We’ve all heard the saying “time is money”, but what does that actually mean? Regardless of your job, title, or industry, how you’re spending your day matters. And as we kick off the new year, we can all afford to be more productive.
Productivity can be defined as, “the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input.” In simpler terms: How much are you getting done in the day? Productivity tools refer to software applications, platforms, or technologies that act as a solution to help enhance efficiency, organization, and effectiveness in completing tasks and achieving goals. By streamlining workflows, automating processes, and improving time management, these tools can help teams do their jobs even better.
Whether you want to admit it or not, we can all benefit from tools that encourage us to allocate our time better. So in the spirit of starting the year off on the right foot, we’ve rounded up some of the top productivity tools for 2024.
Top productivity tools for 2024 and beyond
The importance of productivity tools, and adopting smart technology in the workplace, isn’t lost on us. Luckily as we head into 2024— a year that’s sure to be filled with new technology and AI trends— there are various tools for every unique need and pain point.
Here are a few noteworthy productivity tools we think are worth trying this year.
Beautiful.ai
How much time do teams waste on creating a presentation from scratch only to get a sub-par design? Beautiful.ai’s presentation software gives even the most amateur designers the tools they need to create professional, stunning presentations in half the time. With the Smart Slide templates, Beautiful.ai users can add their content, and the presentation software automatically adjusts the design, optimizing each slide with the principles of good design in mind. The technology makes presentations more efficient, and unlocks bottlenecks giving teams the time back to allocate to other important projects.
Because Beautiful.ai works in the cloud, teams can sync up and get sign off in real-time, right from their browser. Forget lengthy email chains and versioning issues. With the cloud, updates are automatically pushed live so everyone’s always working on the same version of the slide and deck, at the same time.
Beautiful.ai’s DesignerBot gives teams the jumping off point they need to be more productive than ever. Presenters will never have to stare at a blank slide again. The AI-powered technology allows you to describe the presentation you are looking for with a single prompt, and watch as DesignerBot designs slides for you, like magic. Beautiful.ai helps teams brainstorm and execute their ideas from start to finish to streamline the entire presentation design process.
Jasper
Jasper AI is an AI-powered writing assistant and content generator. It is designed to help individuals and teams create various types of content, including blog posts, marketing copy, product descriptions, and more. Think of Jasper AI as your junior copywriter that produces content in seconds for you to tailor and customize based on your needs. Jasper AI uses advanced language models, such as GPT-3, to generate human-like text based on the given prompts and inputs. It can assist in brainstorming ideas, improving writing efficiency, and producing high-quality content.
Motion
Motion is like having a personal assistant, but better. The productivity tool uses automation and AI to help plan and prioritize your day, schedule and limit meetings, and build the perfect to-do lists to ensure you’re meeting deadlines. Notifications warn you if deadlines are approaching or tasks are due, so you can stay focused throughout the day. Their claim is that the tool increases productivity by 137%, which is huge for professionals who bounce from meeting to meeting, tend to procrastinate or get distracted easily.
Zapier
Zapier is an online automation tool that connects various apps and services to automate repetitive tasks without coding or the need for developers. It allows users to create "Zaps," which are automated workflows that connect different apps and trigger actions based on specific events or conditions. With Zapier, users can integrate and automate processes between over 5,000 web applications, including popular ones like Google Sheets, Slack, Shopify, Trello, and more. The platform offers a range of features and customization options to streamline workflows, save time, and improve productivity.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an advanced language model developed by OpenAI. It is designed to engage in conversational interactions with users and provide responses based on the given prompts or inputs. ChatGPT utilizes a variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture, which is a state-of-the-art deep learning model known for its ability to generate human-like text.
The primary goal of ChatGPT is to generate coherent and contextually relevant responses that simulate human conversation. It has been trained on a vast amount of text data from the internet, allowing it to grasp a wide range of topics and conversational styles. Teams might use ChatGPT to help craft messages for prospective clients, internal meetings, or external partners.
Notion
Notion is a versatile and collaborative workspace platform that allows users to create, organize, and manage various types of content, such as notes, documents, tasks, projects, and more. It provides a centralized hub where individuals and teams can collaborate, share information, and streamline their workflows.
With Notion, teams can customize their workspace to fit their specific needs and preferences. It offers a range of features, including rich text editing, tables, calendars, kanban boards, databases, and integrations with other tools. Notion's flexible structure allows users to create interconnected pages and databases, enabling them to build custom workflows and organize information in a way that makes sense to them and their department.
Second Brain is a new, all-in-one Notion system that centralizes tasks, projects, notes, resources, and everything in between.
GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered code completion tool developed by GitHub in collaboration with OpenAI. GitHub Copilot is built on the OpenAI Codex model, which is a descendant of the GPT-3 model. This tool is designed to assist developers in writing code more efficiently by providing context-aware code suggestions and completions as they type. The key features of GitHub Copilot include code autocompletion, multilingual support, and context-aware suggestions. The tool learns from the code written by developers and the suggestions they accept, improving its ability to provide relevant and useful completions over time.
Sembly
Sembly helps make your meetings more productive so you’re not scrambling to take notes or jot things down mid-sentence. The AI software records, transcribes and generates meeting summaries with meeting minutes. Sometimes you can’t make it to a meeting because you’re overbooked— Sembly keeps you in the know. You can “send” Sembly to the meeting instead and quickly review the notes from the call on your own time. The technology acts as your very own team assistant and works with major meeting platforms like Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams.
