5 Time Management Tools for Morning until Night

These days, time isn’t always on our side. With work-from-home orders, quarantine guidelines and homeschooling, we either have too much time on our hands — or not enough minutes in the day. To help you make the most of your time, we’ve listed five time management tools so you can structure your day and stay on track.

Wake Up with the World’s Most Annoying Alarm — ALARMY

What does your morning routine look like? Do you wake up at sunrise for some zen? Or are you rolling out of bed in just enough time to dial into the morning Zoom call for work? A hurried morning puts you at risk for a chaotic day, but Alarmy can help.

Alarmy is the perfect and most annoying wake-up companion if you want to go from a hard-core snoozer to an early riser. To turn off the alarm, you have to complete a task like taking a photo of a predetermined place in your home, shaking your phone or solving a math problem. Alarmy gives you that mental jolt needed to start your morning off right.

Become an Expert To-Doer and List Lover – REMEMBER THE MILK

After you rise, it’s time to grind — starting with your to-do list. If you’re used to getting by with scattered Post-its and mental notes, you may want to upgrade your task management style. The Remember The Milk app organizes all your tasks, so you can spend more time prioritizing and completing them, and less time trying to figure out what you missed or what you’re behind on.

With Remember the Milk, you can add and share tasks and subtasks, create lists, get reminders, and even stylize the app with a fun theme. Stay productive and on top of all your “need-to-get-done’s.”

Beat Distractions – A FOCUS TOOLKIT

There’s a lot that can stand between you and productivity if you’re working from home: kids, fur babies, the fridge, group texts, Twitter… The apps below can help you focus on the task the hand and maximize your time during the workday:

• Pocket: Does the Internet steer you away from your work? Save articles, videos and anything interesting on the Web to Pocket where you can read and watch at a “more acceptable” time.
• focus@will: Move over Spotify — focus@will customizes scientifically designed instrumental music to improve concentration for up to 100 minutes.
• Forest: Beat your phone addiction by gamifying your productivity. Plant a seed in Forest and watch it virtually grow into a tree. If you leave the app to use your phone, your tree will die. Bonus! You’ll also earn and save coins that can be used to help plant real trees!

With the help of an app or two, you can work more efficiently, so there’s more time in your day for doing things you enjoy like working out or spending time with your family.

Sweat It Out in 30 Or Less – HIIT WORKOUTS BY DAILY BURN

A digital device, 30 minutes at most and some motivation — that’s all you need for squeezing in a great (and fast) workout at home. Become a member of HIIT Workouts by Daily Burn, and you have access to personalized plans and new workouts curated weekly.

Daily Burn describes HIIT (high-intensity interval training) as a “technique in which you give all-out, 100% effort through quick, intense bursts of exercise, followed by short, sometimes active, recovery periods.” So because of how these workouts are designed, you can get a killer workout in 30, 20 or even just 10 minutes.

You do need to pay for a monthly or annual membership in order to get the workouts, one-on-one coaching, tracking tool and community support. But the cost is significantly lower than what you’d typically pay to join a traditional gym or boutique fitness studio, or to work with a personal trainer.

Share Schedules in One Calendar – TIMETREE

Managing a family and household gets chaotic, but an app like TimeTree consolidates everyone’s schedules into one group calendar. This way, you and your family can stay organized and up-to-date on everyone’s plans, events, activities and Zoom calls. The whole fam can communicate through chat rooms and comments, and send images.

TimeTree helps eliminate the stress of managing everyone’s busy lives, and lets you know where there’s time available. Because sometimes, you have to “pencil” in date night, family movie night or even just some precious “do-not-disturb me time” before your head hits the pillow.