Recommended Productivity Apps

Dr. Abder-Rahman Ali
2 min readMay 10, 2016

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I cannot emphasize more that technology is playing a vital role in our lives nowadays than any period before. Digging more deeper in productivity topics, I can notice that in order to be more productive you need some sort of software tool or app as a companion along the way.

Not so long ago, I used to refuse to get technology in my productivity routine so as not to get distracted, especially that I was comfortable using the pen and paper way ( i.e. the traditional way).

Commitments began to increase day-by-day, add to that having a family. Notes on papers started to increase, but worse, sometimes they get lost somewhere and I can barely remember what I have even written down.

At this point, I came to the conclusion that we are living in an era where even productivity enthusiasts can hardly be separated from technology. Either we like it or not, technology seems to have to be part of the productivity game.

I don’t want to make you wait more, as I believe you are curious about what those productivity apps enthusiasts are using and what David Allen (creator of GTD) is favoring. So, let’s see that together.

I have interviewed 15 productivity enthusiasts (names and their preferences shown at the end of this post) with this question:

What is your favorite productivity app?

Based on the interviews, I created the following chart showing the most popular productivity apps:

So, from the sample interview (which wasn’t actually a random sample, as I have carefully picked the interviewees and made sure that they are engaged in productivity) it seems that Asana and Todoist are the most favored productivity apps. As you have also guessed, David Allen favored Microsoft Excel.

Now, it’s your turn, what is your favorite productivity app?

Special thanks go to the following productivity enthusiasts for their time in sharing their favorite productivity apps (in alphabetical order): David Allen (Microsoft Excel), Dermot Crowley (TaskTask), Fokke Kooistra (Evernote), Francesco D’Alessio (Todoist), Goncalo Gil Mata (OmniFocus), Jeremy Roberts (Asana), Kosio Angelov (Asana), Laura Stack (Tripit), LJ Earnest (Remember the milk), Michael Sliwinski (Nozbe), Olga Degtyareva (No app), Paul Minors (Asana), Timo Kiander (Todoist), Tracy Parks (Nozbe), Stever Robbins (Todoist)

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