1 year ago

In today’s date, technology is something that has become an essential aspect of everybody’s life. It has influenced almost every aspect of our lives. I reckon there is hardly any person who can survive without technology nowadays. So digital tools do play a vital role in our lives. Right from smartphones and laptops to tablets and other gadgets, it’s all there and dominate us big time. And we are living at a time where it’s very tough to survive without many digital tools.



But at the same time, technology can also be a bane and is not a boon all the time. There’s a subtle grey zone of specific digital tools that may have an adverse effect on your daily lives and make you less productive. And it includes tools like social media and a heap load of other apps that are highly multi-faceted. And each of them does have the aptitude to either increase or decrease your productivity.

Over the years since technology has revolved, the use of digital tools in our place of work has been of high benefits to our business and also made work easy for us. We will list a few digital tools that are very useful to our business and get experts opinions on the list of useful digital tools and how it has made them more or less productive at work.

· Todoist: A tool that helps you lets you keep track of everything in one place, so you can get it all done and enjoy more peace of mind along the way.

· Evernote: A single place for your notes, ideas, lists and reminders.

· Hemingway Editor: A writing editor that checks for grammatical errors.

Other digital tools include; Pocket, Cyfe, coschedule, Hazeover and Betterteam. For more information on the list of digital tools visit colorlib.

Let's review people's view on how digital tools have made them more or less productive at work.

How can digital tools be more productive at work?



Digital tools, if chosen correctly, can turn out to be a boon for you. There are various ways in which it can genuinely help us and make our lives easier. So let’s have a look:





Beautify Your Resume

Take, for instance, if you are on the verge of making a resume, then there are many reputed tools like ResumUP, Vizualize.me, etc. And they will help you make your resume look more appealing, visually. Some tools help you change various aspects of your resume. Right from mapping out your educational background, work experience to your skills and personal information, one can work on this and more.





Support Formative Assessment (Education)

Many digital tools are available for teachers who can utilize them as a form of instructional practice in their respective classrooms. These platforms can unlock an ample amount of opportunities for success for both the teacher and the student. There are tools like Animoto or InVideo that enables anyone to compile a short or long-form video, and the tool is user-friendly. Then there are tools like Kahoot, Naiku, Piazza, etc. that enables the teacher to get a better assessment of the students. And these tools also help them to excel as time goes by.





Planning a Trip

Planning a trip has become way more comfortable than before. Thanks to technology and the digital tools that have made it more convenient. All you need is a phone, and you can book a trip, transportation, look for places nearby and pretty much everything in between. So there are specific digital tools like RV Trip Wizard, Google Maps, Fuelly, etc. And trust me, having them is indeed a boon for anyone planning for a trip, especially an RV trip.





Digital Marketing



Technology has helped a lot in terms of work, especially in the domain of digital marketing. There are specific digital tools that have made it easier for various brands to reach out to a broader audience across a diverse source of channels. And it includes Google Analytics, HubSpot, Slack, InVideo, etc.

How can Digital Tools be less productive at work?



Communication Adhering 24/7



It is generally believed that being able to communicate appropriately is something that everyone should be good at, especially at work. But, one can’t deny the fact that communicating 24/7 refers to continuous productivity as well. Take for instance, if you have access to a phone or email all the time and if any problem arises, then you have to address it promptly. And that can take a toll on your daily life.





Too Many Apps On Your Phone



Having too many apps on your phone is never a good idea. That’s because it will eventually hinder your productivity. So if you have a lot of apps on your phone, you will tend to switch from one app to another from time to time. And that’s going to have an effect on your work and eat up your valuable time.

Social Media



Let’s accept the fact that social media has become an integral part of our lives. But it is not something that one should make a habit of. The term ‘Social’ is quite contradicting in this aspect as all the social media platforms are crippling us to an extent and making us more ‘Unsocial”. So yes, social media is important, but it would be way better if we can limit our usage regarding it.



Nirav Sampat

Enhancing Marketing, InVideo.

Although I’m a tech enthusiast and a techie by trade, I’m still highly sceptical about which tools truly save time and which actually become a time drain. For example, Slack is great if a company uses it to improve communication and facilitate fast decisions - but not if the team end up spending time using the tool to have endless discussions and disagreements. Similarly, Trello is great if it’s helping people organise their tasks and actually be productive, but NOT great if everyone’s shuffling tasks around and adding notes, but not doing any actual work.

It’s important to be ruthless and honest about the use of any digital tool. There should always be a better reason for using each tool than merely using it because it exists and it is there.





Ben Taylor

Technical consultant

I believe some digital tools can make you less productive. Smartphones are the biggest culprit in my opinion. Every time they receive a text message, office workers feel the need to check their phones, which detracts them from the task at hand.

Smartphones are too much of a distraction and prevent your brain from fully focusing on what you're doing. I believe they're the perfect example of a digital tool that makes us less productive.

Gregory Golinski

Digital tools, if used correctly, can make us far more productive at work. Remote communication tools such as Skype, Discord, and Slack allow us to communicate with our team in a simple, effective way. Project Management tools such as Asana, Trello, and Write make project sharing and tracking much more efficient. List Management tools such as Things for Mac and OmniFocus provide us with an easy reference for all personal and business tasks.

AlessioDe Luca





Paid and free digital tools are available to us on a desktop or mobile devices however, if we don’t choose the right one for our business then we will be wasting our time. This depends on the kind of work you have to get done. There are all sorts of tasks that require you to work efficiently and effectively, so you need tools that can accelerate your workflow and give you the desired result.



We are living in the 21st century, but even if we were living in ancient times without the computer or the internet, we would be using tools to help us with daily chores. For example, today we use keyword research websites to dig up relevant search data but back then people made their technology using wood and stone. So tools have always come handy, the only challenge is to select one that assists you with the specific task.



You need digital tools for email marketing, managing teams, social media, visual designing, search engine optimization and link building. Tools automate certain aspects of our tasks and it becomes fairly easy to get the work done. So I feel that digital tools can really come handy provided we learn to use them correctly.

Aamina Suleman



Senior Digital Marketing Executive



LogoDesignGuru.

Personally, I feel that the majority of digital tools make us less productive at work and just add to the number of things that we have to do. Basically, apart from a few notable exceptions that really do help to streamline your work, I feel that most just end up creating more work to justify their existence.



For example, I have a deep aversion to time-tracking software. It's ultimately designed to help you and your team save time (and thus, money) by tracking the time that you spend on tasks but I've found that more often than not it just causes you to waste time. You have to spend forever setting and assigning tasks, as well as monitoring progress and evaluating results. I don't think the digital tools I've come across so far are relatively good at that.

Christopher Fear

Outreach Specialist

Whether or not digital tools can make you more or less productive is largely dependent on the person using them. If you’re the kind of person who isn’t easily distracted between tasks, then they can increase your productivity. However, you need to make sure you’re using the right tools for you, especially if you're easily distracted.



Digital tools have their place in terms of increasing your productivity and tracking your work. They even have the potential to improve effective communication in the workplace. That being said, having multiple applications that you need to use at once can reduce productivity. While every app and tool may have its place in improving your productivity on an individual level, there’s the potential for a too many cooks situation to develop fairly quickly. This can be avoided by utilizing apps that promote collaboration among digital platforms and provide a central location to deposit information across employers.

Rylan Shafer

Media & PR Manager

Ulistic LP

I think digital tools make us more productive at work for one critical reason: Automation. Laborious tasks that used to have to be performed manually are now fully automated using digital tools. This saves both precious productivity time and hard-earned dollars.



Say, for example, that a department manager at a corporation has to review an employee's travel request. This would involve having to manually evaluate the trip details and cross-reference that information with the corporate travel policy so that the booking follows guidelines.



Today, there are digital pre-trip authorization tools like our Authorizer PRO https://trondent.com/authorizer-pro/ that companies can build from their travel policy, so all a manager has to do is see if the trip has passed the automated rule chain, or if it failed and the clear reason code why.



Sure, it takes a little time to learn how to use any digital tool, but once you're up and running you put minutes back on the clock.

Angela Zade | Marketing

In my experience, digital tools make me a Hell of a lot more productive than I would be without the use of digital tools. Let's take Ahrefs as an example. My job involves completing a lot of SEO audits, and monitoring backlinks is a crucial part of this. Ahrefs makes it extremely easy for me to look at the backlink profile of a website without much effort at all. This means I can complete tasks such as backlink analysis quicker than I could without the tool!



Ryan Jones

Digital Marketing Executive





Digital tools and services are ubiquitous to all organizations today. From Email, calendars, web browsers, Voice Over IP telephony to business applications that include word processors, spreadsheets, presentation applications and organizers. Without these digital tools, modern organizations would not be able to function and be able to communicate and interact effectively. Digital tools certainly allow organizations to be more productive as anything that is accessed digitally can easily be searched, edited, shared and retrieved. As well, digital tools allow for access to data and services from any location with an Internet connection so that physical presence is irrelevant. For example, Customer Service representatives can work from an Internet-connected home office using a soft-phone to take calls and enter call details into a Customer Relationship Management system while using other lines of business applications to fulfil customer requests.



Jorge Rojas | Tektonic Inc.

Working as a remote team, we naturally rely on digital tools on a daily basis in order to stay in touch, keep organized and ensure everyone remains productive.

Whether or not these actually have the desired effect depends on the way in which you view them and how you implement them.



One thing I frequently see people fall victim to, however, is shiny object syndrome. With so many new tools coming out on a weekly basis, there are plenty of people who feel like they're missing out and snap up software at an almost unsustainable pace. This is where I believe the use of digital tools falls firmly in the unproductive category.



By constantly changing digital your toolset and subsequently needing to retrain yourself and the team you work with on how to use these tools, you create unnecessary bottlenecks which I believe simply aren't needed.



Providing you use digital tools with restraint and only use that which is necessary, however, I truly believe the use of digital tools can significantly boost productivity. Just make sure you don't get attracted by shiny offers luring you in with features that are completely unnecessary and irrelevant to your work environment!

Jon Hayes

Judgement Media

We have all complained that technology has only made us even more accessible and chained us to our work all days and times. Where has it improved our productivity? There are a few ways we benefit every day.



Work from anywhere and anytime: Before the advent of cloud storage platforms, it was necessary to pack up briefcases, file folders, disk drives, thumb drives, and heavy gear. Today, we can literally access our files from anywhere, and pick up where we left off at the office so long as we have internet access on our computer, laptop, or tablet. In addition, we have platforms where multiple people on the same team can share and work from the exact same file with all changes saves real-time. This technology has saved countless hours in travel. It has also given us the added advantage of secure offsite storage, minimizing the chance of local loss.



Being there when you can't: Having a team or client meeting can be very time consuming and expensive if the participants are separated by long distances. Virtual conferencing equipment is very high quality and relatively inexpensive these days, especially with the use of available faster internet speeds. Within our company, we now host weekly sales meetings online that cross three time zones. We also carry portable, lightweight equipment that allows virtual conferencing from about anywhere

. Now there is no reason we cannot be face to face with any client regardless of physical distance.



Onsite eyes with an offsite body: In days past, it was necessary to visit each physical site to inspect progress and activity. Today, we have incredibly small, high-quality cameras that can be viewed and even controlled remotely. These are relatively inexpensive cameras with stunning 4K video quality and even image stabilization. This allows one person in one location to oversee multiple sites saving valuable time and resources.

Ron Humes

VP Operations.

If I were to compare my work day from 1989 to today's workday, I can honestly say that what I can accomplish in one day, is five times what I was able to accomplish back then. Where we used to get suck is finding information, making transactions, and keeping track of business communications/work.



Focusing in on the business communications/work aspect, when given the choice between a physical log that can be lost, stolen, and even destroyed or a system that automatically and accurately details my work, I will always choose the latter.



Asking if digital tools help increase productivity is like asking if the sun rises from the East. It is very obvious that they do. In the past, a product would take four years to go from idea to actual production. Meanwhile, with today's speed, a product can undergo the same steps in twelve weeks.



Laith Pahlawan, CEO Laith.

Remote teams like ours at Virtual Vocations couldn’t exist without technology. Research has shown time and time again that professionals who telecommute are more productive than their counterparts in traditional roles, and that’s large because the digital tools they use allow them to get a lot done in a short period of time. After all, sending an email is always faster than trying to fax or mail something to a co-worker or customer!





There’s also the added benefit of accessibility that comes with using digital tools and software. Team members can access documents and data from virtually anywhere nowadays, and thanks to web-based programs like Slack and appear.in, virtual communication is quick, easy, and streamlined—and can be done any time, any place. All in all, digital tools help us spend less time doing menial tasks that can be automated so we get back to doing what’s most important: growing our business.

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