WWW… Wednesday! Apps to Make Working From Home Easier

by Taylor Slattery | June 10, 2020

If you’re fortunate enough to still be working right now, chances are, you’re doing it from home. If you aren’t accustomed to this style of work, you may be having some difficulty adjusting to this new work environment. In terms of efficiency, there’s no substitute for having your coworkers in the same room, but for the time being, we’ll just have to make due. Here are some tools that can help to reduce the friction of working from home.

I’ve talked about Trello in the past, but given the present circumstances, it bears repeating. I previously discussed the features of Trello in the context of Kanban boarding, a process used for measuring progress towards the completion of a goal. If you’re working from home as part of a team, Trello is a great way to keep everyone on the same page without having to check in with team members individually. You can create a task for the team as a whole, and assign tasks to specific individuals. As these tasks are completed, the progress is charted for the whole team to see. It’s got an easy to use UI and is also free. You can try it out for yourself here.

Up next is a different kind of productivity app. Working from home can be difficult. Instead of coworkers, we’re surrounded by distractions. If you’re sharing a space with family or roommates, it can be tough to create the kind of noise-free environment necessary to focus on your work. Noisli works a bit like a white noise machine, albeit with a greater deal of customization. You can custom tailor a soundscape to suit your needs or try some of their pre-created formulas to help boost your creativity or put you in a relaxed headspace. The best part is, Noisli is free to try. You can find it here.

Managing teams can be difficult. Especially when doing so online. The internet has allowed us a great deal of flexibility in how we work. We are no longer limited by location and can find the best candidates for a job, even if they’re thousands of miles away. However, with this newfound freedom have come a new set of problems. When you have team members working all over the globe, scheduling meetings can be a nightmare. Figure it Out, or FIO, is a chrome extension that keeps track of your team member’s various time zones. It’s a simple visual solution that can help you overcome the challenges of working with an international team. You can find it here.

I’ve excluded the more obvious tools, like Slack, in favor of some of these lesser-known gems. If you’ve been struggling while working from home, hopefully, some of these can help to make the remainder of your quarantine workload a bit more bearable.

Taylor is the Managing Editor of Notes on Design. Taylor is a graphic designer, illustrator, and Design Lead at Weirdsleep.

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