It is a new year, the time when many people feel they are at their most productive—emerging from the holidays rested (hopefully) and with fresh goals and resolutions to follow. But those good vibes rarely last more than a few months, or a few weeks if you’re really dedicated. What do you rely on to keep you fresh and motivated when that burst of energy dissipates?
While there is no substitute for your own inherent drive to succeed, there are lots of accessible tools that can provide support and help you sustain a more productive work schedule in 2024. These five products can make a big difference as you work to make your goals worth more than the paper you write them on this year:
Todoist
Best for people who love the catharsis of checking things off a to-do list, the aptly named Todoist is a relatively simple mobile app with automatic reminders and the ability to interpret conversational language into action items. Billed as being as “simple or as complicated as you want,” Todoist should be leveraged to keep your momentum up, turning daily or weekly tasks into routines so your productivity doesn’t fade as your attention does.
Cloze
Part CRM, part social aggregator, Cloze claims it can integrate all your personal and professional contacts in contextual, intuitive ways. Sorting and scoring all the posts, messages, life updates, alerts and other activity across your whole social network—from Twitter to professional email accounts—Cloze aims to simplify and organize how you manage your social life. From a real estate business perspective, the ability to follow or interact across multiple platforms is incredibly valuable, and managing all these relationships in one place can help you maintain contacts that otherwise would have fallen on the wayside.
Habitica
More focused on the fun and lighthearted aspects of productivity, Habitica is a great solution for those who like games and quantifying their progress. Turning tasks into fantasy-like quests, this program offers imaginary rewards for the goals you set, all customizable for the pace and style you prefer. As an open-source program, Habitica might require a little more input to become useful, but its imaginative approach to task-setting and to-do lists can help prevent burnout as the year wears on.
RescueTime
If you are a doom-scroller or prone to meandering web adventures during work hours, this program can at least let you know what—and where—the problem is. Tracking your online habits in the background, RescueTime can tell you when you are getting distracted, what you are spending your time on and then offer potential solutions. A great place to start for people who want to set new productivity goals, RescueTime can potentially help you understand focus or motivation challenges you weren’t even aware of, and quantify them in a way that allows you to find solutions that will last.
To reiterate, none of these tools—or really any piece of software or shiny new app—can motivate you on its own. Don’t waste your time and money on these types of products if you don’t also have your own drive to achieve your goals, or improve your business. But sometimes that spark inside you still needs kindling, especially over time, and these programs might just provide effective long-term fuel for your productivity.
