this is my dead cactus welcome back to the bliss bean today's video is gonna be all about apps that
I use for productivity and this is something that we talk a lot about in my productivity
challenge yeah by the time this video comes out the challenge will be starting tomorrow's so don't
forget to go in the description right now and sign up so that you don't forget we're doing the build
productive habits in 30 days email challenge starting tomorrow and I would love to have you
so anyways one of the things that we talked a lot about in the challenge is small changes that you
can make to your phone to make sure that it's less of a distraction and more of a useful tool
in your life so to kind of go along with that today I'll be sharing a bunch of apps that I
use for productivity so I'll be talking about these apps one by one and we'll start with the
ones that I use the most and then we'll work our way down from there so the number one app that I
use is definitely now then pro so this is a time tracking app so that's the reason why I use it the
most throughout the day I'm constantly opening it up to just switch to whatever task I'm working on
basically time tracking is tracking what you do and how long it takes you to do it that's
time driving in a nutshell I did a big video on it a couple of weeks ago I think and I've also
done a blog post on it so if you're interested in learning more about that I'll put the link to the
video up there and then the link to the blog post in my description I think it's an amazing tool for
productivity because it really shows you how you spend your time and it forces you to be honest
about the things that you're actually doing with your time so this is the app that I like to use
because I think doing it on paper is just a lot of work and then some people do it on a spreadsheet
but I think that's also a lot of work I think this is the absolute easiest way that you can do it and
if you're interested in learning how to use this app I did like a walkthrough in my other video
so again you should check that out my next app is this revolutionary app it's so revolutionary that
most smart phones actually come with it you don't even have to download it the clock app this I use
for the Pomodoro Technique basically it's where you set a timer for 25 minutes and you work and
then you set a timer for 5 minutes and you take a little break but I don't have one of those so
this will have to do personally when I warty I like to put my phone not just off to the side but
literally out of sight I don't know why but just seeing my phone distracts me so I would recommend
doing that as well ok third app is to do now this app is not spelled the To-Do like you would think
it is spelled teux deux very fancy schmancy so I actually just started using this app because
if you follow along on my Instagram I talked about how I was doing a little experiment to
see how I would like digital planning because I've been a very loyal paper planner for a long time I
actually have tried to digital planning and it just always failed for me but then I found this
new tool to do I think it's still pronounced to do and I tried it again and I absolutely loved
it cuz I think it fixed all of the problems that I previously had with digital planning the thing
that I didn't like most was that I couldn't see my entire week at a glance and you can do that
with to do it's just a very simple take on digital planning and I think it mimics my paper planning
system very well it just has the added benefit of being super portable and fast easy to use and you
can take your tasks and drag them around which is something that I use a lot because I like to
arrange my tasks in the order that I plan on doing them so I've actually been using this a lot and
you can quote me on this I think I've converted to digital planning this is a big step for me
guys I've got a video coming out soon on my new planning system because even though I tried to
keep the elements of my planning routine pretty much the same something had to change because
obviously it's a lot different from working with paper so keep an eye out for that ok the next
app is called I think it's called productive habits I mean if it has productive in the name
you know it's a good productivity app so this is basically a habit tracker I used to have a
paper habit tracker you know like where you get a grid you write down your habits and then every day
you fill in the little box and now just a pain to do because you have to actually open up your
planner find a pen and fill in the box every time that you do every little thing um but with this I
can just very quickly see what I have left to do and all I have to do to mark it as done is
swipe to get the satisfying little sound also it keeps track of your streaks so like for my
morning routine it says right below it that I have done 21 in a row and that's just really
motivating because you don't want to break your streak habit streaks before a snapchat streaks
kids okay next up is Gmail if he is Gmail and honestly I feel like 90% of the world uses Gmail
I did not obtain this number by any scientific means it's just something I've pulled out so I
like to use the Gmail app because I think it looks a lot better than the Apple Mail app I
just deleted the Apple Mail app from my phone it incorporates a lot of the features that I
like on the web version into the app so like you can apply labels which is something I use
religiously some people think it's weird that I literally have a label on every single email in
my inbox but um they also have this cool feature where I don't know how they do it I guess they
use robots that can read your emails that's cool that's not creepy and they actually automatically
suggest responses to emails that you've gotten so let me find an example so I got an email
from someone confirming a meeting time so email suggested that I respond with great thanks or
thank you or okay see you then I don't use this a ton but if you're the type of person who just
gets tons of emails in your inbox and you need to send quick responses to them this could be really
useful for you alright the next app is a photo editing app and I included this because it has
really streamlined like the editing process for me okay first of all I used to use my DSLR camera for
all of my Instagram pictures but I stopped doing that I think once I got my new phone because this
actually has a decent camera but I still had the problem of having to import my pictures onto my
computer because the only editing tool that worked for me was Lightroom so I would have
to import edit on my computer and then airdrop everything over and that just took way too long
so then Adobe came out with this mobile Lightroom app and it is a lifesaver it basically has all the
features you can find on the desktop version but packed into your phone okay so actually when I
filmed this video I was gonna tell you guys about how I have a reference photo and then every time
I want to edit an Instagram photo I copy all of the adjustments over but apparently I'm looking
now and Lightroom released a new feature two months ago and I literally found out about
just now you can actually make presets and not have to go through that step so that just makes
it even better so yeah I use Lightroom because it has so many different features it's the only app
I've been able to find where I can actually make all the little perfectionistic adjustments that
I always want to make the app is actually free I know that some of the features are locked if
you don't have a Creative Cloud subscription but even if you don't I know that a lot of it is still
accessible so if you like photography lightroom is for you next app is a budgeting app I like
to use the app mint comm and I made sure to show a part of it that didn't have any of my personal
information on it I'm saving up for my gap here right now and so it is really important to me that
I know where my money is going so this helps a lot with that if you're like me and you're just a very
basic user you don't have to use all the fancy features that they have but if you do want to
make really like fancy budgets and things you can also do that on this app it really like fits to
whatever kind of user you are one of the features that I do use is the goal setting feature so I set
a goal for how much I want to have saved up by the end of 2018 I forgot what year it was okay
don't judge me I used to do all of this on paper which was hard to remember to do and it's kind of
a mess and you couldn't like see all of your data compiled into one place so this is a lot better it
connects right to your bank accounts so it tracks all of your transactions automatically obviously
not the cash ones that you have to input yourself but it's also a nice way to be more mindful of
what you're buying so I don't really consider it a hassle okay next next is Google Drive
because Google Drive is my Savior I don't know how I would have gotten through now 12 years of school
without Google Drive so basically everything I do for school is on there and so it's very helpful
to happen on my phone I do also have Google Docs and Google slides if you're a student you probably
have had this happen to you when you only have the Google Drive app and you go and you see something
that you need to edit and you try to edit it and it tells you oh you have to download the actual
Google Docs app if you want to edit things not to see them so I make sure to have those downloaded
onto my phone even though I rarely use them because when I do need them I usually need them
very urgently because I'm about to turn something in for class next one is not really an app but I
think it's worth mention in my social apps folder I have a bookmark to my blog it just makes it
really easy access I highly recommend doing this if you have a blog or website because when I'm
making like social media posts on Instagram or Twitter and I need to get a link to a blog post
it's just right there I can go copy it and then paste it into whatever I'm posting very easy few
honorable mention apps there's the interval timer app it's mainly for workouts but I think if you
wanted to you could use it to do the poem door technique if you didn't want to set all of your
timers manually then there's also the sleep cycles app which is good for productivity because you
can't be productive if you're sleepy Evernote is awesome if you like to store information digitally
and then Google Calendar for obvious purposes for scheduling stuff so yeah those are the apps that I
use to keep my phone a useful and productive tool and not just a distraction um if you're interested
in some of the things that I talked about in this video like the Pomodoro Technique time
tracking some of the different habits that I have you should definitely definitely definitely check
out my productivity challenge which again starts tomorrow so don't be late the latest you can sign
up if you want to follow along is tomorrow and then you'll still get all the emails on
time but even if you sign up later you'll still get all the emails you just won't get them like
starting September 1st which is fine but I would really like to have you following along for the
haier month of September with us so that we could all do it together again the link is
in the description all you have to do is put in your email and I'll send you like an introductory
introductory introductory email to confirm your subscription and tell you a little bit about the
challenge I will get you all set up so yeah before I go don't forget to Like subscribe and turn on
notifications because I have a lot of exciting things coming I actually just put together my
content calendar for the next two months so I feel very organized we're gonna have a morning
routine videos school organization tips the video that I talked about where I'll tell you about my
digital planning routine lots of fun things coming so don't miss out on that and make sure you follow
along on social media as well and I will see you not tomorrow next week I'll see you next week bye