I've said it before, and I'll say it again: being productive isn't about working harder, it's about working smarter. Most of us at Shopify use an arsenal of apps to help us supercharge our productivity.
These 16 productivity apps are some of our favorites. They help us work smarter, faster, and more efficiently. Let us know what productivity apps you use in the comments.
Soulver
Soulver is faster than a spreadsheet and easier to use than a calculator. Simply type your problem as you'd write it on paper, and you'll see the answer instantly with no formulas to deal with. If you make a mistake, simply hit the delete button - you don't have to start over again. My favorite function is solving percentages. Simply type "35% off 300K" and Soulver instantly displays the answer: 195,000.
TextExpander
TextExpander saves us a lot of keystrokes here at Shopify. With this productivity app, you can program custom keyboard shortcuts into frequently used text and pictures. For example, when I type the abbreviation ";home" TextExpander automatically replaces that code with my address. This can be really helpful when responding to customer service emails.
iA Writer
iA Writer is a noise free writing program that gives you a clean typing sheet that's distraction-free. I really like iA Writer's "focus mode" where the surrounding text fades into the background, reducing the temptation to stop writing and start editing. I use this productivity app all the time when I'm writing articles for the Shopify blog.
Trello
Trello is all about team projects. At Shopify, we use Trello for projects that involve team members from various offices. Picture a giant white board that everyone has access to. You can collaborate in real-time, assign tasks, gather opinions and more.
Clear
Clear is a to-do list app that's simple and intuitive. Items are easy to add, they're sorted by priority from top to bottom, and color-coded according to urgency, and a quick swipe to the right crosses an item off.
Boomerang for Gmail
This handy productivity app from Baydin Inc lets you "boomerang" emails based on different criteria. Example: I can tell Boomerang "If nobody responds to this email within two days, bring it back to the top of my inbox." I can also write an email now, and schedule it to be sent automatically whenever I want.
iDoneThis
Every day I reply to an evening email reminder with what I did all day. The next day, I get a digest that lists what myself and everyone else on my team accomplished. iDoneThis is simple, uncluttered, and keeps everyone in the loop.
Divvy
This window management tool is essential for anyone who keeps multiple windows open at the same time. This app lets you "divvy up" your screen into exact portions with the click of a button. If you waste time shuffling around and resizing windows - Divvy is going to be a huge time saver.
Evernote
This is an app that most people already have, but no productivity app list would be complete without it. Evernote lets you collect things, make notes, lists, and anything else you may need to store. It syncs between your computer, smartphone, and tablet so your files are available everywhere you are.
Dropbox
We use Dropbox to sync and share documents, photos, and videos among all our staff members. It has a free service that lets you create a shared folder on multiple computers / devices which automatically synchronises.
Campfire
Campfire is a web-based group chat tool that we use for internal communications all day, every day. Every department at Shopify has its own chat room, and most employees keep their Campfire window open at all times. Since it's web-based, it's really easy to setup and run with nothing to download, install, or update.
Buffer
This is a social media app that you hook up to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and App.net accounts. You can then add articles, pictures, and whatever else you want and make a schedule for Buffer to automatically publish them.
The Hit List
The Hit List is an awesome project manager app that I use to keep my to-do list and prioritize my life. In addition to its basic scheduling function, it has a timer, smart folders, iCal syncing, and so much more.
TeuxDeux
This simple to-do app is bare-bones, and that's the point. It's a really well designed weekly priority list that is exactly what it should be and doesn't complicate things with a bunch of bells and whistles. Type your to-do, edit, check off, done.
Alfred
Alfred takes your Mac OS X search bar and puts it on steroids. Alfred is a high powered search bar and application launcher that lets you launch any application with a quick shortcut. It'll learn which apps you use most often, and prioritize them. The paid "Powerpack" option will give you tons of extra navigation functions, like global hotkeys, clipboard history, and access to hundreds of useful extensions.
Coffee
Great list, Mark! I will second TextExpander and Buffer – both fantastic apps. Would also add Asana (for project management) to the list as well as Skitch. For taking fast screenshots and quickly annotating them, Skitch is a killer app.
Good stuff. I started discovering another productivity app recently that’s nearly as good as Coffee. It’s called “Sleep”. You can get it for free at night and at market price during the day.
Thanks for the comprehensive list!
Extensive list & all are amazing in their own unique ways.
Thank you.
Niiice! I’ve been looking for this one for a while.
And boomerang was the missing link for my gmail.
You’re the man, Mark!
Awesome – I use most of these already!
I love fluid, which takes sites like Trello and turns them into stand-alone apps.
Workflowy is awesome for outlining things, or making lists. Infinitely nestable, it ends up kind of doing whatever you need it to.
I use Toggl to track all of my hours to keep me focused.
A little plug, a couple apps I’ve built that I use daily. The first is Timerdoro.com for doing time-based productivity hacks, and saving my eye-sight. The second is theBirdy.com for tracking my spending every day. Hope they can help you, too!
I use Uberlayer, a nifty productivity app to use when you’re pixelperfecting a design. Lay a PSD over your browser window and check if you’re perfectly in line with your design.
iA writer is really awesome, that would definitely be on top of my list.
Great list, lots of gold in there.
I use Wunderlist for to-do’s to keep it synced across devices. I also get important emails SMS’d to me via gmail using AT&T’s cellnumber@txt.att.net address.
IFTTT is cool for automating tasks like sending me emails of RSS alerts.
And we use our own Float Schedule for scheduling the team!
We use one platform, Tracky, www.tracky.com which is both a social collaboration and project management tool. It does just about everything we want, chat online, upload documents, and even publish blogs or tracks to social sites. Tracky now also works with Buffer to allow you to organise your life even more.
Great post Mark. I also love Boomerang, but Soulver and iDoneThis are new to me. One more to checkout (that is app based) if you have many conference calls is MobileDay. It’s a simple one-touch conference call solution that has saved me a ton of time.
Great set of tools – thank you. I specially like iA Writers way of focusing your thoughts :)
If you need a very flexible tool for managing everyday activities that will help you gain clarity and balance your workload then please check out http://kanbana.com or the upcoming iPad version http://kanbana.com/iPad
I’ve been interested in personal effectiveness for years so I’ve tried to create a tool that fulfills my needs and hopefully others too.
If you want to learn some of the methods behind this tool I’ve written a short and FREE eBook on the subject: “3 Pillars of Personal Effectiveness” that you can download here: http://bit.ly/MiMi84
I’d imagine Fulfillrite’s App in the marketplace that helps users with their daily order fulfillment & shipping also makes Shopify owners more productive?
http://apps.shopify.com/fulfillrite-order-fulfillment
Fulfillrite’s App in the marketplace that helps users with their daily order fulfillment & shipping also makes Shopify owners more productive…
http://apps.shopify.com/fulfillrite-order-fulfillment
Does Soulver actually say that 35% of 300K is 195,000 or is that just a typo :p
Fantastic list, I can’t wait to check out some more of these apps in-depth. Great work!
These are some nice apps for productivity. Recently read an article by Caterina Fake (cofounder of Flickr and Hunch) that the number one thing she does to be more productive and create more time is to reduce the amount of digital media she consumes. You can do this by batching tasks like checking email or browsing the web into something that’s done a couple times a day rather than every five minutes. For the latter, we’re building an app called Skim.Me (http://skim.me) to nudge users to consume content from their favorite sites/apps in a few full (and timed) info meals per day rather than constantly snacking. Think we can help consumers in their everyday lives as well as workers.
As to your last item, “Coffee”, there is a great little app called “Caffeine” [http://www.lightheadsw.com/caffeine/] which helps me out when I’m developing, as it keeps my mac from dimming the screen or falling asleep.
Great tools for online collaboration. I find myself in need of coordinating multiple offices in various time zones, and these tools may just do the trick.
The tool I can’t live without is Wunderlist. Its a free todo list app that works on every platform you can think of. Its simple and keeps everything is sync across all the platforms you use it on.
You can’t forget about rapportive (http://rapportive.com/) for gmail. My absolute favorite! It automatically grabs grabs social media profiles when you open your emails!
Another great roundup. I used and loved The Hit List for a couple of years, but grew weary waiting for them to release an iPad version of the app. I switched to OmniFocus for Mac and iPad consequently and have been extremely happy—it lives up to the hype!
Great list. Looking up boomerang right now. I can’t wait to start on that one. Thanks for the list!
Instead of buying Solver for $12 you can use free alternative (and works from menu bar) called Numi: http://www.getnumi.info
@Derek Stevens, it’s 30% OFF, not OF. : ) Instantly making this calculation is a huge time saver.
This is a great list. What I wonder though is how can you use 4 different to-do list apps? Or does each person on the team use something different?
Thanks for sharing – great list. I use Found instead of Alfred and Right Inbox instead of Boomerang, although I do use Boomerang Calendar and for project management Asana for me is great and I have also liked Producteev in the past.
great list! I was really bummed when I saw that Picturesque (Soulver’s sister app) is for MAC only. Any suggestions for a comparable PC app?
Thanks!
Shameless plug for which I apologize- I’d like to suggest Mission Control http://missioncontrolhq.com, which I use for managing my teams. It’s team task management as simple as it comes, and it’s free.
HI
Today i came across this amazing new website named nupinch.com…i really think you guys should check it out..
Link: http://bit.ly/XczfI3
@suhana
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