A lot of time goes into managing work, projects, employees and clients. You wonder how you can get it all done without being stressed, frustrated and burnt out. Time management tools are you solution.
Time management tools can be a lifesaver for busy people.
Even a simple app can make a huge difference in how you work. Technology is available to help you improve time management for virtually all aspects of your workday.
These tools don’t just help you get your work done faster, they also help you find a better work-life balance.
Time-saving tools give you your time back so you can spend it on what’s important to you. From growing your business to taking the afternoon off – you make the decision.
Here’s what to know about the benefits of using time management apps, plus 6 time-saving work tools you can’t afford to go without.
What Can You Do With Time Management Tools
Time management apps offer big benefits for busy people, whether you’re CEO or an up-and-coming employee.
You can generally maximize how you spend your time with an app, but you can also use it for specific areas of your work. Here are 6 of the most important ones:
Scheduling
Time-management apps can save you a surprising amount of time managing your schedule. In fact, a good app can be almost as much help as hiring your own personal assistant.
Scheduling apps use technology to simplify the process of picking a meeting date and time. They feature tools like online schedulers and automated prompts, saving you from the back and forth emails and phone calls that come with manual scheduling.
Schedulers also help fix common problems such as forgetting to add participants, allow for travel time, block out time for your other priorities or send reminders so everyone shows up.
While you may not be able to hire a personal assistant to manage your schedule, you can get many of the same valuable benefits simply by adding a scheduling tool.
Task Management
The right time-saving tools can be a big help when you’re trying to manage tasks and track your projects or boost both your productivity and efficiency at work.
For most people, workdays consist of numerous smaller tasks that have to be completed by you and your work colleagues. Important information, such as task ownership, priority, status and due date, is easier to track when you’re using an app.
Time management apps are also helpful for estimating and tracking workloads, speed, budget and the overall status of your larger projects.
Taking advantage of tools that let you manage your tasks can also help with business strategy, solving inefficiencies, gaining insight into processes and reaching your long-term goals.
Time Management
There are a lot of benefits to use a tool to keep track of how you spend your time. If you don’t know where your time is going, it’s difficult to make changes to improve time management.
Time-management apps can be used individually for your own purposes or across a team for management purposes.
Used individually, a time tracker app can help you pace yourself, set and reach work goals, and gain insight that could help you with estimates and tweaking your work processes.
Across a team, a time management tool can be used to check progress or improve schedules. Some companies use them to avoid burnout, improve quotes, bill accurately, or even reward your top performers.
Collaborating
Working together with other people becomes much easier when you add a time management tool to your process. Apps help everyone to be on the same page, adding to your efficiency.
Using communication tools in the workplace can help solve problems with projects, operations, resources and time. You will likely be surprised by the results of this time-saving tool.
A time management app that has collaboration features will be especially useful if part or all of your team is working remotely, since distance becomes less of a communication obstacle.
Collaboration tools are also helpful for managers who want to track, monitor and analyze work processes in order to improve their team’s productivity.
Task Automation
Any time your workflow includes an action that is meant to trigger a response from you, it’s a chance to benefit from task automation with a time-saving work tool.
Task automation can help you work more efficiently, reduce errors, save on budget and take advantage of new opportunities. Basic automation apps work best with tasks that are fairly simple and need to be completed frequently or on a schedule.
You can also use more advanced time management tools to automate some of your more complex tasks using Advanced AI. Such tools can help you with responding to messages, sending reminders, scheduling appointments, managing requests, and even compiling reports.
Automating tasks is a good way to improve time management because it lets you focus on your most impactful work, while the app takes care of less important duties.
Organizing
Time management tools can even help you become more organized in how you work, which is great if you are naturally disorganized.
Working with apps can help eliminate distractions, fix bad habits, and automate tedious processes that make your work more disorganized than it needs to be.
Many apps also feature tools that will help you keep on top of documents. They can even guide you to setting priorities and crossing more things off your to-do list.
Eventually, time management tools that help with organization will help you set and reach long-term goals that would’ve been difficult to get to if you were still unorganized.
The 6 Best Time-Saving Tools for Work
How you incorporate time management apps into your process will vary depending on your needs.
There may be one area of your work or several that need help, so you might choose one or even a set of apps to boost your productivity.
When it comes to choices, there are many time-saving tools to help improve time management but we think these 6 are some of the best.
Slack
One of the most popular communication tools in the workplace. Slack makes it easy to chat with your team and other stakeholders. This messaging app solves many of the problems that can come with trying to manage all your communications through email. Slack organizes conversation threads, offers private channels, voice and video conferencing, file-sharing and reminders.
Calendly
When it comes to saving time managing your schedule, Calendly is hard to beat. This tool syncs with your calendar, automatically offers days and times when you’re available in a simple online interface and sends confirmations and reminders to keep everyone on track. It’s a convenient tool for scheduling meetings and booking appointments without distracting you from your day.
Toggl
For tracking and managing your time at work, Toggl is a simple and effective option. The app can track the time you spend on tasks manually or automatically helping you improve time management and productivity. Toggl also features reports and analysis that help you visualize where your time is being spent, plus an invoicing option for when you’re working with clients.
Evernote
Of the time management tools available for note-taking, Evernote is the definite favorite. This digital filing cabinet app has many on-the-go uses, from jotting down ideas, to organizing your to-do’s, planning your day, annotating PDFs and even working with large media files. Evernote is popular as a time-saving tool in part because it’s so flexible and easy to use.
IFTTT
Automating simple tasks saves a lot of time and IFTTT (If This Then That) is a simple app that does just that. This time-saving work tool connects apps and uses conditional programming to trigger automated actions. There are ready-made action triggers, such as saving incoming email attachments to your Google Drive folder. However you can also customize and create your own triggers.
Folio
Organizing your email inbox can save you a ton of time, and Folio is one of the best time-saving tools for the job.
Folio lives in your Outlook or Gmail inbox and uses AI algorithms to automatically organize your mail into workflows that make sense for your business. Folio features calendar integrations, notifications and alerts, task making and to-do list tracking, and even more.
Start your free trial of Folio today and save more time managing your workflow.
Who we are
We've built Folio: the first AI email assistant for professionals.
Folio plugs directly into your work email inbox and automatically organizes your email, giving you contextual access to all the information you need to increase your productivity in minutes.
We are a team of passionate product people and engineers that gets excited about solving complex processes and creating value for people.
We're a venture funded company backed by Accel Partners, Vertical Venture Partners, and other leading venture capital firms and angel investors such as Ash Patel and Jerry Yang.
