As we now enter Spring, it’s a time where we get that burst of renewed energy and start to grow, thawing from winter just like the flowers and trees. But those good vibes don’t always make it to Summer, let alone the rest of the year. What do you rely on to keep you fresh and motivated when that burst of energy dissipates?
While there is no substitute for an inherent drive to succeed among your team members, there are lots of accessible tools that can provide support and help your team sustain a more productive work schedule in 2024. These five products can make a big difference as your team works 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 team’s momentum up, turning daily or weekly tasks into routines so your members productivity doesn’t fade as their 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 team’s 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 your team 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 your team members set, all customizable for the pace and style they 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 your team members know what—and where—the problem is. Tracking your team member’s online habits in the background, RescueTime can tell a member when they are getting distracted, what they 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 your team understand focus or motivation challenges they weren’t even aware of, and quantify them in a way that allows your members to find solutions that will last.
To reiterate, none of these tools—or really any piece of software or shiny new app—can motivate your team on its own. Don’t waste time and money on these types of products if your team doesn’t also have its own drive to achieve your goals, or improve your business. But sometimes that spark inside still needs kindling, especially over time, and these programs might just provide effective long-term fuel for your team’s productivity.
