9 Pieces of Productivity Tech to Add to Your Arsenal in 2020

To get (or stay) on top of your industry in 2020, it's essential to automate. An enormous number of cloud-based tools exist so you can make everyday tasks faster, easier, and less expensive.

Which ones are actually worth your investment? We combed through them and came up with 10 you should consider adding to your productivity arsenal:

Whatever your line of work, chances are you spend a lot of the day scheduling calls and interviews. Finding a time and place that works for everyone, much less sending reminders or following up after, can take dozens of emails.

Appointment.com simplifies scheduling in a number of ways. Not only can interviewees book, cancel, and reschedule on their own, but Appointment also sends out SMS and email reminders automatically. Appointment syncs with common digital calendars, automatically displaying appointments and preventing double bookings.

New year, new goals? Beeminder is a helpful tool for accountability when it comes to New Year's resolutions and new business initiatives.

Not only does this app help you visualize your goals and set realistic milestones, but it also minimizes the buzz of modern distractions in order to keep you and your team on track. Beeminder works via pledges that are paid to the app if users fail to meet their goals and milestones - a business-appropriate incentive to put in the work.

Widely known and beloved by startups, Slack is a platform that's changed business communication for the better. Combining the best elements of email with the immediacy of instant messengers, Slack users can send a message, photo, video, or document that will prompt a notification on any connected device.

Slack can be configured for a huge range of teams. Conversations are searchable; notifications can be toggled on and off for each channel so you only get what you need. When they're doing deep work, users can set themselves to "away" to indicate that they shouldn't be bothered.

Since its founding in 2006, Toggl has become a big name in the time-tracking world. It's added a slew of analysis features in more recent years.

Perfect for project-based work environments, Toggl allows you and your team to track the amount of time spent on tasks. It continuously highlights areas of improvement, and it can be configured to monitor time spent by project, client, and task. It works on mobile devices as well, which helps freelancers and frequent travelers.

Business travel takes a huge amount of time and resources. Minimize it by taking video calls at your office instead.

Zoom is a popular videoconferencing choice because of its high-resolution video capabilities, clean audio, and easy-to-use interface. Plus, Zoom makes it possible to set up webinars at the drop of a hat, once a major undertaking for digital marketing teams.

Handwritten notes may be meaningful, but they're neither fast to create, nor easy to organize. And once they get lost, the client or scheduling information they contain is gone as well.

With Evernote, you and your team can create and share notes from any digital device. Having been in business for more than 15 years, Evernote is known for its security, simplicity, and usability. Its integrations make it easy to link notes to other online productivity and calendar tools.

No matter the initiative, project management involves a lot of similar meetings and processes. Todoist uses templates to streamline the project management process.

Name a process, and Todoist probably has a form for it. Project roadmapping, social media management, blog posts, campaign trackers, design sprints, feature planning, bug tracking, and more get a boost from pre-built templates. It lets users break down tasks into subtasks and offers robust analysis features.

Because there are so many platforms, devices, and schedules these days, it's easy for commitments to slip through the cracks. 24me is a smart personal assistant that integrates your calendar, to-do list, and digital notes.

24me's "Meet My Links" feature makes it easy to stay in control. It consolidates notifications from social networks, service providers, financial providers, and more. And it offers industry-leading security features to protect your personal information.

Sometimes, your No. 1 obstacle to productivity is a lack of focus. If that sounds like you, try Freedom, a web blocker app that keeps you from clicking through Facebook or Reddit while you should be working.

Freedom works on multiple devices and operating systems, including Windows, Apple, and Android. It lets you schedule blocked hours ahead of time, and it keeps track of your sessions on each site to show where you've slipped up or succeeded.

2020 is ticking, so don't wait to get a handle on your team's productivity. There are plenty of tools available - but if you want to be productive, take what you need from this list and get back to work.

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