Productivity Time-Saving Apps

Over the last few years, there have been many insightful articles written on the claim that too many apps can kill productivity. Indeed, perhaps ironically, many interesting posts claim that productivity apps themselves kill productivity, particularly when we use too many of them. The constant switching from app to app, the overwhelming feeling of having too many tools, and a host of other reasons contribute to the idea of technology overload. 

And, it’s not just about having too many apps either. In an article published in 2019, Vox took aim at one of the darlings of the all-in-one productivity app boom – Slack. To be fair, Vox was probably a bit harsh in titling its piece, “The productivity pit: how Slack is ruining work”, but the article did raise some salient points about Slack (and its competitors, such as Microsoft Teams) and the contradictions of calling it a essential productivity tool. 

Slack in the firing line 

One of the interesting points raised by Vox was that Slack failed to do the very thing it was supposed to do in the first place – “fix email”. By fixing email, the author meant that these collaborative tools are supposed to either integrate – or eliminate – the need for multiple communication apps, and they haven’t. Think about it: You get to work, you check your email, you check Slack/Teams for messages, WhatsApp, a personal email account, SMS on your work phone, and so on. This drives down productivity. 

To be fair, some collaborative tools have succeeded where Slack and Teams have failed. Spike, an email app growing in popularity for businesses, decided to “fix email” by reimagining email. It saw email as being – more or less – the same for the last 25 years, and it decided that it was time to recreate it. By transforming emails into conversations – in a WhatsApp-style chat format – Spike eliminates the needs for multiple apps and integrates with existing apps, and thereby helps productivity. We should also say for reference that it has all the tools (like video calling and note-taking) that you would expect from Teams and Slack. 

Nevertheless, there is a growing sentiment that too much communication is hurting productivity. How many Slack messages do you send or receive that are unnecessary? How many channels are unnecessary? Do you speak to the same colleagues across multiple applications? Do you get distracted by messages? 

It’s not our intention to pick on Slack or Teams here – far from it. But there is mounting evidence – or, at least, expert opinion – that the communication overload is becoming damaging to productivity. Here’s an excerpt from an interview in Wired magazine with Lucas Miller, lecturer at Haas School of Business, Berkeley, California: 

“With email you know you probably have time to read through a bunch of messages and have a day to respond. Slack is instant and we get a rewarding hit of dopamine every time we respond to someone or someone reaches out to us to let us know a member of our’ work tribe’ needs us. It makes us feel valued and informed, but it also makes us fearful every time an alert comes in that we’ll be out of the loop or ill-informed if we don’t check a message, even though very few truly need our instant attention.”

More succinctly, Miller said that “The result is that workers end up checking messages about work, rather than doing any.” And that gets to the heart of it – the difference between doing work and checking messages about work. Getting the balance between the two is not easy – and it’s one of the challenges facing the modern workforce. 

Perform an audit on your workplace apps

But let’s be honest about it – you or your boss aren’t going to suddenly stop using tools like Slack. These products are seen as essential to modern enterprise, even if it can be proven that they hurt productivity. So, what is the answer? 

Well, first of all, it’s worth doing an ‘app audit’ to see what is working for your company and what isn’t. RingCentral Inc recently published a blog on the best and worst productivity apps, citing its own video conferencing product among the best. But towards the end of the piece, RingCentral highlighted four key areas that unite the “worst” productivity apps:

  • Those that don’t integrate with existing software and systems. 
  • Those that only offer minimal methods of communication.
  • Those that are too complicated to use and require too much employee training.
  • Those that make the workplace more cluttered and tasks less streamlined.  

We could probably add a few more items to the list, but the above checklist is a reasonable starting point for evaluating the worthiness of your current products or anything you are considering implementing.

By Anurag Rathod

Anurag Rathod is an Editor of Appclonescript.com, who is passionate for app-based startup solutions and on-demand business ideas. He believes in spreading tech trends. He is an avid reader and loves thinking out of the box to promote new technologies.