My phone doesn’t have Facebook, nor does it have YouTube. Actually, there are many popular apps that I don’t use. Most of the popular apps like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and other popular apps work on the human psychological weakness to make money. The entire business model of these apps is based on grabbing the viewer’s attention and monetizing it by showing the advertisement.
But there are some apps that I use almost every day. As someone who works on a computer, these apps and software have helped me stay productive and optimize my workflow. In this post, I will share these apps and software.
1. Momentum (Browser-Extention)
Momentum is a must-have if you are someone who has to constantly check their browser while working. (Like me)
It is easy to fall prey to the link rabbit hole if we don’t implement a proper strategy to boost our self-discipline.
Momentum is a free extension available on Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge that turns your new tab into a personal dashboard. Every time you open a new tab, you can see a personalized greeting, a beautiful image, a motivational quote, your main tasks, and even the local weather of your current location. So, the chance of randomly surfing the internet greatly reduces as you see this specially curated page that is optimized to keep you productive. You can also set up a Pomodoro Timer within this extension. Get Momentum here.
2. Microsoft To-Do App
There are a lot of To-List Apps and Extensions on the market. But in my honest opinion, Microsoft To-Do List is the best Free To-Do List App available on the market.
This thing has almost everything that you need in a To-Do List App. The main things that I like about this app are:
- It syncs easily across multiple devices. If you set a task on your computer, you will see the task reminder on your phone. Also, the app is deeply integrated with its Microsoft ecosystem, helping you sync across multiple platforms easily.
- This app has a beautiful and responsive widget available on mobile devices. Using a to-do list widget on the phone’s home screen helps minimize phone use and get back to work.
- It has the remind me feature that reminds you of the task on a particular date and time. Although this might seem like a basic feature for a to-do list app, many other apps charge you money to use this feature.
3. Bing Co-Pilot (Chat Gpt Alternative)
It wouldn’t be far-fetched if I say AI is taking over the world. I think 90% of people reading this post have used ChatGPT once.
I also used ChatGPT when it launched, but after GPT 4 came out, I stopped using it.
While GPT 3.5 is amazing, compared to GPT 4, it’s way behind. The problem is that GPT 4 costs money, but GPT 3.5 is free.
The $20 subscription fee is nothing compared to what you get from GPT 4. But if you don’t need ChatGPT very often, paying $20 might not seem like a good option.
Well, you don’t have to worry. You can use Bing Copilot, which is powered by GPT 4 and is completely free to use. You can use Copilot to search the web, summarize documents, create content, and do more useful things.
I use Bing Co-Pilot mainly to generate ideas and create an outline for different content.
Although this blog post is about free Apps, if you create content heavily and need AI in the process, paying $20 per month for GPT 4 is absolutely worth it for the access to extensions and the GPT store.
4. Stay Focusd (Browser Extension)
As I said at the beginning, I don’t have YouTube and Facebook apps on my phone.
To prevent ourselves from getting sucked into these hyper-addictive websites while browsing via Laptop, we need some tools. Relying only on self-control is a bad strategy.
Stay Focusd is a tool that helps you stay focused on work by limiting your time on distractive websites. You can set your daily allowance of time for each website, and once you use it up, the website will be blocked for the rest of the day. I only allow myself to use Social Media and YouTube for 30 minutes.
Stay Focusd Extension is a great tool to help you avoid distractions and get more done.
5. Canva
As a KDP publisher, I have to do a lot of graphic design-related stuff.
Canva is my go-to website to create most of my graphics. I use Canva to create book covers, make images for blog posts, create thumbnails for YouTube videos, and do many other design tasks.
There are lots of graphic designing platforms. What’s so special about Canva? Well, there are mainly 2 reasons why I love Canva.
- Canva is easy to use. The intuitive interface of Canva allows even a beginner to design something stunning instantly.
- Canva has a vast library of templates, fonts, images, and elements you can customize and edit. For example, if you want to create a thumbnail for a YouTube video, rather than start from scratch, you can select different templates and modify them to create your design.
