is priceless.


HP Trust Circles

Prices vary; free version available
HP Trust Circles enables secure collaboration between groups of trusted people. Have you ever accidentally emailed a sensitive document to the wrong person, or lost a flash drive containing important data? HP Trust Circles lets you take your mind off those details by automatically encrypting your data and restricting who can access it. Members of a "trust circle" can transparently view and modify any documents belonging to the group; to anyone else, the contents are gibberish. The Standard edition of this product comes pre-installed on some HP computers, and it's also available as a free download on any HP computer. It lets you create up to five trust circles, each with up to five members. If your computer isn't an HP, you can download the Basic edition, which gets you one trust circle with up to five members. From either of these editions, you can upgrade to Pro, which lets you create unlimited trust circles and invite unlimited members ($19.95-$29.95).


Mention
 
free to $64.99 per user per month for the Enterprise edition
The search-and-alert program Mention takes the concept of Google Alerts and blends it with social media monitoring tools, resulting in one rich package for businesses. Mention actively searches the Web and social media sites for key terms of your choosing, with advanced search criteria available, and in multiple languages. When a new mention of your key terms is found, you can use Mention to assign a follow-up to that activity (if you're working in a collaborative environment) or to track the sentiment by marking it positive, negative, or neutral. Mention is much richer than Google Alerts. There's a lot to uncover in this wonderful program.
Additional platforms: Chrome, Mac, Android, iOS

RescueTime Solo Pro
 
$72 per year; free version available
Proponents of productivity are always looking for tips, tricks, and data that can inform them how to eke a little more out of their day, both personally and in the office. RescueTime ($72 per year for Solo Pro edition; a free "lite" edition is also available) is an indispensable tool for any productivity kit, and our Editors' Choice among time-trackers. The app monitors all your computer use, or just the apps and sites you tell it to log, and informs you when and how you're both productive and distracted. It's compatible with both Mac and Windows, and it can work across multiple computers. With excellent settings and customization, a variety of reports, and amazingly simple setup, this app is aces. 
Additional platforms: Mac, Android, Kindle

Mac Apps

ABBYY FineReader Pro
 
$99.00
Optical-character-reading (OCR) software for Windows has always been more powerful than Mac-based OCR apps. Now that Abbyy's FineReader Pro has arrived for the Mac, the playing field is much closer to being level (although the Windows version of ABBYY FineReader has a few features not found in the Mac version). ABBYY FineReader Pro is the only serious choice for OCR on a Mac, so if you need to scan old paper files and digitize them into searchable text, this is the tool you need.


Dragon Dictate for Mac
 
$199.99
Don't confuse Dragon Dictate for Mac with the aforementioned Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows. They are, in fact, two different products from the same vendor, although they both do the same basic function: turn your speech into text. I can't say, after testing, that the Mac version hits quite the same marks as the Windows version, although it is still rather good at what it does. Mac users looking to increase their productivity will find that Dragon Dictate immensely speeds up the time it takes to write, whether you're composing email, notes, scripts, articles, or something else. It does take some time to get used to dictation software, but, once you do, it really cuts down on times spend typing.


Evernote (for Mac) 
 
free; $45 per year for Premium
Note-making and organizing tool Evernote made its name on smartphones, but its desktop Mac app gives users an incredibly powerful and reliable hub. The latest version, Evernote 5 for Mac, does everything the mobile app does, and then some. You can create text notes, audio memos, photos, and tag all these notes and organize them into notebooks so that they're easy to find later. Version 5 looks less cluttered, less cramped, and more sophisticated, with shades of dark gray replacing much of the signature green in the user interface. A new productivity-boosting shortcuts feature lets users keep notebooks they want to see at the top of the app. Wrap this in with Evernote for Mac's excellent existing features, such as one of the most powerful search bars I've ever seen,

 

NameChanger
 
free
The proliferation of digital cameras has resulted in many photographers, both amateur and professional, snapping more photos than ever before and dumping them onto their computers for touch ups or uploading to Facebook. Unfortunately, those photo files get labeled names like IMG_9078 and DSC_0091, which don't describe the content. MMR Software's NameChanger, a free Mac app, remedies that problem by automatically renaming batches of files for you. If you're a stickler for file and folder organizations, this app is a dream come true.

[TeamBills]

@Cass Cassini Aren't Google Drive and One Drive for backing up your files? Openoffice is for word documents right? I'm still confused what a productivity tracker is.

[Loreena]

@TeamBills Go to Google play store and type productivity in search and whatever you get are all tracker apps. 

Google drive, one drive, open office,are all productivity suites alongwith being backup clouds. 

A productivity tracker saves time,allows efficient documentation of tasks, storage, transfer, communication with team members, project management, note taking, task allocation to members in projects, accounting softwares, CRM software programs, PowerPoint presentations, faster communication interfaces to save time, easy organization of tasks, items, SEO softwares, report softwares for expenses and payroll to employees, invoice management. 

Plus such software's will also contain goal trackers for individuals along with smartlists. 

Such apps are available for both individuals and businesses at premium prices. Some are free.

[Joseph Maynor]

Check this one out guys and gals.  I hunted-down and bagged a good one!

https://www.the1thing.com/time-management/the-pomodoro-method-of-time-blocking/

http://caps.ucsd.edu/Downloads/tx_forms/koch/pomodoro_handouts/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf

Edited July 30, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[Loreena]

@Joseph Maynor  Good one. Keep hunting. I'd do the same. You got more ?

[Joseph Maynor]

@Loreena Here's one I was using for a while.  I kind of outgrew it, but I used it for years.  It's called Swipes

If you like to do lists, this one is for you.  It is great because you can organize your tasks in a way that allows you to swipe them off lists, and even into other lists as you need to.  Highly recommended.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/swipes-to-do-task-list-plan-achieve-goals/id657882159?mt=8

Edited August 1, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[dew]

I use this one. It's not a to-do list organizer sort of app, it only tracks how much time you spent on which task/project. And you earn ranks as you work enough hours. You get demoted if you slack off and it pushes you and even scolds you if you're not active. It's kinda annoying and I know the rank system is based on "extrinsic motivation" and wont work everytime. But I am a terrible procrastinator and it helps sometimes and I will take that!

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/productivity-challenge-timer/id1117766356?mt=8

[Afonso]

I like Swipes:

Edited August 7, 2017 by Afonso

[AleksM]

RescueTime.

[Loreena]

@AleksM is it available on Google play store

[AleksM]

@Loreena It's available for android.

[HypSandar]

Try LifeRPG, blue joystic icon on google play.

I wrote a giant wall of text, but my internet broke...No way i'm rewriting that review.

Here's a quick overview though:

 

Add missions, gain exp based on fear, difficulty and urgency factors. 

Add custom skills and categorize them, view their progress through neat statistic features

Earn rp money from missions which u can count as dollars, the reward of it is optional, not all missions gain $

For example selling a book would gain u 20$, thats 20 rp $ u can spend the rewards on items which ud buy irl and have them noted in the app

There's a lot, lot more to the app, though if i'd write it that wouldn't be a quick overview..