5 Free Productivity Tools that Can Help You Do Things Better and Faster

So much work to do, so little time - the typical entrepreneur’s day.

I personally am having problem organising my mind and time because there are so many things going on in my mind.

More often than not, I try to do multiple things at once. Although multitasking ability is generally good, but the downside is its ability to drain your energy just to catch things up.

Entrepreneur’s typical day

Here’s an example of my typical day before changes made:

I got up early at 5.00 AM - I check my emails, and reply to emails needed to respond. Along the way, I receive some notifications that my blogs visitors have left comments - I go to my blogs right away to reply for comments (my policy - 1 comment received, 1 reply. Period)

At 6.00 AM, I end up still replying for comments, while I started to read through various news for blog posts idea. And then I receive an email or two for advertisement inquiries. I go back to my inbox and reply to them ASAP.

At 7.00 AM, I start writing some blog posts, and do some blog commenting on interesting blog posts I found from the blogosphere. Then I remember I need to respond to my employees SMS and emails. And I need to redesign one of my web properties.

And it’s just 7.00 AM in the morning. And it’s my typical, unorganised, days. And I have no weekend. And I have to help my wife taking care of my kids. And I need to have time for myself.

Whoa.

5 free productivity tools I use

I try to organise conventionally - post-its, notes, etc. - But I ended up with a pile of papers that look like a scrapbooking in progress on my home office desk.

This gotta stop.

Luckily, the Net offers tons of possibilities to help you be efficient and effective. Although some of them are paid services, of course for an obvious reason - more functions, more perks, I use several tools that are free.

Without further adieu, these are 5 free productivity tools I often use to actually free some time to do other than work - family quality time, hobby and interest, and more:

1. Brainstorming and Mind mapping
   I use Bubbl.us for my brainstorming and mind mapping. It’s free, innovative, easy to use and you can save your mind maps into your account. One of the best mind mapping tools on the Net.
2. To-do list & planning tool
   For a simple to do list on the go, I use Wipee List - You can create to-do list, strike-through on completed ones, and share your to do list to others. For a more comprehensive planning tool, that includes to-do list, I use Zoho Planner. You can create notes, reminder, to-do list - like many good organiser can do. Both tools are free.
3. Bookmark
   I bookmark most of the sites I found interesting to Del.icio.us. It is as good as the others, such as Mag.no.lia, only more popular :) You can, of course, share your bookmarks to others, unless you make the bookmarked sites private.
4. Stickies
   One of the most interesting tool I found, MyStickies actually ’stick’ notes on the web page you saved, for free. It works like bookmarking sites, such as Del.icio.us, but for a more private use.
5. Start page and dashboard
   The start page of all start pages :) iGoogle is free and you can put almost everything inside - Calendar, weather, news updates, interesting quotes, etc. I often use my iGoogle to keep updated for interesting news to blog.

There are way many more tools I use, but the 5 above are the ones I often use and recommend.

What tools do you use? Please share by commenting to this blog post :)

Ivan Widjaya
Organising productivity
Image by psd.

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