List of over 350 Productivity Tools | Hacker News Reader

List of over 350 Productivity Tools

drive.google.com

47 pointspankmahar24 comments

First one: "Thrive Global is a corporate and consumer well-being and productivity platform that offers science-based solutions to improve performance."

What does that even mean? The next few descriptions seem similarly content-free. I even know what Grammarly is but if I didn't, "Grammarly’s AI-powered products help people communicate more effectively" would not induce me to try it.

I visited the "Thrive Global" site and looked for the app. It is 3 clicks in, and appears to be... a tracking app which is available only on Samsung devices.

I'd be better off googling for "Productivity tools" over trying to process this list.

Hint: If your list has 350 items, it does not benefit productivity.

I'm sure that somebody will come along with a "curated" list.

The descriptions are utterly useless. Instead of giving short account of capabilities, we're faced with advertisment.

How is this being up-voted? Reading through any such list would be a loss of potentially productive time.

you have to spend productivity to make productivity

Slightly off topic: Is there a way to scrape info about who visits a shared google doc? Could a post like this be used to gather email addresses of people looking for productivity software?

It seems you can use Google Drive Metrics [1] which is deprecated and migrating to other services.

[1] https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/reports/v1/reference...

Depending on the settings yes you can, though I'm not sure if linking it to specific profiles can only be done at Google, but I've been able to see how many people are reading a shared gdocument before.

I just received a notification today on a Gdoc I edit frequently that said something like, "Editors can now see who and when the document has been accessed by others"

What's the point of this?

It's a great way to waste time ;)

The second tab of the sheet seems to be the point.

When I was a kid I used to maintain a dictionary of websites too. Felt stupid after finding google.

Yahoo, is that you?

Call me dmoz

It is a well compiled list. I think the OP titled it incorrectly, which has led to some sagely advice and even debate about productivity in the comments!

In fact these are the kinds of things I'd like to see more of on HN - A peek at personal notes, resources, links etc used by the HN crowd.

irony: combing through this list for one that is actually useful is a serious time sink.

One of the best productivity tools is not looking for a tool to make you more productive.

Productive people create productivity tools to make them more productive. Unproductive people think those same productivity tools will magically make them work better, but most of the problem lies in a lack of self-discipline, rather than lack of a magic tool.

The problem is the right productivity system is contextual.

I have my homegrown software based on Autofocus, which as a system is enough for 95% of senior engineers. However, I've just added some additional responsibilities that draw me from a "maker" schedule more and more. My problem isn't that I'm not productive in terms of an hours worked perspective -- my problem is that I need help focusing on the right things in the face of competing requests.

GTD, for example, is fantastic for that. It's terrible for the average developer. Most developers can rely on their bug tracking software as their "productivity software" with a simple todo list and calendar reminders for due dates of non-code requirements. (e.g. HR paperwork)

I don't need a magic tool to make me productive; I need a tool to function as a priority queue. If you want a tool to make you productive, you're looking at the wrong tool.

Wise words. Productivity comes from within. Not from external tools.

I think this is true to an extent. Thinking you need external tools to make you more productive and spending too much time looking at new tools does the opposite. However, deciding on some tools that are good enough for you and actually using them can be a large boon. I have been more productive than ever in 2018 and it's partially because I established a system in Todoist and Trello. Of course, actually building the momentum on top of that system was the more important part, but I really don't think I could have done it without the organization.

I was hoping these would be native desktop apps. Instead it seems to be a marketing list for a bunch of fly-by-night SAAS apps.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com