8 Tools That Will Increase Your Productivity

Whether you are a small business owner or an office worker, you are probably always interested in ways to work better and smarter. The importance of finding the right business management solution can be the difference between success and failure, and based on the small business statistics you always hear about, you need to focus your efforts where they are most important. Here you will find 8 tools that will increase your productivity while introducing you to new ways to think and work.

A.nnotate.com – an amazing tool that allows you to upload documents and then annotate them. This is perfect for distributed workgroups where team members can log in to post their annotations to images and Office documents directly from their browser. You can decide what documents to share, which to keep private, and which to make publicly available. This way you don’t have to pass around papers or consolidate multiple revised documents into one. All your documents and annotations are indexed by the system so you can quickly locate your documents. This service is free for up to 30 pages. You can pay for additional pages or pay a monthly subscription.

Aviary – a powerful image manipulation program that lets you work with your pictures with Etch-A-Sketch controls as a Facebook app. Other features of this web-based tool include a screen capture program (a Firefox extension), an image markup function, an image colour editor, music creator, vector editor and more. You can find templates, filters, logo tools, colour palettes and an array of amazing creative tools that make it easy to work with your images and sounds. Best of all, these powerful tools are free.

InFormEnter – a Firefox add-on that speeds the completion of online forms. If you do much business on the Internet, you know how much time you can save by clicking a small button near each for field to enter stored data rather than having to type in the same data over and over again. Download this free tool and start cruising through form details and on to productive work.

StumbleUpon – a toolbar that installs in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer, making it easy to stumble across the web. This helps because you can configure StumbleUpon to serve up only pages that you need to visit based on your profile. You define the type of sites you wish to visit such as “Design” and you can find resources that are pertinent to your business, making it easier and faster to find information you need. StumbleUpon and its toolbar plug-in are free.

Google Docs – an indispensable tool for online collaboration and productivity. Create files in Microsoft Office compatible formats and then save them online and share them with your team or with the public. This powerful suite of tools works through your browser so it is platform independent. Google Docs is free for most uses. Businesses can purchase the suite for use on their own domain through the Google Apps Marketplace.

IMified – enables your applications so that they will work with popular Instant Messaging services. This innovative approach to integration allows users to create “bots” that interact with your web applications in real time. IMified is a development platform that gives you important capabilities to integrate with your website visitors. With this platform, you can design and create and only pay when you have an application that is ready to go live.

ToDoIst – a free web-based task list management program that gives you impressive capabilities within a simple interface. Configure tasks with a calendar using recurring and hierarchy structures all within your favourite browser. Get reminders, Google integration, and mobile access all from this application that is essential to any effort to get things done.

Leechblock – a Firefox add-on that allows you to block time wasting websites like Facebook and YouTube so you can spend your time working rather than doing other things. By installing this free add-on, you can reinforce yourself against your weaknesses and get more things done.

These 8 tools that will increase your productivity will help you stay focused on your work while working smarter and faster than ever before. Try them all and see for yourself.