Top Productivity Tools You Need To Make Use Of In 2021(Part A)

We know it is the fourth month of 2021, but it is better late than never. Therefore, we would like to introduce you to some tools that would completely revolutionize how you do things. Enough of spending ten (10) hours on a job you should have done within two (2) hours. Have you ever had to look or search through hundreds of emails to try and recover what your supervisor or teammate said about a project? Or maybe you woke up one morning, and at about five minutes to 9 am, you just remembered you had an online meeting by 9 am? Or You sent an email to an important client, you read it five times, and after sending it, you realized you had made some major grammatical errors your eyes did not catch? Oh, it can be very tiring! We have all been there!  

There is no individual in any sphere of life that does not want to be productive in what he or she does. Thankfully, there are quite several tools that can enable you to maximize your time and efforts! Let us introduce to some we can vouch for:

• Grammarly

This application is an absolute “lifesaver” in writing. The services provided through Grammarly are helpful to everyone who can read and write. Therefore, the services are for you! Why? You are either writing through the consistent emails you send to your clients or work supervisors, the application materials you submit when applying for a scholarship or a new job, or even the essays or projects you need to submit for your coursework. With this information technology age, people are consistently chatting on their phones or posting on social media. Then, they delete it after realizing they just blew the roof off with significant grammatical typos. An essential aspect of any writing is to ensure that is absolutely no grammatical error. There is a limit to the mistakes you can observe no matter how good you are in English. Therefore, this is where Grammarly comes in. And it is free- at least the essential features that you need!

It automatically detects potential grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word choice mistakes in your writing. Apart from helping you eliminate errors, it enables you to find the perfect word to express yourself. For example, as seen in the picture below, you might want to use the word “awesome,” then Grammarly lets you know that terms such as “incredible,” “fantastic,” “remarkable,” and “extraordinary” fit well into your sentence and tone. You can also get tailored writing suggestions based on your goals and audience. Before you write, you can set your goals-What audience are you addressing? General, Knowledgeable, or Expert. Do you intend to be informal, neutral, or formal in your speech? Is your domain academic, business, general, email, causal, or creative? What tone are you going for? Do you intend neutral, confident, joyful, optimistic, friendly, urgent, analytical, or respectful? Therefore, suggestions will be given based on these goals.

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Also, this is a great way to improve your English and polish your writing skills. Through email, you will obtain a weekly writing update that scores your writing productivity, mastery or accuracy, vocabulary. It also gives you information about the tones you used during the week and the top three (3) mistakes, for example, missing article, missing comma in a compound sentence, or incorrect punctuation. Not to mention, when you write, you are given an overall performance score based on correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery and provided suggestions on how to improve the score. Through this, you will be a more skilled writer.

Additionally, it helps with plagiarism detection. For example, if you plan to apply to a graduate school, you must ensure your essay is not considered a “literacy theft.” For those who might be new to this terminology, plagiarizing is to use someone’s work without crediting the source through a reference. A lot of people do this without knowing. And many academics see this as a significant offense since it shows a lack of integrity. That’s why there is no published journal without a reference. Okay, let us go back to how Grammarly can help with this. Through its plagiarism check feature, it scans your write-up with sources on the web and academic database. Then, it scores how many percentages of your text match the sources. It shows you the web sources and the references you can attach to your write-up to avoid plagiarism. However, this feature is available in the premium (paid) version of Grammarly. But it is worth it!

Apart from all of these fantastic features, you can obtain information on your write-up such as the number of characters, words, sentences, reading time, speaking time, the unique words used, and even serve as a personal dictionary!

It is available as a web editor and a desktop editor, a browser extension for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge, or an application for both iOS and Android. Also, it can be integrated with Microsoft Word and Outlook. This can be downloaded for free! Then, you enjoy the free features available-grammar, punctuation, and spelling checker, obtain readability metrics, personal dictionary, set writing goals, and browser and device integration. To access some other features, such as plagiarism checker, you will need to obtain the premium service. You can pay either monthly, quarterly, or annual. Lastly, it offers an enterprise tool called Grammarly Business that enables team members to craft messages that capture the company’s voice and style.

• Slack

Suppose you manage one or more projects or work within a team- in that case, Slack is the ultimate productivity tool you need to stay updated on every task, follow through on each conversation, and organize every aspect of your project for maximum effectiveness. Remember, at the beginning of this post, we talked about going through several hundreds of emails to find that single essential email that might have been sent since last year, all because it contains some vital information. Slack solves this problem! Its features make it a faster and better way of communicating with your team than email. Now, have you ever used WhatsApp or telegram? If yes, it is WhatsApp or Telegram for projects or teams. If you don’t know what those social media apps are, don’t worry about it. We will explain slack in the simplest terms for you to understand what it does. It is meant for professional and organizational communication and can be used as a community platform.

Through Slack, a team admin can create a “workspace” and allow a community, group, or team members to join through a specific URL or invitation. It also has a fascinating messaging system. Within each workspace, there are public channels that are open to everyone in the workspace. Anything posted is searchable by others, and they can obtain a collective view of a project’s information, team, and organization. Any member can create public channels. However, private channels can be made as well. They facilitate private conversations between smaller sub-groups of the team that are not open to all members. These channels are best utilized when organized around a topic, for example, marketing, customer care, publication. Therefore, team members know where to check for specific information. Also, there is direct messaging. This allows users to send private messages to specific users rather than a group of people. Direct messages can include up to nine people. Once started, a direct message group can be converted into a private channel.

Additionally, you can view all your ‘mentions and reactions’ at an instance. That is, you will be able to see when people react to your message or mention you (@yourname) or your keywords in their message. Also, you can set a reminder for a specific date and time for yourself, a team member, or a channel.

Another fantastic feature about Slack is that it allows for mistakes. Unlike emails, once you send an email to the wrong person or included the wrong document, it cannot be undone. But in the Slack workspace, you are permitted to edit and even delete messages. There is no time limit to this. And if you are a workspace owner or admin, you can delete a file sent by someone else to a public or private channel you are a part of.

Furthermore, you can make voice, video calls or share screens on Slack. It also integrates with many third-party services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, GitHub, Gsuite, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Adobe, and many more with no additional cost. Most of these features are available for free for small teams for an unlimited period. However, for unlimited integration, voice, video calls, and screen sharing for up to 15 participants, you will need to upgrade from a free to either a Standard, Plus, or Enterprise Grid version, depending on your organization’s needs.

• Sedja PDF

Have you ever opened a document on Adobe Acrobat Reader, and you see unique features such as edit documents, convert PDF files to Microsoft Word, or compress PDF? Then, you decide to try one of these features because ‘of course, you need it!’. But then, Adobe redirects you to its website to subscribe to Adobe Acrobat Pro for a fee. Yikes, then you realize the features are not free! Well, if this has ever happened to you, we are dish out a solution to this problem- Sedja PDF!

We hope you have learned a lot from this! Let us know how this was helpful to you in the comments section. Also, do not keep all of this information to yourself! Share this post on your social media platforms or to a friend.

Nevertheless, this is just “Part A.” We are not done yet. We have more tools that will blow up your productivity to the next level! Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed by filling the form below!!