I'm gonna be 100% honest with you guys here,
I am an absolute sucker for round-up lists
of app recommendations and I know I'm not the only one,
because I get asked by you guys
for app recommendations all the time.
So, here we are.
Now, my intention this week was to sit down
and make a list of app recommendations for the iPhone,
and then I was gonna come back next week
and make a companion video for the Android people.
But, what I found out when I started making my list,
is that the majority of my picks are actually cross-platform
these days, with very few exceptions.
So, instead of making two very redundant videos,
I've decided just to take the iOS and Android halves,
and smash them together into one delicious
peanut butter and jelly sandwich of a video,
and in this video I'm gonna be giving you ten specific
productivity app recommendations you should check out.
And fittingly we're gonna be starting with
my to-do list recommendation.
Now when it comes to to-do list apps,
I personally use a very powerful app called Asana
and I absolutely love it.
However Asana is built mainly for teams,
and it's got a lot of features you probably won't need
if you're just managing your personal tasks.
So, if you're not managing a team like I am,
I recommend, Wunderlist.
It's elegantly designed, has apps on iOS, Android
and lots of other platforms,
and it doesn't lock essential features behind a pay version
like some other to-do managers do.
Now, every good task management app needs
a calendar app as a companion,
and while Google calendar and iCal are both good,
Fantastical is my calendar app of choice.
The design is great.
It's one of the few calendar apps that features
complication support on my Apple Watch.
But the killer feature for me
is the natural language processing.
Instead of typing out events, I can speak them
and the app will intelligently parse what I say
and fill in event details automatically.
Fantastical does not have an Android version
and the only Andriod app that I could find
that has a similar natural language feature
is Today Calendar which is around five dollars
after a free trial.
Now if you don't want to pay that much
and you can live without the language processing feature,
I recommend checking out SolCalendar for a free,
full featured alternative.
Habit Tracking is another practice
that helps me stay productive
and my favorite app for that is Habitica.
Along with a full featured web app,
Habitica has iOS and Android apps
that let you turn tracking your habits into a video game.
You can level up the character,
you can buy gear and you can join up with other people
to go on quests and keep each other accountable.
You'll also find a College Info Geek guild within Habitica
that has over 7,000 members.
Now if those video game features aren't your cup of tea,
but you still want to track your habits,
I'd recommend checking out an app on iOS called Momentum,
which lets you simply open the app, check a box
and move on with your life.
You can also check off habits within iOS's today view,
which is a really cool feature.
On Android check out HabitBull
for something that has similar features.
For managing notes, my app of choice has always been
Evernote, this app is pretty much my second brain,
I write all my scripts in it,
I take notes in it
and I shove all sorts of information in it
that I want to remember.
Now, Evernote is cross platform
but if you own more than two devices,
which is the limit on Evernote's free tier.
You may want to give Microsoft's OneNote a look
as a possible alternative.
I prefer Evernote personally,
but I am a premium user and the apps are pretty comparable
and I think OneNote does offer more on the free tier
than Evernote does.
Anyway, while Evernote is keeping my notes managed
and synced, to keep files synced
and backed up across all my devices,
I use Dropbox.
It integrates amazingly with Asada,
which lets me attach files to tasks in the blink of an eye
and overall I consider it to be
one of the most crucial tools in my work setup.
Next up, we've got Scannable.
An app that lets you automatically scan documents
and send them straight to Evernote.
Other than my idea notebook and sketchbook,
I try to keep my life as paperless as possible
and Scannable lets me do that really, really easily.
Now, if you're not an Evernote user though,
I would check out ScanBot,
which offers a lot of different export options.
Initially, it's also the app you should check out
if you're on Android,
since Scannable is an iPhone exclusive.
Now, if you often find yourself
getting distracted by your smartphone while you're working,
you've got a couple of different options
Number one, turn it off.
But, number two, if that doesn't work,
you can download Forest,
which is an app that rewards you
for leaving your phone alone by growing a virtual tree.
Now if you touch your phone before a session is up,
the tree dies.
You also get a record of your progress
and the positive reinforcement that it provides
may be just the thing you need to improve your focus.
Speaking of focus,
one of my favorite ways of getting focused
on a particular task is by using The Pomodoro Technique.
And there are a ton of Pomodoro style timer apps out there.
Feel free to check out as many as you like,
but on the iPhone, I'd recommend going with FocusKeeper.
While those of you on Android should check out ClearFocus.
Lastly, one practice that helps me stay productive
throughout the entire day is excercising.
Which is why I use an app called the 7 Minute Workout
pretty much every single day.
And this just helps me make sure that even on the days
that I'm not going to the gym,
I'm still getting some exercise in.
So guys, that is my list,
at least for this particular video.
Now I definitely have more apps on this bad boy
that I use and want to share with you,
so I'm going to do more app round up videos in the future.
And if you've got app picks of your own,
you can share them down in the comments below.
Before I wrap this video up
I did want to let you guys in on one more thing
and that is that College Info Geek tshirts are now in stock
over at DFTBA.com and if I can stand on my tip toes enough,
you can kind of see the shirt,
cause I'm wearing it right now
but you can see the full picture at the link
in the description and if you click that link,
you can also buy a shirt if you want.
If you do get one and you want to send me a picture of it,
you can tweet me over @TomFrankly
and you can also use my Twitter to ask me questions,
which I'll use for future videos
and future Q&A rapid fire,
lightning style round video things.
And that about does it for this weeks video guys,
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See ya!