20 Of The Best Apps For Boosting Your Productivity

If you struggle to focus on your work, there are plenty of apps you can use to help you out and boost your productivity.

When it comes to studying or completing uni work, we can often think of our phones and laptops as a distraction (no thanks to social media).

However, your phone can actually be a super useful tool to help you learn better and to help boost your productivity. Whether you struggle to focus on doing your uni work or you just can’t find the motivation to do it, here are some of the best productivity apps to help you focus and smash your uni work or day-to-day goals.

1. Todoist

If you want to make the first steps towards getting more organised, Todoist allows you to group tasks together based on different projects. This is essentially an upgrade of your regular to-do list, which has loads of benefits to help you get your life together and see what you need to do clearly.

You can also collaborate with other people and assign and share tasks with them, so it’s good for group work in uni.

2. Hive

If you like to keep your work synced across all platforms, you can download Hive’s desktop and mobile applications so you can access all of your work in one place.

You can create tasks, assign them to other people and collaborate on them and it’s really good for group projects that involve multiple people. So, if you’re trying to organise a group project over WhatsApp, downloading Hive might help you out significantly.

3. Drafts

If you’re always taking notes, but they’re hard to read when you go back to them or they’re just a bit of a mess, you’ll want to download Drafts. You can go hands-free with diction if you prefer to speak rather than write things down, you can customise your notes to make them clear and easy to understand and you can download the app for both your phone and desktop too.

4. 24me

Every wished you had a personal assistant to help you get your life in order? Well, 24me is the personal assistant you never knew you needed.

The app allows you to put your calendar, to-do lists, and notes in the same place and basically does all of the hard work for you. It organises your schedule, gives you auto-reminders to do things and auto-completes tasks and errands. Basically, once you download it, you will not be able to live without it.

5. Trello

Trello is one of the best productivity apps. You can organise and customise projects, share them with other people and organise things on boards so you can clearly see what needs to be done and what’s being worked on.

It’s ideal for project managing group projects, but it’s also super customisable for solo use too so you can use it for your personal to-do lists or individual coursework, or group uni projects.

6. IFTTT (If This Then That)

IFTTT (If This Then That) is an automation tool that helps to connect all of your apps in one place. If there are apps you can’t live without and you use regularly (such as your calendar, notes, FitBit, Smart Home tools etc.)

You can use the app to set up auto-reminders for all of these different apps, even simple things like drinking more water. You can also automate repetitive tasks that you have to do every day to help you boost your productivity by switching your focus to other things.

7. Calendly

Calendely is a really good app for scheduling meetings, without having to put the work in to do it. Due to the pandemic and the rise of virtual and online working, it’s highly likely you’ll probably be opting to meet with other people on your course via a Zoom call instead of in person, especially now that it’s been normalised.

Calendly is a really good way for you to schedule calls and meetings like this, without having to organise it yourself. You simply select what times you’re free and whoever you invite to a meeting will choose the best time slot for them when you send them a Calendly link and there you have it, your meeting is scheduled.

8. Brain.fm

If you find that listening to music helps you to study and focus, Brain.fm is a really handy productivity-boosting app. The app plays music that is designed to help you focus, relax, sleep or meditate.

The app will play music that will work best for what you need it for, so if you’re having trouble sleeping it will play something that is scientifically proven to relax you, and if you’re trying to revise it will play something that can boost your focus.

9. Evernote

Some people prefer to write notes by hand and others prefer to write them digitally. Whatever you prefer, Evernote is a great app that can help you to collect all of your notes in one place.

If you write handwritten notes, you can take photos of them and upload them to the app to store them with your digital notes so that everything is all in one place. You can also easily search for your notes, both digital and handwritten and group and organise them in a way that works for you. So, if you don’t want to carry notepads across campus you can keep your notes on your phone for easy access whenever you need them.

10. Forest

Forest is probably one of the coolest productivity apps there is. If you struggle to focus on your work and keep checking your phone every 5 minutes, only to get lost in a TikTok hole the Forest app will change your life.

Every time you want to do some serious work, open the Forest app and plant a tree. The tree will grow as long as you don’t touch your phone (and if you do, or exit the app your tree will die). If you work hard and use the app regularly you’ll be able to grow an entire forest, which can be very fun and rewarding and put a little incentive into your studying. You can even collect different species to help make your forest even better if you successfully use the app without breaking your focus!

11. Plant Nanny

If you struggle to remember to drink water, Plant Nanny will make sure you never forget ever again. Plant Nanny is a really fun (and definitely addictive) app that will track your daily water intake.

Every time you log that you drink water, you will be able to grow and water cute little plants and flowers on the app. If you’re not drinking water, you guessed it- they’ll die. You can customise the app and grow an entire garden if you want, but only if you’re keeping track of your water and remembering to drink it in real life.

12. Toggl

If you want to keep track of how long you’re spending doing certain tasks, Toggl can make that nice and simple for you. You can easily track how much time you’re spending and create custom reports to help you identify how to improve your time management.

It’s also really good for collaborative work, so if you’re struggling to work with other people you can all see what each other is working on and how much time you’re spending on doing things.

13. Engross

Ok, so you’re sat down and ready to do some work but you just keep losing focus and can’t stick to the schedule you’ve planned in your head. This is where Engross comes in. The app uses the Pomodoro technique, where you break down work into smaller intervals of 25-30 minutes and have mini-breaks in between that last a couple of minutes.

You can customise your timer on Engross to make it work for you, based on how long you want to study and take your breaks. The distraction tracker also allows you to press a button every time you get distracted, and it will compile a report showing you what points in the day you get most distracted which is super useful for you to learn from.

14. Krisp

Krisp is a noise-cancelling app that can help to remove noise that is coming from the background of other apps. If you’re on a Zoom call and you’re picking up noisy feedback, Krisp can be used both on mobile and desktop and can connect to other apps that you use, to help remove background noise.

If you’re recording Zoom calls or meetings, it can help you to receive clear recordings and professionally cancel out background noise.

15. Cold Turkey

If you really struggle to focus while you’re studying, Cold Turkey is a simple but effective way to remove those distractions. Cold Turkey starts a timer and will block all websites that you deem as a distraction until you’ve finished your work.

So if you’re studying and you’re tempted to check social media, you literally won’t be able to until your timer is finished. If you think you can get around this by turning the timer off, you can’t you won’t be able to unblock the websites until the timer is complete, and you will set the timer to the correct time so you’ll have to use that time to study and be productive.

16. Tide

Tide is a really nice productivity app that mixes multiple different features together to boost your productivity and wellness. The app allows you to set up focused study sessions on timers that work for you, can play relaxing sounds to help you focus and if you get tempted to exit the app to check social media you’ll end up completely failing the focus session, and no one wants that.

It also promotes wellness too, as, after all, it’s important to look after yourself while you’re studying. You can track sleep, water intake, meditate and access inspirational quotes daily to help you feel motivated to smash your goals.

17. Motion

If you find your laptop a distraction because you like to online shop or use the internet to do anything but study, Motion can help you to block these distractions and shift your focus into being more productive.

Motion will block social media temporarily but will allow you 1 minute to quickly check what you need but after that, you’ll have to get back to your work. You’ll also receive a handy report showing you how much time you’re spending being productive or distracted, which is useful to help you work out when best to study.

18. Noisil

Noisil is another app that can help to remove distractions by helping you to create the right mood with sounds. It’s a really good app for boosting productivity as it can replicate relaxing scenarios such as a cosy coffee shop or relaxing fire to help you feel more focused on whatever it is you’re trying to do.

19. Pocket

If you ever see something and think, oh yeah I’d like to save that for later or make a mental note to come back to it, Pocket is the app you need. You can easily save content from everywhere, and keep things accessible for when you need them whether this is articles, blog posts or Tweets, Pocket will help you keep it all in place.

20. Quizlet

Quizlet allows you to easily create flashcards to help you to memorise important info for your exams. If you suck at making flashcards, Quizlet can help you take the hard work out of that too as you can access flashcards made by other students.

There’s also a built in game feature, which allows you to race against the clock to try and memorise and learn things so if you’re struggling to remember important info this is a really great app to try out.

So, if you struggle to focus these apps can help to boost your productivity and change how you work. University can be super challenging when it comes to exam season, but also on a week to week basis we could all probably do with switching up our habits to help us learn better and be more productive.

Whether your goal is to drink more water or stop being distracted by social media, curating your phone or laptop to suit your needs and downloading productivity apps can take your phone from being distracting to a super useful tool to help you work better and focus on your goals.