My favourite productivity apps

Photo by William Hook on Unsplash

I started reviewing apps on my phone this weekend and started cleaning them up as some of them have been sitting idle on my phone for a long time. This encouraged me to review existing subscriptions with some of my apps and write this article on my favourite apps/tools that help improve my productivity. Please note that these are the tools I use for my personal productivity, and I’m excluding the ones I use exclusively for work. The list contains a mix of free and paid apps, and wherever I’m paying for a subscription, I’ll try to provide free alternatives and explain why the apps I pay for are worth every penny.

1. Notion: Notion describes itself as an all-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. I use it to write down my todos, set up reminders and take notes. It is essentially my second brain which I use for storage. What is different about Notion is it is incredibly flexible and allows customised templates. For example, you can use Notion as a project management software or build a personal website with these templates. It is free to use, and the free plan is more than enough for my usage. If you haven’t heard of it yet, try it once and thank me later!
2. 1password: Do you remember your passwords for various sites? If so, chances are you may be using a shared or easily guessable password for almost all of your apps. What if one of these apps is compromised? You either need to change the password across all other apps or by the time you realise this, someone might have already used the credentials and changed your password. Another reason to use a password management tool is that you can potentially share credentials for financial apps such as banks/investment brokers with your partner/family. This is the primary reason why I use 1password. I’ve subscribed to their family plan, which allows me to invite up to 5 guests, and I can safely share credentials for my bank accounts with my partner. While 1password doesn’t have a free version, there are a lot of apps, such as KeePass, LastPass or Bitwarden, which you can use for personal use. However, if you want to take a family plan, I found 1password is relatively cheap ($2.5/month) compared to others.
3. Grammarly: Grammarly is like a proofreading tool. I use it both for my work and personal use — for example, writing articles on Medium etc. It provides real-time feedback on spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity improvements and writing style, among other things. It has a free version which offers basic features, and I’ve not checked out any free tools that do the same thing. I’m super happy with Grammarly as it addresses my OCD with making the content spelling and grammatical mistakes free. If you still find any mistakes here, you know who to blame :)
4. Google One: By default, Google provides 15GB of personal storage across all their services. If you are a heavy user of Gmail or Google photos, you will likely need a Google One subscription, a cloud storage service that gets you 100GB of space for $2 a month. Apart from Gmail, I use Google Drive extensively to store important files online and share them with my family members. I believe it is exceptionally cheap and has many plans compared to alternative apps such as Dropbox or iCloud.
5. Calm: Calm is an app for sleep and meditation and is a paid app. It offers you sleep stories, guided meditation, and music. We are in challenging times, and I don’t have to tell you how important it is to be mindful of your thoughts and feelings. I started meditation a few years ago but never practised it regularly nor was able to reap the benefits of meditation. I found myself stuck in constant mind chatter many times in the past and started exploring tools to practice mindfulness. I found Calm several months ago and started using it for 10 mins every day. After I got used to it, I’m now able to meditate without the app. There are a lot of free apps out there for meditation, and I encourage you to try them to see what works best for you. I believe if you can sit idle observing your thoughts for 10 mins on your own, you are good. You don’t need any tools!
6. Medium: Ironically, I’m talking about Medium on Medium. It is my favourite platform to consume and create digital content. As Ankur Warikoo, a famous Indian entrepreneur, says: If you want to understand the world better, read. If you want to understand yourself better, write. I use Medium daily to read on various topics ranging from managing personal finance to book recommendations to articles about DevOps. I occasionally write too on Medium. While you can access articles on Medium for free, you can’t read more than three locked stories per month. (A locked story is one you have to pay to read, and writers can choose to lock a story so only Medium members can read them). There are some tricks like opening the same story via an incognito window in a browser, which won’t work after a specific limit. The membership costs $5 a month, and I think it is worth it.
7. Journey: Journey is a journal app designed to keep your memories private. I don’t religiously do journaling, but when I’m on vacation or travelling or bored, I grab my phone, open the Journey app, and talk about whatever comes to my mind. I don’t share the videos anywhere, and I play them whenever I’m free. It helps me improve my storytelling skills.
8. Spotify: Spotify needs no introduction. It is an audio streaming provider, and most of its users use it to listen to music. However, I use Spotify to only listen to podcasts. While most users pay for its service, I’ve not come across a need to take a premium subscription. This is because you don’t get ads in the middle of the podcast. I’ve seen visual ads on the app, but that doesn’t interrupt the listening experience. You may wonder, why is Spotify a productivity tool? This is because I mostly listen to podcasts while working out, commuting to work, or going for a walk. It makes the whole experience much better.
9. Kindle: Kindle is an e-reader designed and marketed by Amazon. If you are an avid reader, I’d highly encourage you to buy a kindle for yourself. If you don’t want to buy one, you can download the Kindle app and get access to the Kindle library and all the digital books you buy on Amazon. While it is not a substitute for paperback, it has its advantages. I like the in-built dictionary, and given that English is not my first language, I find it extremely useful. You can also highlight the text and email the content for later consumption.
10. Udemy/Skillshare: If you want to level up your skills, you need one of these platforms to pick up new knowledge by taking online classes. They offer a premium membership that grants you unlimited access to their course library. In my case, my company offers a free subscription to Udemy, and I used it in the past to complete some certifications.
11. Expense Tracking: I’ve dedicated a whole article in one of my previous posts about the tools I use to manage personal finances and investments. If you are interested, you can check it out here. However, I’ve not covered what app(s) I use to track personal expenses in that article. So, I want to introduce an app called Lunar here briefly. I use it to track all my costs in Sweden, the place I live. It provides a physical card that you can use as a debit card for all transactions. At the beginning of every month, I transfer some money from my bank account to my Lunar account and perform all transactions via a Lunar card. This way, I can categorize my expenses in the app easily. It also provides interest on the money you park in your account as a bonus. This is cool in Sweden, where the traditional banks won’t offer any interest on your savings account.

This is it from my toolbox for now. If you use any apps/tools that improve your productivity, feel free to share them with me in the comments below. And if you find this article useful, please like/share/subscribe to my article.