Feeling overwhelmed and unfocused is expected when you start working remotely. Suddenly, without the structure of an office, you have complete autonomy over your schedule. But with great Freedom comes great responsibility.

When every minute turns elastic, and your boss isn’t watching your screen, wasting hours between apps can become routine. Maybe you had rock-solid personal productivity once. But now, slipping deadlines, communication breakdowns, and distracted days seem inevitable no matter how many to-do list apps you try.

What if, instead, there were a few deliberate solutions that could give you back the same elite focus you had in the office? Game-changing technologies are so simple yet powerful that productivity bottlenecks disappear in days, not months.

Read on for five breakthrough apps that streamline remote work.

1.Freedom

You’ve undoubtedly been a victim of wandering between apps and losing focus while working remotely. Freedom is an invaluable tool that locks you out of distracting websites and apps for set periods so you can power through essential tasks.

What you’ll love about Freedom is its simplicity. All you need to do is launch the app, add sites you find distracting to your “Block List”, set a custom timer based on how long you need to focus, and Freedom will handle the rest. It can be a total game changer for improving your productivity.

ProTip: Set your Slack, Facebook, inbox, and other distractions to only be accessible during short breaks. You’ll be amazed at how much more profound in flow you’ll get with your work.

2.Slack

Remote collaboration is critical for any distributed team’s success. While in-office employees can tap their colleagues on the shoulder or call an impromptu meeting, remote workers need technology to connect everyone seamlessly.

This is where Slack comes in. Think of Slack as a virtual office where your whole company exists digitally. You can direct message individuals, create group channels, instantly share files, hop on video calls, and much more.

Slack brings all your work conversations and tools together in one platform so communication always runs smoothly. It can significantly reduce back-and-forth emails while allowing you to collaborate smoothly across remote teams and time zones.

3.Calendar

Your schedule can spiral into chaos when you don’t have set office hours or commuting routines while working remotely. From client calls to internal meetings and pressing deadlines, things tend to fall through the cracks—which can quickly turn an otherwise productive week into constant frustration.

This is why Calendar is a must-have, a clever scheduling assistant app. Once connected to your Google or Outlook calendar, Calendar analyzes all your upcoming events and commitments. From there, it provides helpful reminders about meetings, automatically blocks off focus time so you can complete deep work and more.

The calendar keeps you in sync and on track with your daily and weekly priorities. For remote workers who need help sticking to routines and managing hectic schedules, Calendar is essential.

4.Boomerang

Between team emails, client messages, and an endless stream of notifications, keeping your inbox somewhat under control as a remote employee can feel impossible some days. This is where Boomerang comes in handy by helping you handle email overload.

Boomerang lets you easily schedule emails to send at any date/time you set so you can clear out your inbox immediately.

You can also use Boomerang to receive notifications if a critical stakeholder hasn't replied to an urgent email after a timeframe you determine, allowing you to follow up at just the right time.

Staying on top of your constantly-filling inbox used to be anxiety-inducing until Boomerang came around. Now, you can have a reliable system for keeping email organized rather than letting hundreds of unread messages indefinitely pile up. Such a relief!

5.Toggle

As a remote worker, accurately evaluating how productive you are daily or weekly can be challenging. With no manager monitoring your work and no set hours to clock in/out, time easily blends when you work from home.

However, precisely tracking your remote work time is critical for billing clients, reporting to managers, setting future goals and more.

This is why Toggl is highly recommended for fellow remote employees. Toggl provides straightforward time tracking for monitoring how many hours you work on projects with just one click.

You can use handy productivity reports that break down where your hours are spent each week—allowing you to schedule your time better and improve inefficient work patterns.

The Bottom Line

You are streamlining your workflows, establishing routines, and automating tedious tasks—these used to be nearly impossible for remote workers only a few years back.

However, with today’s modern SaaS products tailored towards distributed teams, staying focused and efficient regardless of location has never been more achievable.

Give the apps above a try if you’re struggling to stay productive outside a traditional office! Let me know in the comments if these tips are valuable or if you have any other favourite remote productivity tools to suggest!