It’s always a struggle to be more productive, both in work and in life. Luckily, we have technology to keep us on task and spending our time more efficiently. Between our phones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches, we are able to make the best use of each minute in the day using apps, a sentence that probably wouldn’t have even made sense to us a decade ago. Here are some of my favorite apps that help me stay on track during the day using applications on my phone and devices.

1# Evernote

Evernote was a favorite of mine during college. You can take notes, include documents like PDFs, easily create a bulleted to-do list, or use the camera tool to include photos of things like receipts, coupons, or tickets. These are accessible across your devices, so feel free to set up your shopping list on your computer and access it on your phone at the grocery store. The best part of Evernote is how easily you can organize those little documents in your life, like business cards or hand-written notes, that often end up lost or crumpled up on the floor of our car.

2# Google Drive

An angel from heaven, Google Drive allows us to store our files and access them on the go, as well as collaborate seamlessly on projects with coworkers. It is integrated with many web apps you might need in your line of work, and always saves instantly so you never have to worry about losing your work on that big PowerPoint the night before the presentation. Google Drive is important to my household as well, allowing me to share collaborative documents like big shopping lists, search within PDFs so I can scan in important documents for my home and family, and keep track with my partner of expenses or ideas. If we are independently searching for, say, Virginia houses for sale, we are able to put all we’ve learned into one shared folder that includes other important documents about the house-buying process. Google Drive has been a basic need for me as a working professional and overall human being, and works as seamlessly with Android devices as it does with Apple products.

3# Trello

Trello works like a big white board on which you would jot down and organize your ideas in a visual way. It’s a great tool for brainstorming ideas for a project, or segregating your tasks based on whatever categorization system makes sense to you. When I freelance for multiple companies, I use Trello to organize my duties for each one. When I work for one company, I use it to organize my assignments based on category. It’s completely customizable for whatever system works best for you, and the free version is more than acceptable for most professionals.

4# Hours

Hours is an app that will help you keep track of exactly how you spend your time each day. You can use an app like this to become more productive by looking at how much time you spend on particular tasks and how much time you spend giving into distractions. This helps with work, but also with your personal life and better understanding how you can get important task in your life completed in the optimal amount of time.