5 iPhone apps that will make you more productive

1. Toodledo


This is by far my favorite app for implementing David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” methodology. I don’t use his system to the letter, as contexts are sort of meaningless for me (I’m always near a phone, a computer, and an internet connection; and this is where 90% of my work happens). I do, however, love the principles he teaches, such as to have a weekly planning session, to have a list of projects, a list of actions, & a list of short-term & long-term goals, as well as a list of the different areas of stewardship in my life.

2. Habit Factor

This is a cool little app that I started using about a week ago. It replaced “Streaks” for me on accident. It went like this. I had to go into Apple to get my 3rd iPhone, & wasn’t able to restore my apps because Apple told me they had to rule out the “tethering hack” as a cause of my problems, meaning I needed to wipe my iPhone clean and go back to factory settings. Anyway….

back to Habit Factor. It allows you to set a goal & then set habits to go along with it. For example, you might set a goal to have 100 blog posts by three months from now. After you’ve setup your goal, you setup habits, small steps that much be accomplished on a regular basis in order for you to reach your goal.

All of that is cool, but where the app is different from Streaks is this: as you proceed along the path to your goal, you can check your progress, either as a % of your total goal, or as a fraction. So if you want to write those 100 blog posts, & you’ve written 33, you’d see “33% complete” when you checked the app.

That little “progress meter” helps keep me motivated.

3. SugarSync

This is actually a web service which has introduced an iPhone app. The web service is really similar to DropBox, allowing you to sync files across multiple computers.

The app has saved me a bunch of times. For example, my company was working on an important project that was due the next day. I had gone home already because family was in town. We went out to the movies to see Star Trek (which was awesome), and I got an email, “Dude, the files are corrupted on the Shared drive. Do you happen to have an extra copy of everything?” This was a 67 page doc, with about 17 exhibits — losing it would have been a nightmare.

I wasn’t worried about losing it because I not only had it backed up online through SugarSync, but also had it backed up on 3 different hard drives (all of which are hooked up through SugarSync), and backed up on an external hard drive.

As cool as that was, it got better.

I was just sitting down to enjoy Star Trek, & Captain Kirk’s dad was getting ready to sacrifice his life for his family — what a stud — so I didn’t want to go home to grab my laptop. No worries, I shot back an email, “I’m going to share a SugarSync link with you, you’ll need to setup a quick account but is should be painless.”

I then logged into my SugarSync  iPhone app (SugarSync organizes your files just like on your computer). I searched for the folder where all the files were, clicked “Share,” typed in my co-worker’s email address, & hit send. Bam! Files shared.

Saved me some serious time & stress, and I got back to my movie.

SugarSync has a free version, where you get up to 2GB free — they also have a paid version, which starts at like $5 a month.

4. Evernote

The reason I have this app is actually similar to the reason I have SugarSync, except that with Evernote I can go deeper and actually search through all my documents’ text, & access it from the phone. If you have OneNote, & use it for taking notes, you can easily import all your OneNote doc’s from within the Evernote’s Desktop version. You can also import most of your other text files, and then have all of this searchable from your iPhone.

The other things that Evernote allows you to do is take text notes, voice notes, picture notes from the iPhone.

The unique thing about Evernote (as there are many note-taking apps available on the iPhone), is that you can access your files from the iPhone, the desktop, or online.

Universal access to your most important notes.

5. Maps

So this one’s not exactly a productivity app per-se, and it comes with the iPhone so you have it no matter what, but I love it. If I was a bigger spender, I’d upgrade and down one of the new turn-by-turn apps, but for now Maps is good enough for me & saves me time driving around wondering where in the world I am.

Those are my favorites, but if you have any of your own that I missed let me know in the comments.

Thanks!