Tech Tools: Four Easy-to-Use Productivity Boosters

In a new Tech Tools column, news editor Andrew Sheivachman discusses productivity tools that will save you time and increase your efficiency.

When it comes to staying on-task at work, summer challenges the best of us. It’s easy to find yourself distracted by the lure of long balmy days, fireworks, barbecues and the like.

At work, too, there are more digital distractions than ever before. Here are four technology tools that will help you accomplish more work in less time.

Checkmark: location-based reminders
Your cellphone probably lets you set a reminder to take out the garbage, email clients or pick up spaghetti on your drive home. But what good are reminders when you’re already doing something else?

Checkmark for your iPhone or Android device allows you to set a reminder for specific locations, adding a useful twist to normal reminders.

For instance, you can remind yourself to call a client 15 minutes after you get home, or to pick up cookies for your staff when you drive past a supermarket.

You can also list your tasks by distance, which is useful if you have to spend an evening running errands following a hectic workday. The app costs $5.

SelfRestraint: Tame your addictions
Let’s face it: the Internet is full of distractions, whether it’s checking on old friends on Facebook or demolishing your cousin Bill in online Scrabble. Imagine if it weren’t so easy to tumble down the online rabbit hole – you’d surely get a lot more done at work.

SelfRestraint is a nifty program that lets you block individual websites for a set amount of time. Name your distractions and block them out for however long you want.

You can still access your work email and systems, unlike other programs that block your entire Internet connection. You’ll be surprised how productive you’ll be when Facebook disappears from your life for a few hours.

Also, it’s free.

Asana: Project management
If you manage a small team, or work on one, it can be a challenge to stay up to date on your co-workers’ progress. Here’s one way to spend less time in meetings and more time selling travel.

Asana streamlines the work process by allowing you and your co-workers to organize and assign tasks. Then you set a due date, and check in on projects as they happen. The tool groups all your conversations about specific tasks, helping to hold people accountable and hone in on important milestones. There are mobile apps, as well, to let you track all this on the go.

Asana is free for teams of up to 15 members, and reasonably priced for larger organizations, starting from $50 a month for a team of 15 memberes.

Feedly: Read more
If you start off your work day by clicking through a long list of website bookmarks, you’re not alone. But you can still miss vital news items that would help you in your business or be useful information for your clients, not to mention wasting precious time doing so.

Feedly has a fix: You can now aggregate all the news you need in one place. Just feed it the websites and blogs you like to read, and Feedly will update automatically anytime a site adds something new. (Make sure to add Travel Market Report to your feed, of course! And making us your homepage couldn’t hurt either.)

With Feedly, you can access all your news from any smartphone, keeping you updated as you travel as well.