Often, technology can be one of the many reasons we get distracted, from flicking through social media or completing just one more level of Candy Crush. However, technology can also be hugely beneficial in helping us to more effectively organise our time and workload.

There is a range of great apps available that can help to boost your productivity levels and focus on ticking off your to-do list.

FocusList

FocusList is a daily planner that helps you to break your workload into manageable chunks. The app is based around the Pomodoro Technique, a management method which breaks down tasks into a 25-minute time frame to help boost and maintain productivity and focus.

The idea is that by working in smaller, more manageable time increments and taking regular five-minute breaks, it helps us to complete tasks faster with less fatigue. FocusList allows you to input tasks and tracks your time. Once you start a task, the app starts a timer to countdown the time you have left before taking a break.

It also allows you to input an estimated task completion time and then compare it to the actual amount of time the task took to complete. At the end of the day, you can track how much time you spent on each task and analyse where most of your time is being used over weeks and months.

Buffer

If you run your own business or work in a social media role, then you may be familiar with Buffer. Managing social media platforms can be extremely time-consuming and overwhelming.

Buffer is a social media management tool that allows you to more effectively manage all our your social media profiles in one place. Not only does it allow you to schedule content for the coming weeks or months, but it also tells you when your followers are most active and therefore, more likely to engage with your content.

The app also allows you to track and analyse engagement and interactions on the posts you have shared so you can easily identify the types of content that work for your business and are more likely to drive sales.

RescueTime

If at the end of the day you find yourself wondering where all your time has gone and why you haven’t achieved as much as you would like yet can’t quite put your finger on why then RescueTime may be a useful app for you to use. The app runs in the background of your device and tracks all the applications and websites that you use as well as the amount of time that you spent on them.

So, if you’re spending a little too long scrolling through social media, RescueTime will know. It then allows you to generate reports and set goals to more effectively manage your time. If you want to spend an hour less a day on social media or limit the time spent on shopping websites to two hours a week then you can easily manage your goals, track your usage and even put blocks to certain websites in place.

Noisli

Often, the environment around us can act as one of our main distractions. Being able to concentrate is the only way we can work to be more productive. Research has found that it isn’t really noise which is the most distracting element, rather, unwanted speech noise that individuals deemed to be a distraction.

Noisli is an app which is focused on white noise. White noise is a type of sound that masks out background noise. A lot of the time, people use white noise to help them sleep or to prevent them from waking up during sleep. The function of white noise and its ability to mask out distracting sounds makes it a great tool to help you concentrate and focus. By adding a low-level, ambient sound to your workspace, it can help to make conversations and other unwanted noises easier to ignore.

Noisli is filled with a range of sounds which people typically tend to find relaxing, such as crashing waves, rain or a burning log fire. If you find yourself in an environment filled with distractions and you are unable to concentrate, or you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed with your workload, download Noisli to bring a sense of calm, drown out distractions and help you to get on with the task in hand.

Trello

Trello makes managing your workflow simple. It is used by many well-known companies worldwide, such as Google and Adobe, and is one of the best project management tools around. You can create boards, lists and cards based on different projects and tasks and arrange them to easily organise and prioritise your to-do list.

Whether you work on your own or part of a team, Trello is a great visual tool that helps you to easily see work to be completed, the level of priority assigned to a task and deadlines, making it easier to schedule your workload accordingly. It also has the ability to help you break down tasks into smaller, manageable chunks so you can easily see where you are up to. For anyone with a long list of tasks and a busy schedule, Trello is a must-have app to help manage your time more effectively.

In a world where smartphones and other devices can become an obsession and a distraction to everyday life, it has become more apparent that mobile app development can be used in a positive way to develop apps that are also beneficial to everyday life and productivity. By using productivity-boosting apps you will soon be on your way to a more organised, stress-free and manageable workload.

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According to Google, the speed update will only affect sites that “deliver the slowest experience to users”. This means only a small percentage of websites will be impacted by the update. However, a slow site can still rank well, but only if the page in question has highly relevant, good quality content.

This update was announced after a recent study indicated that the average load time of a mobile landing page is 22 seconds, but 53 per cent of mobile users abandon their search if a page takes longer than a few seconds to load.

More than half of Australia’s overall web traffic comes from mobile devices, however, mobile conversion rates are lower than those on desktops. The study, comprised of 900,000 mobile ads’ landing pages across 126 countries, confirmed that the majority of mobile sites are too slow and bloated with too many slow-loading elements.

From these results, Google determined that 70 per cent of the pages analysed took at least seven seconds to load the visual elements displayed above the fold, while it took more than 10 seconds to load all of the visual content below the fold. During this time, the probability of a user abandoning their search increases with every second that passes.

Of the pages analysed, sites in the automotive, retail and technology sectors were among the slowest to load. It’s believed these slow load times could be attributed to how much data is often crammed into a single mobile page. Of the sites studied, 70 per cent contained more than 1MB, 36 per cent more than 2MB and 12 per cent were storing more than 4MB. Considering it takes seven seconds to load 1.49MB with a fast 3G connection, it’s safe to say that a large portion of mobile websites are storing too much data on a single page, which is affecting loading times.

In light of these findings, Google has reiterated how important it is for developers to consider how performance affects a user’s experience of a page, and to always remember to compress images.

Things You Should do Before July 2018

There’s still time to improve the load time of your clients’ sites before these changes are officially implemented. While there isn’t a tool that indicates whether or not a page will be affected by the new mobile speed ranking factor, there are a number of tools available that can analyse a site’s performance, including:

• Chrome User Experience Report
• Lighthouse
• PageSpeed Insights 

These tools can highlight key user experience metrics, the auditing quality of a web page (performance, accessibility, and etc), and how well a page performs against the Chrome UX Report.

You can also test a site’s mobile speed to see how it stacks up against user preferences with the Test my Site tool.

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As it currently stands, only Australians aged 13 and above are able to sign up for a Google account to gain access to their own email account, the app store and the internet on phones and tablets. However, now that 50% of children between the ages of two and 12 have their own phone or tablet, younger children are able to sign up to these services simply by lying about their age during the set-up process.

Family Link is a way to help children gain access to their own digital space, with their parents being able to keep track of what they’re doing and impose usage restrictions.

How Does Family Link Work?

For Family Link to work the child will need a new or factory reset Android device. Google will ask the parent to create an account during the set-up process, at which point they will be required to enter the child’s birthday. If they’re under 13-years of age, the parent can create a Google account that’s under their management.

After the account is created, Family Link will automatically be downloaded to the child’s device, and the parent will be able to choose which apps and settings they want to provide access to.

Using the app, parents will be able to manage the amount of screen time their children has, with weekly or monthly activity reports available, as well as daily screen time limits.

Parents will also be able to control which apps can and can’t be downloaded, and allow the device to be remotely locked when it’s time for them to study, play or sleep.

However, Google does acknowledge that no app can make services that are designed for adults 100% ‘child-safe’, but that Family Link will help parents stay in the loop and set ground rules for how their children use their devices.

Any parent who requires assistance setting up Family Link on their child’s device can visit the Google Help Centre.

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