13th Dec, 2023
Productivity tracking apps are there to help you understand the way you work and improve productivity, time management and focus levels when working. By tracking your productivity you will create better quality work in better time.
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You may have never thought about using productivity tracking apps before, but how can you measure to improve without tracking something?
Here on Tool Finder, you can discover many productivity apps to help with getting things done, this list of Reminder Apps and Tools might be a good place to start.
Maybe you have landed here because you recognize your productivity levels are decreasing, your work isn't as good as it should be and you are always behind, with a forever-growing pile of things to do, with seemingly little time.
If that's the case, it's time to give one of the best productivity tracking apps a go to finally measure your productivity to improve time management, focus, and quality of work.
A productivity tracking app is a tool to help individuals and teams improve their productivity levels by tracking how they spend their time, how much they focus, where they are most productive, least productive, and so on.
You can use a singular application such as a timer app to track how long you can focus, to then analyze your focus time and see where you can improve. Some applications will also guide you in improving your time in focus.
You can then use a more all-in-one productivity tracking application to monitor your time, focus, context switching, and distractions and give you reports on where you can make changes to increase productivity.
So what are the key components of a productivity-tracking app? Here's a short list to explain the main features of the apps we have within this list.
Here's our list of the best productivity-tracking apps to help you track and measure your work to help you get more done, manage time better and focus on tasks at hand.
Listed in no particular order, these productivity tracking apps are great for helping you easily merge a new application into your daily routine whilst working to track your time, focus and overall productiveness.
Here's a list of all the apps mentioned in this list of best productivity tracking apps with their in-depth reviews here on Tool Finder.
Toggl Track provides a really neat place for teams to manage where time is being spent, how much time is left on projects and how to bill payable hours and minutes to teammates, freelancers and contractors.
However, we aren't here to talk about billable hours, just how Toggl Track helps with productivity tracking. The two biggest features of Toggl Track for productivity tracking is the ability to easily track time spent by team members. You can use tons of integrations and the web browser to track time spent working on projects and tasks.
Then within reports and insights, you can filter, sort and export reports to share in meetings or with clients to represent where time has been spent. You can also go through reports to analyse how well your team is working and see where you can make improvements.
Timemator is a really neat productivity-tracking app for Mac and iOS. It will automatically track where you spend your time so you can go back in and analyse it and assign time to tasks you were completing.
You can create rules to automatically start a timer when you begin working on a project. This also works by connecting with apps you use to carry out tasks. By having an automatic timer you can be sure to keep track of time spent, however you can also use the manual traditional timer as well.
Once you have tracked time spent on a task or project you can go into Timemator to organise that task into a folder. This just helps with creating the report and breaking down how you spend time.
Finally, you can see reports and billable hours with Timemator too. You can see your report in multiple views such as a daily timeline, weekly timeline, and an entire month overview.
Session is a good place to start with productivity tracking because it provides a simple and easy way to track time and ensure you are focusing on just one task at a time. All you have to do is simply start the timer and begin your focus session on the task you have chosen.
With Session you can also use the app like a Pomodoro Timer, this means including timed breaks into your focus sessions to allow you to work for longer and create better quality work without the risk of burnout.
With the Mac version of Session, you can now block distracting applications to ensure your focus is just on your task. This is helpful if you have recognised you often context-switch between apps and procrastinate.
Finally, as with most productivity tracking applications you can also see reports at the end of each day to assess how well you have spent time and how you can improve your productivity through time tracking.
Freedom is a unique and clever application for productivity tracking with the sense of removing all the distractions that are getting in the way of you completing work.
With Freedom, you can start a session whenever you want or create a focused schedule with specific apps and websites. This helps users create focus routines and create a habit of focusing on tasks and learning to remove distractions.
Freedom not only allows you to block apps from popping up or you being able to access them whilst working, but it can also block websites and the entire internet if that's what you need. To make sessions easier, you can create specific block lists to help get started quickly, all you have to do is tick all the apps and websites you want to block.
MagicFlow is another productivity-tracking app that works in the background to track where you spend your time, potential distractions, context switches and more. It then provides a report of where you have spent time and how you can improve your productivity in certain areas.
MagicFlow also allows you to create focus sessions with a live timer on your screen. This live timer helps keep you motivated to focus on your tasks to get it done, it will also alert you when you have been distracted and push you back onto completing your task.
Then at the end of each day, you can take a look at your report and see how much time you have spent in a range of different aspects such as how often you switched contexts, how much time you spent in a deep focus and how long your productivity sessions are.
There are many ways you can track your productivity, of course, a productivity tracking application makes the process a lot easier, but what's the breakdown of tracking productivity?
First of all, you're going to want to track your time better, by tracking the time you spend on tasks you will gain a better understanding of where you best work, which time of the day you work the longest and when you can get the most work done.
Any of the productivity tools listed above to assist with time tracking will help with this, especially tracking apps that provide daily reports.
Next, you need to get into the habit of reading these reports and analysing them. This is the whole point of tracking productivity.
By reading and understanding your reports you can then assess where you need to make changes. Maybe you discover you work best in the evenings, and you need to cut out certain distractions.
Then, you can start breaking down your tasks into the best times to work, and track time from here.
It will take a while to create a new productive working habit but over time if you keep tracking productivity and checking reports you will get to a place where you are producing great quality work within a good amount of time.
Amongst this, you want to eliminate distractions that are ruining your productivity levels, applications such as Freedom do a great job of making sure you cannot access distracting apps whilst working.
Out of all the apps listed above, which one is best for you? Here are three categories to consider.
Dozens of apps. One subscription. Only $9.99.
With a single monthly subscription at $9.99, you get 240+ apps for your Mac.
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