For a writer and an author, productivity is a challenging aspect. There are enough distractions to distract them from writing. While the distractions are one, writers also find it challenging to focus. Many a time, there is a lot a writer has to do, but the lack of a list can cause the day to be super chaotic, jumping from one task to another without a proper plan.

While on some days there are external distractions; on other days, the writers struggle with aligning their thoughts to get started with writing. Unsure how it happens, the content simply refuses to flow from the head on those days. You feel clogging in the head, and thoughts don’t align to be able to complete the part of the content that was supposed to be completed. It happens quite regularly, and hence without the realization, the days, weeks, and sometimes months pass by in a jiffy.

If you have been into this cycle and looking for some tools to boost your productivity, stay along and you would love this article. While there are tools for writers to eliminate distractions, this list consists of tools that can help you improve day-to-day productivity and better your speed. Let’s get started:

Listly:



Listly is a cool tool for writers. Whether you are writing Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children’s Fiction, Historical Fiction, or a book of any other genre; the chances are that you might have to do a lot of research. With Listly, you can make lists with the links of the referred information categorized as per your need in one place so that they are easily available at the time of requirement.
What’s more? Listly also provides you an option to make your list public or invite people. They would get access to your list and also add links that seem appropriate. This helps you save searching time for resources that have been crowdsourced from the community of writers.

Mariana Timer:



Ever heard of the Pomodoro Technique? Pomodoro Technique has been long used to improve the productivity on the tasks at hand. According to this technique, you take a 5-minutes break after every 25 mins of your work. At the 4th such cycles, instead of 5-minutes, you take a 15-minutes break. The Pomodoro Technique is said to help you beat procrastination and improve your focus.
The intentional 5-minutes break helps resist all of those self-interruptions and re-train your brain to focus better. It was formed in the 1980s by a university student ‘Francesco Cirillo‘ who struggled to focus on his studies then. The name ‘Pomodoro’ is derived from the Italian language, and it means 'Tomato' as Francesco had found a tomato-shaped timer; thus, the Pomodoro Technique was born. Mariana Timer helps you apply the Pomodoro technique to boost your productivity.

If you find Pomodoro Technique helpful, Great! If not, Mariana Timer also provides you with options called ‘Custom Timer’ and ‘Kitchen Timer’. Custom Timer is a feature using which you can set a period for multiple things you are doing. The kitchen Timer works like our usual timer, you can set the duration, and it would get to work with it.

750 Words:



If you are someone who needs to put your thoughts out in the morning so that you can think fresh and better for the rest of the day, let us appreciate the team behind 750 Words. 750 Words is a concept in which you write down 3 pages (assuming we write about 250 words per page) with whatever is in your mind. The best part, you don’t have to worry about it being proper content. It could just be anything, whatever you are feeling in the morning. Just take it as a ‘brain dump’- just dump everything and forget it. It could be unformed ideas, random thoughts, or even any of your private things.

750 Words provides you with a platform to just put all of these down. In short, it is an alternative to notebooks and reduces the hassle of having to find them every day. 750 Words is online but ‘Private’, it is between ‘You’ and ‘You’. It is not blogging, tweeting, or Facebook status updates. It is like your personal diary. Writing out the things stopping your thoughts would help you with a better flow of thoughts during the day. More than 500,000 writers have used 750 Words.

Trello:



Trello is another productivity-boosting tool for the authors. When you are framing a story or a concept for your book, there might be several stages. It is often a difficult process to record the same in a spreadsheet and keep that in sync with the regular updates. If you are facing the same, Trello is the tool for you.
You can not only make a note of your To-Do list but also keep a track of the same with the Kanban-boards that follow a unique cards system on Trello. On Trello, you can create the stages, create cards for the task and move it along the different stages as and when it is completed. The Kanban boards help you create a visual of the workflow and help you accomplish it faster.

Noisli:



A writer is always in search of a ‘Perfect Environment’. These Covid times have restricted our travels, and we are forced to stay back in our home. But for reasons more than one, the home might not be an ideal environment an author like you would like to have while writing. Several annoying noises at home could distract you, to say the least. But, what if you could experience being in a coffee shop or the woods right from your home?
Noisli does just that. It simulates an environment for you. It is a tool using which you can set the background noises to anything you like. Whether you like being in a coffee shop, in the woods, besides a waterfall, in rainfall, amidst thunder sounds, or a mix of any of them; you can set that as your background with Noisli. Ssshh... Top secret!! I’m currently in a coffee shop in the woods near a waterfall with mesmerizing view of leaves falling, and sounds of thunder! ;)

It helps you get away from the annoying noises and improves your focus & productivity. You gotta try it!

keybr.com:



Well, this is a simple fact that the typing speed is pivotal to the writers & authors. The faster you write, the more you would be able to accomplish. According to Wikipedia, an average professional typist types around 50 to 80 WPM (Words Per Minute). If you are like me, this number is equivalent to climbing a peak or setting a world record. But worry not, though many tools help you find out your typing speed and others that help you improve your typing through the practice of typing some letters continuously, keybr is different from all.

Keybr is a web-based application powered by an algorithm that analyzes your typing and guides you accordingly to learn touch typing, which means typing through muscle memory without looking at the keyboard keys. It can help improve typing speed and accuracy dramatically. The best part, it doesn’t teach typing using the boring and standard method to force you to type some letters continually like ‘jjf jjk jjf jjk’ over and over again. Once you start typing with keybr, its sophisticated algorithm generates typing lessons matching your skills. Thus, helping you learn touch typing faster. Enjoy Typing!

Conclusion:

This list has tools that help you with things more than just making the To-Do Lists. These are both unique and interesting tools that writers like you can use and see a spike in productivity.
Listly helps you store your research links better; Mariana Timer helps you time yourself while writing; 750 Words helps you dump the unproductive thoughts; Trello helps you organize better; Noisli helps you create a perfect environment for writing; and the last but not the least, keybr helps you get better and faster at typing.
These tools can go a long way in streamlining many of your activities and making you more productive and accomplish more.

We hope that you find this list useful.

Which tool did you love the most? Do let us know in the comments below.





Image Credits:

Image 1: Juliette Leufke jleufke, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Image 2: Listly

Image 3: Mariana Timer

Image 4: 750 Words

Image 5: Trello Image 6: Noisli Image 7: keybr