Working home office, like anything, has its pros and cons. Among the pros are the increased freedom and flexibility, the potential to design your own ergonomic workspace, and cutting down on the waste of both time and energy taken by the daily commute. Among the cons, however, are reduced access to resources, lack of personal connection with coworkers, and a lesser ability to spontaneously collaborate with a team.
Especially given the rapid shift to home office over the past two years, employers and employees alike have been rushing to find all the best tips and tricks to make home office as productive and healthy a working environment as possible. From online company bonding activities, to complete content management overhauls, the workforce has gone above and beyond to reorganise and stay focused in these tumultuous times. Here are ten of the best apps for stepping up your home office experience!
1. To-do list: Evernote
Evernote has long been one of the most popular office apps, and with good reason. Evernote is a simple and easy to use catch-all app for noting taking. Whether it be jotting down notes reminders, creating to-do lists, or recording pictures and voice memos - Evernote will help guarantee that you never forget an important task or a valuable idea. Evernote will also sync your notes and reminders across all of your connected devices, meaning whether you’re at home, at the office, or on the go - you have all your thoughts and tasks on hand.
2. Concentration: Forest
For a lot of people, switching to home office has meant needing to learn new levels of focus and discipline. It’s no surprise that many of us struggle to focus on one task, without fighting the urge to check your phone and have a quick scroll of your newsfeeds. Forest is a fun and quirky software that goes lengths in developing the focus and concentration skills necessary for championing the home office. Forest encourages you to stay away from your phone by planting a virtual tree once you begin working, which will continue to grow until you get distracted by your phone. Even better, Forest partners with real-life tree planters - so you can help grow the Earth while you concentrate on your work!
3. Project Tracking: Monday.com
Monday.com has become an invaluable tool for teams needing to keep track of projects - both big and small. Monday.com allows users to easily understand the goals, teams, and stages involved in a given project, and individual task boards can be assigned different workers and statuses so that with one simple glance, the entire project team is on the same page.
4. Video Conferencing: Zoom
In recent years, Zoom has become an absolute staple of not only working life, but our social lives too - and with good reason. Zoom is the perfect integrated video conferencing service. The premium service comes with unlimited meeting times, and allows up to 100 participants in a single call! The platform offers a number of incredibly useful tools such as screensharing, meeting recording, and breakout rooms - to ensure that you can squeeze as much value as possible from all of your meetings.
5. File Sharing: Dropbox
Dropbox has long been a staple of many working offices. From across the world, Dropbox allows users to simply drag and drop files to one another - getting rid of the need for passing USBs back and forth to one another. Dropbox allows users to upload files of up to 50GB, the equivalent of around 30 HD blockbuster movies - so you can share pretty much anything you can think of!
6. Collaborative Files: Google Drive
The Google Workspace is an invaluable tool for anybody working from home office. From spreadsheets to questionnaires, file sharing and document editing, Google really offers it all. Any file can be opened up and shared with other viewers, commenters, or editors, and the broad range of services available on the Google Workspace makes it the perfect hub for every member of the team to upload their work.
7. De-stressing: Calm
One of the most important elements in mastering home office is learning how to wind down and disconnect from work at the end of the day. The best way to do this is create a daily routine to separate yourself from the working grind. Going for a refreshing walk or meditating are great ways of resetting your mind after a long day of work. Calm is a highly popular app for guiding users through meditation, featuring a range of well-known actors who lend their voices to provide calming sessions for all occasions.
The transition to home office isn’t always easy, but with a bit of preparation and the help of useful right apps such as these - working from home can become a real breath of fresh air! Here are some extra tips for efficient home office apps.
