At Kikao64 Hub, our clients work remotely, and time management is one of their key concerns. Digital nomads and homebodies alike, our clients are teams and staff in different companies that coordinate day-to-day activities across time zones, cultures, and regions.
The biggest challenge for remote workers and people with work-from-home arrangements is how to manage their time schedules – meeting dates, client schedules – with teams around the world.
So, in this article, we will share some important calendar and time management tools to help remote workers (our clients) stay productive. We’ll also share some time management tips for remote workers to use alongside these tools.
Let’s delve into it!
- Best Time Management tools for remote workers
Time management goes hand in hand with productivity. The following are scheduling, productivity, and time management tools for remote work teams and individuals:
- DeskTime – Time Tracking
DeskTime is a desktop and mobile time tracking app for teams and freelancers. It has robust attendance tracking, productivity measurement, and workflow management features.
It tracks employee activity on PC and Mac by noting every active website, program, and application they open and categorizing them as productive or unproductive.
What makes DeskTime popular;
- Project and task time tracking
- Automatic online and idle time tracking
- Productivity calculation
- Absence calendar
- Shift Scheduling
- Smart reporting and data exports
- Popular with management tool integrations such as Asana, Basecamp, Jira, Trello, GitLab, Google, and Outlook Calendars.
- WorldTime Buddy – World Clock and Converter
For teams that work across regions, here is World Time Buddy.
World Time Buddy (WTB) is a combination of a world clock, time zone converter, and an online meeting scheduler. It’s a key online productivity tool for those traveling more, in flights, in online meetings, or just calling friends and family abroad.
It allows you to compare multiple time zones at a glance, so you can plan conference calls, sales calls, webinars, international phone calls, or even web meetings. It also aids with business travel & tracking of market hours.
- Hubstaff – Time Tracking
If you want to know how much time your employees spend on tasks, Hubstaff is your go to tool.
Hubstaff is a remote employee tracking software that tracks proof of work, time spent on a project or task. It also offers other capabilities like payroll management, project management and remote talent finder.
What makes the Hubstaff time tracking tool so popular:
- Focus more on task completion than tracking it
- Smart web, desktop, and mobile apps
- Feature-rich dashboard for easy team management
- Record time on the road with mobile-based time tracking
There are more features in Hubstaff that support integration with other apps and tools.
- Doodle – Free online meeting scheduling tool
Remote work doesn’t mean no meetings. But, like real office scenarios, you might forget a meeting or forget to slot time for a crucial meeting. This is where Doodle comes in.
Doodle is the simplest way to schedule meetings with team members, project collaborators, colleagues, clients, partners, or even family and friends, especially when the meetings extend across time zones.
- Harvest – Time tracking
Harvest is modern time tracking software – for less effort, more joy, and improved profitability.
Harvest helps growth-minded individuals and organizations make the most of time, from consultancies to remote teams, internal departments, freelancers, and people working from home across industries. You can plan and estimate projects with real data, manage team capacity and workflow, show evidence of time worked, and create reports. You can track time from desktop or mobile and integrate time tracking into your existing workflow.
- Calendar – Scheduling
Perhaps the most widely used, Calendar is the best tool for simple and easy task scheduling. It also has helpful features such as:
- Intertwined Calendaring and scheduling
- A unified online calendar
- Time-usage analytics
- Finding mutually agreeable meeting times
No other calendar tool offers all of these features together.
It also has a perfect integration with different communication and collaboration tools. For example, Calendar’s harmonious dashboard lets you view all different calendars across Google, Outlook, and Apple in one user-friendly interface.
- com: Free Online Appointment Scheduling Software
Technically, the best tool for scheduling, Calendly is the modern scheduling platform or hub for scheduling meetings professionally and efficiently. It eliminates the hassle of back-and-forth emails as you try to find the best time for your meeting.
According to TechCrunch, Calendly managed to solve people’s online scheduling nightmare in 2020. The “future of work” — cloud services, communications, productivity apps — has become “the way we work now” and Calendly is right at the center of this paradigm.
Calendly works for teams and individuals.
- Toggl – Time Tracking
Toggl makes individual and team time tracking so simple that organizations love using it.
Toggl offers online time tracking and reporting services through their website as well as on mobile and desktop applications. With Toggl Track, you can track time blocks optionally labeled with three options: a task, a project, and tags.
Voted the top time tracking tool for individuals and organizations, Toggle offers you the opportunity to unique features like:
- Time tracking: Online & offline time tracking
- Project management: Unlimited projects and subprojects for accurate time tracking
- Reporting: Reports featuring team progress
- Billing: Assign billable rates to your task
Essentially, Toggl integrates with different project management systems, platforms browsers such as Chrome, Mozilla, Android, Windows, iPhone, desktop, Mac, etc.
- Zapier – App Integration and Automation
People who use Zapier save an average of 4 hours per week when working. Why?
Zapier is an online automation tool that allows employees and teams to connect two or more apps to automate repetitive tasks. With Zapier, you can connect and automate your apps with just a few clicks.
“Zaps” are integrations of apps that you can search and choose to help you create your workflow. When an event (task) happens in one app, Zapier can tell another app (or group of apps) to perform (or do) that particular action to prevent repetition so you can focus on your most important tasks for project completion.
With Zapier, you can integrate apps like Google Suite, Salesforce, Dropbox, and many more productivity tools to move data between them automatically, so you can focus on your most important work.
It allows teams to be 100% remote but still complete tasks.
What makes Zapier so popular?
- Automating repetitive tasks
- Sync with Google Calendar
- Publicly share apps
- Set up triggers and actions
There are more other apps you can use to improve your time management.
To make your time management more effective, you need to strike a balance between time management tools and personal organization.
5 Time Management Tips and Tools for Remote Workers
Use the following tips to boost your productivity tips at work:
- Prioritize Your Tasks
Start your workday with the “eat the frog” methodology, where you start with the highest priority task, then other tasks can follow. Tackle your Goliath first and work on other tasks later.
- Build a healthy schedule. – and stick to it
Have your day divided into segments and break down your tasks into blocks of time with breaks in between. Working remotely can sometimes mean working more houses which can lead to fatigue.
- Break down goals into smaller tasks
Taking large tasks by the horn can cause intimidation. Vague and intimidating tasks can cause you anxiety over having to work. Breaking down my main tasks into smaller, more manageable subtasks helps with this issue. Smaller tasks are easier to complete & transition to the next task.
- Get rid of distractions.
When working remotely there are a lot of distractions, including social media, community websites, noise from items, children, or even the bed next to you, or free time without anyone watching.
Get rid of all these distractions to give you optimum productivity. How?
- Wear noise-canceling earbuds with calming music to help you focus.
- Use Do Not Disturb on your phone to block any incoming calls, texts, or active apps with notifications.
- Turn desktop notifications off to prevent distracting notifications.
- Block distracting websites such as social media.
- Multitask only when necessary
Multitasking might appear a good idea, but it really isn’t. Dividing your attention between tasks will slow you down. It might also leave room for error.
So, unless you must, avoid multitasking and focus on one task until you complete it.
Final Word
For employees and teams who have remote work arrangements, it can be challenging to stay productive when working at a co-working space or working at home alone. Time management can fix this. Despite these challenges, using time management tools, establishing a schedule, setting clear expectations, and eliminating distractions can all help you ease the burden.
One more thing
When choosing a co-working space, you need a flexible and functional workspace that offers comfort, connectivity and networking alongside ambient office space like Kikao64. Kikao64 is a flexible and creative coworking space and an incubator for Eldoret’s new high-tech community of entrepreneurs, start-ups, nonprofits, freelancers, creatives, and athletes. We offer beautifully designed and ergonomically mindful modern offices and meeting rooms for individuals & companies of all sizes. Book a Space online or walk in and enjoy the best working environment.
