The 8 Apps Our Editors Swear By For Productive Work Days

If you’re anything like our editorial team, you’re currently living your best #WFH life. Our team has pretty much mastered the art of working from home like a pro, but it’s not without a few life hacks to help us stay on track and keep us moving along just as effectively as when we were working from our office. Whether you’re back in the office or you’re getting things done from a desk at home, these apps and tech tricks are what the IBT team swears by for productive work days!

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1. Asana

We’re hardcore Asana stans over here! From reminders to send follow up emails to tracking tasks for writing the articles we love to write (and you love to read!), our team loves using Asana’s task tracking system to stay on top of all the things!

2. Slack

Are you even working in the 21st century if you’re not living that Slack life?! We use Slack for easy access to communicate with each other to follow up on ideas, questions, projects, and, of course, to chat about the latest episode of The Bachelor that we all watched the previous night. Slack is super helpful for allowing us to check in with each other for quick questions without having to send an email, which could easily get buried in our inboxes!

3. Spotify

We love having Spotify on in the background while we work to have some music playing to keep us motivated! While our tastes range from lofi beats to Taylor Swift’s latest album, we all prefer having a little background noise rather than complete silence to keep the day from feeling like it’s dragging on.

4. Toggl

Toggl is a desktop app that allows you to start and stop a timer to track how long it takes you to work on a task, which can be super helpful to find out which tasks are taking longer than expected (or necessary!). Our team loves to use Toggl to help figure out where we could be even more efficient in our workdays, which is always a win!

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5. Mailtrack

If your job is anything like ours, it includes lots of time spent in what one of our editors affectionately calls “an inbox hole.” Mailtrack creates notifications to let you know if, and when, a recipient has opened your email, which can end up saving you so much time! If we can see that someone hasn’t yet read our email, we’re not stressing about sending a follow up email just yet to see if they’re interested in our idea.

6. Notion

If you need a glowing recommendation for Notion, one of our editors literally said “I could simply not exist without Notion” – it doesn’t get more convincing than that! It’s a task management system similar to Asana, but with tons of customization options to create a more unique experience to fit your own needs. Sign us up!!!

7. Focus Mode on our iPhones

One of the saving graces each and every one of our team members relies on is the Focus Mode setting on our iPhones. We love this feature during work hours to limit text notifications to only our team members so that we aren’t distracted by friends or family members popping into our phones throughout the day. A major benefit of working from home is the flexibility that comes with it, but we don’t want that to start dragging down our work quality by ending up on FaceTime with a friend for over an hour, which we’d never do if we were in an office. 

*Pro tip: get outside for a little fresh air and exercise each day and take a midday walk around your neighborhood – this is the perfect time to check your phone and respond to any non-work related texts or calls that have come in so far that day!


8. Alarms on our iPhones

A few of our editors have found that they work most efficiently when they time block their days to do batch work, meaning they’ll set a timer to focus on one specific task at a time, rather than jumping back and forth between multiple projects. Using timers and alarms on our phones is the easiest way for us to stay on task and to let us know when it’s time to move on to the next item on our to-do list!

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Already use some (or all!) of these apps? Drop a comment and let us know which one is your fave! Are there any that we missed? Tell us below so that we can be in the loop and we’ll all be our best working selves!