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Six Productivity Apps That Can Give You A Dose Of Inspiration

I anticipate that these productivity apps will inspire you for years to come.

By Anshul KumarPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
Six Productivity Apps That Can Give You A Dose Of Inspiration
Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

At some point in the life of everyone, a little spring of inspiration can be helpful.

It might be time to consider some exciting apps that have been around for a while but are here to stay, especially if a couple of your resolutions are wearing out in the context of day-to-day life.

Listed below are six ways to jumpstart your business and feel motivated again.

So let’s get started.

1. Obsidian — for note-taking.

Obsidian is a free note-taking system available for your desktop. It allows you to create a second brain system.

All the notes you write are connected, allowing you to build a knowledge graph. Obsidian is best for pure note-taking, brainstorming, research, and overall building wikis or Zettelkasten in its basic form.

Obsidian is very simple to use, but you can include around 20 plugins to maximize its power, and there are many community-made add-ons you can try as well.

Obsidian works with plain text markdown, allowing sync encryption and any data processing that works with simple text files.

Obsidian is an excellent tool for people who worry about Notion security issues and are looking for a different app. This is why obsidian has a paid add-on of its own called ‘sync’ that adds a bunch of security features that will protect everything — notes, photos, and other sensitive data.

Take Better Notes With This Free Note-Taking App That Wants to Be Your Second Brain.

Obsidian makes connecting ideas easy and helps you think and write better.

2. Habitica — for habit tracking.

Habit tracking relies a lot on the right cues and the proper discipline and motivation mechanisms.

Keeping track of your habits is essential to give you a boost of motivation.

Habitica lets you track habits and goals while providing a whole gaming experience to level up your character, unlock skills, and other items.

If you need that extra something or don’t enjoy simple habit trackers or if you’re competitive or naturally into video games, then Habitica is worth a try.

3. Google Calendar — for time blocking & appointments.

Google Calendar doesn’t need any introduction nowadays, but it’s still my favorite calendar app.

It just works with most productivity apps that require calendar services. Google Calendar makes it a safe option for any future in-app integration, and its native app is powerful and beautiful looking.

To maximize its power, I work with different calendars and compile various activities and areas of interest into one calendar.

Embedding tasks into your calendar is also a great idea if you’re a fan of keeping the main to-do list and adding jobs to your calendar.

A few more calendar apps worth mentioning are — Spark (for mail and calendar) and Calendar.ai.

You may read more on calendar blocking here.

I Started Time Blocking For Six days, And This Is What I Achieved

My experiences how my productivity levels went up with time blocking

4. ClickUp — one place for all your work.

If Obsidian has earned its recognition as a note-taking app, ClickUp needs to take the trophy for powerful task management and project planning.

The learning curve may feel a bit steep sometimes, but it is a powerful app that has earned productivity. Not to mention that it’s available on all platforms, has an offline mode, and its free version is compelling.

ClickUp also integrates with hundreds of different apps. So you can import calendar events, notes from Trello or Todoist, and even files from your cloud storage.

In terms of task management, the app has many different templates and tools. It provides users with many different ways to organize tasks at varying levels of detail and priority.

5. Day One — Journalling App.

Day One is a great journaling app featuring a great design and intuitive interface.

You can add many different media to your journal entries making the whole concept of digital journaling more fun and more complete. It also features end-to-end encryption.

So just like the paid version of Obsidian, your information, photos, and videos are safe.

If you prefer to journal on your computer, there’s an app for your mac as well.

Unfortunately, Day One is only available for Mac and iOS. But if you like an equally powerful experience for windows, I recommend either Live Journal or Glimpses.

6. Scrivner — for structured writing.

For any structured writing or any writing meant for publishing, Scrivener is probably the best investment you can make.

Although Scrivner is a word processor at its core, it includes many organizing features for your manuscript, including an outline feature where you can move things around.

Scrivner has a place to include your back research and even publishing features.

The other exciting thing about scrivener is that you can methodically work both, starting from a draft and then carving your way into a more detailed and finished product, or you can begin typing and then organize your topics or chapters later.

If you’re working on a heavily researched project, you can easily open both pages simultaneously to be able to reference just in case.

How to Get Started with Scrivener: The Writing App for Organized, Efficient Writers

Final Thoughts.

So, here were my picks, and do let me know if you know of any other productivity or inspirational apps that you are a part of your workflow.

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About the Creator

Anshul Kumar

I’m a business & productivity consultant, YouTuber, and blogger. I write on productivity, tech, and life lessons. Get access to FREE newsletter: https://bit.ly/3eJFcKT

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