10 Productivity Tools and Tips for Digital Designers

10 Productivity Tools and Tips for Digital Designers

I know it's hard to stay on top of your work and personal life; so many things are going on, and only so many hours are in the day. 

It is easy to feel scattered, trying to juggle it all. 

However, there are ten must-have productivity tools out there that can help you get organised and productive.

These are 2024 productivity tools that make your work easier. Tools for to-do list management through calendars, projects, and note-taking enable one to optimise each day. 

Using Todoist, Asana, Slack, Toggl Track, and Evernote, wrangling tasks, deadlines, and information in one place becomes more manageable.

Slack: The Team Collaboration Hub

In today’s work-from-anywhere world, staying aligned with distributed teams can be challenging. 

That’s where a platform like Slack can help you – it creates a virtual workspace for your team to communicate, collaborate, and get work done seamlessly.

Consolidate Tools and Conversations

Slack aims to be the hub that brings all your work together in one place. Rather than toggling between different tools and inboxes, you can message, share files, hop on calls, and manage workflows within Slack.

Conversations stay transparent yet organised with open channels organised by topic, team, or project. 

Slack has become a virtual office where people can work flexibly while staying connected. Integrations with popular tools mean you can bring other tools like Salesforce, Zoom, and Trello into the workflow.

Customise How You Collaborate

Slack offers flexibility in how teams communicate. You can have quick conversations via chat or voice clips, brainstorm ideas through virtual whiteboards, or talk live in audio/video Huddles. This allows teams to work however makes the most sense for the task.

You can also customise workflows with tools like Workflow Builder, task lists, reminders, etc. Automating repetitive steps helps teams save time and stay focused on meaningful work.

Enterprise-Ready Security and Scalability

With enterprise-grade security, compliance, and centralised controls, Slack provides a trusted platform for large organisations. Robust permissions, encryption, and integration options ensure even the most regulated industries can collaborate securely.

Slack scales to connect your entire organisation, whether you’re a 5-person startup or a 50,000-person multinational. Make Slack your digital HQ to bring teams together and drive your business forward.

Notion: Workspace for Writing, Planning, and Organizing

The array of work tools available today can often feel disconnected and overwhelming. You might have separate tools for notes, task management, wikis, and more. 

Wouldn’t it be nice to consolidate all that into one unified workspace? That’s the mission behind Notion.

Notion aims to provide an all-in-one hub for everything you and your team need to organise work and collaborate effectively. With its versatile building blocks, you can customise Notion into anything from a task tracker to a product wiki to a team calendar. It replaces the need for separate tools like Evernote, Trello, Confluence, and others.

Flexible Writing Space for Any Idea

Notion makes writing and communicating ideas easy using its diverse content blocks – from text to images to code snippets. It provides excellent collaborative features for working on docs with teammates and gathering real-time feedback and suggestions.

You also get handy AI writing assistance built right in. Ask Notion to help you summarise an extended doc, generate ideas for brainstorming, or translate text into another language. The AI makes it effortless to create high-quality written content as a team.

Customisable Views to Organise Your Workflow

With Notion’s flexible databases, you can build custom pages to view your workflows exactly how your team needs them. For example, you can make Kanban boards to visualise progress or interactive calendars to schedule and track deadlines.

Notion also smoothly integrates your favourite work tools like Slack, GitHub, and Google Drive. You get a centralised workspace that connects the tools you rely on daily rather than keeping them siloed.

Instant Access to All Your Team’s Knowledge

Notion provides the perfect virtual space to store and organise all your team’s institutional knowledge in one place. Its stellar search makes it easy to instantly dig up any document, fact, or project detail you need.

You can even query Notion’s built-in AI to get quick answers about your knowledge base. Say goodbye to having info scattered across folders and tools. Notion gives you one secure, accessible home for everything your team needs to know.

PictureToText: Get Text From Images

Have you ever encountered an image full of text you wish you could edit directly? You can copy text from a screenshot into a document without tedious retyping. PictureToText makes it easy to extract text from any image in seconds.

This free online tool can grab text from JPGs, PNGs, GIFs, screenshots, scanned documents, signage – you name it. Using advanced OCR (optical character recognition), it identifies text in images and makes it selectable, copyable, and editable.

One-Click Text Extraction From Any Image

Uploading an image to Picture to Text Converter couldn’t be simpler. Just drag and drop or browse to add your file. Hit the convert button, and the text from your image is extracted within seconds.

No matter if the image has handwritten or computer-generated text, vertical or diagonal orientation, PictureToText can handle it with ease. There’s no need to download software or sign up for an account. Batch processing lets you convert multiple images in one go.

Accurately Recognizes Text in Over 20 Languages

Picture to Text Converter leverages powerful OCR algorithms to deliver industry-leading accuracy. It can extract text in English, Spanish, French, German, and over 20 other languages with precision results.

Even low-quality, blurred, or angled images can be processed correctly. Whether a photograph, screenshot, scanned document, or PDF, this OCR converter extracts text seamlessly.

Edit, Share, or Store Extracted Text Instantly

The text extracted from your images is ready to use instantly. Copy and paste it into any app or download it as a .txt file. Saving the extracted text also allows you to archive or search it later.

Unlocking text from images opens up countless possibilities. You can digitise notes, reuse content from screenshots, make image-based documents accessible, and more. If you regularly work with images containing text, Picture to Text Converter is an invaluable productivity booster.

Zapier: The Leading Automation Platform

As businesses increasingly rely on multiple tools and software tools, seamlessly connecting them becomes critical for boosting productivity. Zapier is one of these best tools – the leading workflow automation platform that integrates your favourite tools and services into efficient, automated processes.

Build Multi-Step Workflows Between Thousands of Tools.

Zapier lets you quickly build multi-step workflows called Zaps between web and SaaS tools. It connects triggers and actions from different tools to automatically pass data and complete tasks. For example, you could create a Zap that emails new Salesforce leads to your MailChimp list.

With thousands of integrated tools, Zapier lets you connect the tools you use without a developer. It supports popular software like Gmail, Slack, HubSpot, and QuickBooks. You can integrate 100+ tools on the free plan and unlock even more premium app integrations with paid plans.

Customise Workflows With Code, Webhooks, and Logic

Beyond essential app-to-app connections, Zapier offers ways to customise and enhance your workflows. You can reformat data, add conditions and filters, incorporate webhooks, use code steps, and more.

For example, you could create a Zap that only adds Gmail attachments over 5MB to Dropbox. Or one that sends automated Slack messages based on custom logic. Zapier gives you the flexibility to tailor workflows to your unique needs.

Manage and Track Automation Across Teams

With Team and Enterprise plans, Zapier provides collaboration features to streamline automation and workflows across your organisation. You can build and securely share Zaps across teams, restricting access to sensitive integrations.

Robust tracking, monitoring, and analytics give you visibility into who is automating what. This helps ensure your most business-critical workflows are running smoothly at all times. Zapier makes it easy to scale automation while maintaining control.

Asana: The Work Management Platform Built for Any Scale

With the rise of remote and hybrid work models, businesses need tools to align distributed teams and manage workflows efficiently. Asana can easily do all these jobs – a work management platform designed to help companies organise, track, and automate work at any scale.

Centralised Tracking and Collaboration

Asana provides a shared workspace for teams to manage projects and tasks in one place. Team members can break down goals into actionable steps, assign tasks, set due dates, attach files, track progress with kanban boards, and more.

Real-time collaboration features like conversations and automatic updates ensure everyone syncs across departments and locations. Managers get visibility into what’s being worked on to identify bottlenecks early.

Work Automation Across Tools and Teams

Asana also makes it easy to streamline workflows with process automation. The platform connects to hundreds of commonly used tools like Slack, Salesforce, and Zoom. You can build multi-step automation across tools so repetitive tasks happen automatically.

For example, you could create an automation to add new Salesforce leads that automatically lead to a Mailchimp campaign. The workflow builder and Asana Forms provide no-code ways to customise processes for your unique needs.

Enterprise-Grade Security and Scalability

With robust access controls, audit logs, and compliance certifications, Asana provides the security and governance enterprises need. Millions of users across industries like healthcare, retail, and technology use Asana to manage work.

Whether you’re a small team or a global company with tens of thousands of employees, Asana scales to your needs with enterprise-ready features, international support, and custom onboarding.

Microsoft Teams: Connect Distributed Teams

Companies need tools to connect distributed teams and drive alignment in today's dispersed work environment. To tackle this problem, you can use Microsoft Teams, which creates a shared digital workspace for teams to communicate, meet, and collaborate.

Consolidate Tools and Conversations

Teams provide a single hub for all teamwork and communication. Rather than toggling between tools and inboxes, employees can message, meet, share files, manage tasks, and automate workflows directly in Teams.

Teams replace the need for email to coordinate work. Channels organised by topic, project, or team keep everyone aligned without inbox overload. Integrated tools like Trello, Adobe Sign, and ServiceNow streamline workflows.

Meet, Chat, Call Seamlessly

Teams make connecting through messaging, video conferencing, and voice calls easy for dispersed teams. Features like screen sharing, virtual whiteboards, and background blur make online meetings highly functional and pleasant.

Employees can toggle between chat, calls, and meetings seamlessly as needed. Teams provide flexibility to communicate in real-time via the medium that makes the most sense.

Secure and Compliant for Enterprises

With advanced security, encryption, and controls, Teams provides a trusted platform for regulated industries like healthcare and finance. Granular permissions and audit logs enable secure collaboration at scale.

Whether you have 50 employees or 50,000, Teams scales to support communication across the entire organisation. Make it your digital headquarters to unify your business and enable hybrid teamwork.

Todoist: Focus and Organise Your Life

Todoist is one of the most popular and user-friendly productivity tools out there. It acts like an extension of your mind to capture tasks the moment they pop into your head. Then, it helps you prioritise what’s essential to make progress on your to-do list rather than just adding to it endlessly.

Effortless Task Capture for Frictionless Productivity

Let’s face it – we all intend to stay organised and tackle our ever-growing to-do lists. But taking the time to write down tasks can feel like a chore. That’s why Todoist makes capturing tasks incredibly easy and frictionless with its quick add feature.

You can quickly type tasks into Todoist using completely natural language, and it will understand you perfectly. For example, you could type “Meet with Susan next Tuesday at 2 pm to discuss budget,” Todoist will automatically create the task with the correct date and time. It’s like you have a personal assistant ready to take notes whenever you think of something you need to do!

Smart Task Organisation to Finally Declutter Your Mind

It’s not enough to just capture all your tasks in one place. Without structure and prioritisation, a to-do list can feel as overwhelming as having all those tasks in your head.

Todoist helps you cut through the clutter with features like projects, labels, filters, and reminders. You can group related tasks into projects and give them due dates so you know what needs your attention. Filters give you views on your Today tasks or upcoming tasks so you can focus on what’s most pressing.

Shared Team Spaces to Increase Alignment

Beyond personal use, Todoist can be a real game-changer for team productivity. It gives your team a shared workspace while keeping your projects separate.

Coworkers can divide and conquer tasks in shared projects. You get features like assigned tasks, comments, due dates, file attachments, and more to work seamlessly as a team. But you don’t have to look at their grocery lists or other tasks cluttering your view.

Toggl Track: Flexible Time Tracking

In today’s dynamic work environment, having visibility into how your team spends its time is essential. Toggl Track provides flexible and accurate time tracking to help you optimise team productivity.

Complete Visibility into Time Spent

At its core, Toggl Track gives you insights into your team’s time across projects, tasks, and activities. Employees can quickly start timers to track time or log it afterwards. Managers gain visibility into billable vs non-billable hours and time spent per client or project.

Unlike intrusive tracking tools, Toggl focuses on willing participation and transparency. This time, data enables better resource allocation, workload balancing, and project planning based on capacity.

Seamless Time Tracking Experience

Toggl offers seamless time tracking with desktop and mobile tools designed for each team member’s needs. Features like idle detection, manual time edits, and bulk actions make it easy to record accurate hours.

Integrations with project management, accounting, and other tools also streamline time tracking. For example, you can generate detailed client reports and invoices from your time data.

Scales With Your Business Needs

Whether you’re a small startup or an enterprise with thousands of employees, Toggl provides the time tracking your team needs. Robust privacy controls, role-based permissions, and single sign-on meet the security needs of large companies.

Toggl’s free plan works for small teams, while premium plans unlock enhanced reporting, approvals, and advanced integrations. With Toggl Track, you get analytics and insights to make data-driven business decisions confidently.

Evernote: Notes, Tasks, and Planning

Life can get disorganised quickly between work, family, hobbies, and more. Evernote aims to provide an all-in-one digital workspace to consolidate your notes, lists, files, and schedules.

Centralise Your Information

Evernote lets you capture ideas, documents, images, audio – anything important to you – and access it anytime on any device. It becomes your second brain to store and find everything easily.

Save handwritten notes, quickly scan receipts/documents, clip web content, attach PDFs, and more. An intuitive organisation with tags and notebooks keeps related info together. Powerful search makes it fast to find what you need.

Streamline Tasks and Planning

Beyond just archiving, Evernote helps you put your information to work. To create organised to-do lists, you can add action items, reminders, and due dates to notes. Integrate Evernote with your calendar to see note reminders alongside events.

The Tasks feature lets you break down projects into steps, assign items, and track progress. Real-time collaboration allows teams to co-edit notes and stay aligned.

Flexible Plans For Any Need

Evernote offers several pricing tiers depending on your needs. The free version lets you try essential note-taking and organisation. Paid plans include advanced search, larger monthly uploads, and document scanning.

For teams, Evernote Business provides shared workspaces, centralised admin/permissions, SSO, and robust organisation features to coordinate projects and information.

With Evernote, consolidate your work and life into one intuitive workspace. Sign up for free to start getting organised!

Grammarly: AI-Powered Writing Assistant

Writing well is a critical skill for effective communication in the modern workplace. Grammarly provides an AI-powered writing assistant to help you craft flawless emails, documents, and messages.

Context-Aware Suggestions

Grammarly offers advanced algorithms that analyse your writing and provide personalised recommendations based on the context. It looks at your intent, target audience, brand tone, and more.

This ensures you get suggestions tailored to the situation – an email to your manager or a social media post for customers. The AI assistant catches grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, style, tone, etc.

Works Where You Write

Grammarly seamlessly integrates into all your work tools and sites for frictionless writing. You can use it directly within Gmail, Google Docs, Microsoft Office, Slack, Salesforce, and hundreds more. There are no copying/pasting or switching tools.

The browser extension catches mistakes on any web page before you hit send. You can also access Grammarly on iOS and Android mobile keyboards.

Enterprise-Ready With Robust Security

Grammarly prioritises responsible AI and data privacy. User data is never sold or used for advertising. The Grammarly Business offering provides additional enterprise-grade security and controls.

You get an AI-powered assistant with Grammarly to boost writing quality across teams. Sign up free to craft clear, flawless communication that makes an impact.

Final Words

It’s easy to become scattered about managing everything. However, new tools help optimise productivity. This article reviews the top 2024 tools for workflow efficiency. Solutions like Todoist, Toggl Track, Slack, and Evernote integrate tasks, projects, calendars, and notes. Adopting suitable applications based on needs boosts performance.

Time is freed to achieve significant goals. Experimenting with recommended solutions to build an optimal system-matching workstyle is helpful. The suitable applications facilitate a sense of control and mastery over demanding schedules.

Work smarter, not harder, with the aid of technology.

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