Making the Most Out of the Remote Work: 9 Tools for Everyday Challenges

Even though almost the whole world has been working remotely for more than a year now, the issues of organizing remote work, maintaining productivity and efficiency are still relevant. This article shares a few simple apps that will help you effectively organize most remote processes, maintain smooth team communication, and stay inspired.

Creative insights into remote teams management

Before getting started with remote work optimization, find out how to design and manage remote teams to always be on the same page. Remote Work for Design Teams ebook is bursting with actionable insights on how to keep remote and creative teams effective.

Sounds to boost productivity and focus

Do you miss office sounds? Then you can use the I Miss The Office application that will surround you with the sounds of a keyboard, a printer, and a working coffee machine.

Are you, on the contrary, happy to finally get rid of the incessant noise and work in silence and harmony? If that’s the case, stay inspired and creative surrounded by the sounds of nature, or whatever you like – from the sound of a passing train to the purr of a cat. All these sounds are available from Noizio for Mac.

Background distractions-free conferencing experience

A year of working at home taught us to calmly react to external noises interrupting our call or video conference. We have become more tolerant of neighbors making repairs and other household sounds. But it’s still annoying anyway. Artificial intelligence-powered application Krisp removes all extraneous sounds and allows you to communicate with your team effectively.

Streamline calls scheduling

Scheduling dozens of calls per day may be challenging, especially if your team members are located in different time zones. The idea of Calendly is very simple  -you just need to specify your working hours and time zone, then share the link with your colleagues and allow them to choose free time slots. A planned call or event will be automatically synced up with your Google or iCloud Calendar.

Make use of countdown timer for better efficiency

Having a clear idea of how much time you spend to cope with a task and how effective you are at each of them is even more essential while working remotely since there are always more opportunities to get distracted. Big Timer is a nice and simple tool to set up a countdown timer, plan your time, and most importantly, follow your schedule and stay concentrated.

Send meaningful video messages from your screen

Video feedback is a great alternative to both calls and messages. With Loom you can record videos of your screen, enhance them with voice explanations and instructions, record video from your webcam, and quickly share your recordings with customers and team members.

Simplify screenshots capturing

Taking screenshots using a print screen and inserting them into a visual editor is quite an outdated practice. What’s more, CleanShot X can take the art of taking screenshots to the next level, allowing you to also scroll, take instant annotations and quickly share a link to your screenshot.

No more time zone mess!

If you work with customers or colleagues from different time zones, you know how easy it is to get confused by location and time differences. FIO solves this problem by allowing you to quickly navigate the time zones you need. The application allows you to select up to ten time zones, each of which will have its own gradient indicating the location and current time.

Data usage control and optimization

The more applications are running on your computer at the same time, the more data is used in the background. Of course, this slows down your device, so monitoring and optimizing data consumption is another key to effective and seamless remote work. For Mac users, the TripMode might be a good solution.

Have your PC running at top speed

Working in an office usually means that there is always a tech person in the team, and their job is to come to your rescue and fix your computer whenever something goes wrong. Sadly, when working at home, we do not have such a luxury and mostly deal with all kinds of problems by ourselves.

If you don’t want to face computer troubles alone, try Auslogics BoostSpeed 12, which offers a wide variety of solutions to PC users. Cleaning up the junk, speeding up the system, protecting your privacy, you name it – this tool can do it all. And the beauty of this software is that you don’t need to be a pro to be able to use it. Even though the program includes over 20 optimization tools, the interface is simple and intuitive, and you can fix your PC with a single click of a button.

Say goodbye to the chaos of using multiple tools

Switching between multiple tools can be super challenging and confusing when your team is working remotely. ProofHub is a project management and team collaboration solution that helps teams manage work in a way that everything can be kept organized in one place. It is a central platform that allows teams to sort through the clutter, plan and visualize tasks, communicate, track progress, manage time, and share as well as proof files seamlessly.

Keep your To-Do list ready

If you want to stay productive while remote working, you should keep a well-managed to-do list. nTask is a tool that will help you create a to-do list for free without messing up your schedule. Easily assign tasks to team members, set due dates, and share with the team on the go. Using a to-do list helps you keep updated, and enables you to meet deadlines as you receive real-time notifications and reminders.

Your bookmarks at your fingertips

How many articles, books, and researches do you have on your free-time reading list? And how much time do you spend to find the bookmark you need? Raindrop.io is a tool that allows you to quickly create a bookmark, categorize your reading and always have instant access to the information you need. Flexible categories are also helpful for keeping your personal and professional readings separate.

“Say no politely” email mission accomplished

It’s hard to say no. Saying no politely, leaving room for further collaboration, is even more difficult. If you often have to face such a dilemma, the How to Say No application will help you accomplish this and even offer dozens of templates for different situations. All you need to do is choose the template you want, customize it a bit and add your name at the end.

Conclusion

There can be a lot of useful and effective solutions to streamline remote work processes. Even though this article isn’t an ultimate list, we have collected the most essential and intuitive applications for work at home use. Get started with the one that fits your current necessity and proceed with the other tools, since together they make an effective combination for enjoyable remote work.