DEV Community: anthonypelle

What is Ruthless Prioritization? Top 6 Productivity Steps to Take

anthonypelle — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 17:07:14 +0000

What does it mean to be productive? Your knee-jerk response might be "to get more done". More being the word most people use.

If you're finding yourself buried beneath an avalanche of tasks and responsibilities, you're not alone. A staggering 78.7% of burnout comes from too many tasks and not enough time to get it all done.

The average employee wants to spend at least 20 hours/week on productive work, but only manages to average 11.2 hours/week. This is largely because they're overwhelmed with 21.5 hours/week in meetings, when they ideally want to spend only 10.4 hours/week in meetings. Without proactively managing your time -- you can see how easy it is to get your priorities backwards.

So if your work is piling up and everything feels both urgent and important -- you're going to have to make some tough decisions around your priorities -- it's about ruthless prioritization.

What is ruthless prioritization?

Ruthless prioritization is identifying and focusing on your most important goals -- while eliminating or postponing less important ones. And while tasks are one of the most important areas to prioritize for productivity, you're not going to get far unless you take a look at all of your priorities that occupy your time.

What are the hardest things people struggle to prioritize?

Task work
Meetings
Habits
Family time
Personal time
Lunch
Breaks
Exercise

So instead of trying to take everything on at once, focus only on your very best ideas for meaningful work (which is how Sheryl Sandberg defines "ruthless prioritization"). And deprioritize (or cut) the activities that aren't aligned with these goals.

The disciplined pursuit of less

Time is our most precious resource and a finite one. Most people these days are all over the place. They have hundreds of things to do, dozens of people to please, and never enough time to get it all done.

And poor time management is often driven by unclear or undefined priorities. The key to regaining control is identifying what truly matters, and ruthlessly prioritizing nothing but that.

You need to focus on what's most essential -- the "disciplined pursuit of less". It's about consciously and systematically choosing to do fewer things, but doing them better -- the opposite of the "more is better" mentality that leads you to overcommit and overwhelm yourself

And fast-growing companies pursuing greater success and growth can actually stray from the disciplined creativity that earned them success in the first place, known as the undisciplined pursuit of more, which can actually set you up to fall. But true productivity isn't about doing more; it's about doing what you can do great. As the late Steve Jobs once said, real focus is about saying "no."

How to ruthlessly prioritize in 6 steps

So how do you decide -- what are the things I can do? Let's take a look at the 6 steps you need to take to ruthlessly prioritize a more productive and work-life balance-friendly workweek:

1. Analyze where you spend your time

The first step you'll want to take is to track your time so you can see what you've been prioritizing recently -- and if this actually aligns with your goals. The best place to start is a calendar audit. Here are the big things to look for:

How many meetings did you attend this week?
Did you have enough time available for task work?
Did you get through all of your regular work routines?
How often did you have to work overtime?
Did you have enough personal time (or PTO) to relax and reset?

Even though many of us get to Friday afternoon and wonder what did I actually get done this week -- we still tend to overestimate our productivity.

Manually tracking this data every week is a pain, but there are free time-tracking apps like Reclaim.ai that automatically analyze your calendar for you so you can see where you spend time every week. Get detailed breakdowns on how much time you spent towards tasks, habits, meetings, even work-life balance stats to start making better decisions about your time. They even offer anonymous and employee-friendly People Analytics to analyze productivity and track priorities across your team.

2. Set your goals (high-level priorities)

Prioritization without clear goals won't do you much good, as it leads to multitasking, relentless context switching, disorganization, and mental blocks, which wreaks havoc on your productivity.. The entire process of ruthless prioritization revolves around goals -- what are all the things you want to accomplish? Well-defined goals serve as guiding stars, directing your efforts toward what truly matters and motivating you to eliminate distractions. Outline both your short-term and long-term goals, and set them in the order of priority.

While many goals will be project-oriented, it's also important to think about your goals in terms of time management issues you want to improve. Here are the top examples of high-level goals people set for work:

Defend more time for heads-down productive work
Reduce my time in meetings
Optimize my meetings around which ones are most important
Improve my work-life balance
Coordinate better as a team

These goals are going to drive your ruthless prioritization today -- but goals and priorities change all the time, so make a habit of reviewing them regularly.

3. Outline your tasks & routines

The next step is to create a master to do list of all your individual tasks and recurring work routines. Don't worry about cutting anything out quite yet. You want a holistic view of everything on your plate.

So, if your tasks are scattered across to-do lists, notepads, email, and probably even bouncing around your head -- get them organized in one place. If you're not already using a project management app -- it's time to get one. This is the best way to centralize your task list and goal planning -- and coordinate with your team.

Pro tip: include the little stuff. When you start aligning your priorities with your time, you'll want to accurately estimate shallow work items (like catching up on email/Slack, status updates, and organizing your task list) so you can defend dedicated time for these so they don't bleed into your productive hours.

4. Prioritize your task list

Now that you've consolidated and organized your tasks, it's time to start prioritizing these to your goals. The Pareto Principle (AKA the 80/20 rule), asserts that 80% of your results stem from 20% of your efforts -- so you want to focus on ruthlessly prioritizing tasks that provide the highest value.

If you're having a hard time determining what's most important, check out the Eisenhower Matrix to identify your highest priority tasks -- that are both important and urgent (from those that are not).

There are also important questions you should ask yourself when prioritizing tasks -- this simple exercise will make it much easier to determine what stays and goes:

Is this task the very best thing I can do for my work?
Is this task essential to my work?
What is the reward/outcome of me completing this task?
What are my task dependencies -- which do I have to complete first?
How much time do I need for each task?
What's the risk or impact to my team if I don't do this task?

Be ruthless! By the end of this exercise, you should have a concrete list of all of your tasks ordered by priority. And it's okay if your task list is still long if it's prioritized -- but this is also a good opportunity to cut the low-value tasks (that are both not important and not urgent) from your list.

5. Time block your calendar

Congratulations, you now know your top priorities! Now it's time to make sure they actually get done -- let's get these on the calendar. The simple act of time blocking can boost your productivity up to 80% -- so you're not only defending time for your ruthless priorities, you're reclaiming more of your time back too.

Take a look at your calendar, and see what time you have available outside of meetings, appointments, or personal events. Pull up your task list on the side, and start blocking time for your top priorities on your calendar. As mentioned above, it's also important to defend time for the small low-level tasks that continually interrupt your productivity throughout the day. We recommend setting 20-30 minutes in the morning and afternoon to catch up on things like email and Slack so you're distracting yourself all day checking in.

Time blocking is a very manual task that ends up eating a lot of your time -- so we recommend automating it through Reclaim.ai. This free AI productivity app connects right to your Google Calendar, and allows you to automatically time block your tasks, by priority, right in your schedule. The best part is it keeps your schedule flexible for changes, and doesn't jam up your calendar so you're unavailable to meet.

6. Say no

As you probably discovered in the above step, even after ruthless prioritization of your task list, you still probably don't have time for everything you need to get done. It's time to start saying no to things that aren't top priority:

Unproductive meetings
New projects with low value
Tasks outside of the project scope
Work requests during personal hours
Personal events you don't want to do

This is the "ruthless" in "ruthless prioritization" -- but it doesn't make you a bad person. While it sucks to feel like you're letting someone down, you can say no without belittling the priorities of the requestor. This is done by sharing context around your priorities -- a simple response explaining why you can't help at the moment -- "Hey, I would love to help you out, but I have these high-priority projects on my plate that are occupying all of my time this week. Let's add this to our planning meeting to discuss when we can get this prioritized".

It becomes much easier to say no when your colleagues can see your priorities through your calendar. And with smart time blocking, you can say no directly through your schedule --- if you don't have the time for a medium-priority task or meeting that comes in, Reclaim.ai won't allow it to sneak into your calendar this week.

As you've probably realized by now, ruthless prioritization is 100 times more effective when you prioritize as a team. Instead of competing over priorities -- your team should be aligned on what's most urgent and important so everyone can work together and support your shared goals.

AI ruthless prioritization

There's no doubt about it -- ruthless prioritization is hard. It's something you need to consciously enforce every single day to stay focused on your top priorities and keep low-value time wasters from creeping into your schedule. But you can save yourself a lot of time by automating your ruthless prioritization through AI.

AI calendar Reclaim.ai offers an insanely powerful prioritization system that allows you to ruthlessly prioritize everything you need to get done -- all through your existing Google Calendar schedule -- while maintaining the flexibility you need to stay open for collaboration in your organization. Here are some of the ways you can step up your prioritization game with AI:

Task prioritization: Automatically schedule your tasks to your calendar in order of priority, and use an "up next" bucket to make sure your top to-dos are scheduled first.
Habits prioritization: Create smart recurring events for routines you need to get done on a regular basis, and prioritize them against tasks and meetings on your calendar.
Google calendar events prioritization: Set priority levels for regular Google Calendar events, such as low-priority recurring team meetings, so you can offer more availability on your calendar for urgent meetings you need to get scheduled.
Scheduling link prioritization: Share your availability for meetings with smart scheduling links with priority levels so you can book meetings faster over lower-priority meetings you don't necessarily need to attend.
One-on-one meeting prioritization: Automatically find the best time for your one-on-one meetings across both attendees calendars, auto-reschedule around conflicts and PTO, and prioritize which meetings to schedule first.

With the ability to set a priority level for everything on your calendar -- you can finally take back control of your time and keep your schedule oriented around only the stuff that matters. Teams are able to focus on goals, team members can better understand each other's priorities, and you can say no to low-value time wasters that pull you away from your important work.

Start ruthlessly prioritizing today

We all know time is the most precious resource we have -- and it's too valuable to waste. Get started with ruthless prioritization today, and bring the concept back to your team so everyone can realign their time to the most important priorities they need to focus on at work.

By cutting the unimportant stuff from your schedule, you can get more done every week and reach the high-priority goals you need to achieve faster than ever before. Remember -- ruthless prioritization is a mindset you need to adopt every day -- don't fall back into bad habits of allowing unnecessary tasks and meetings to creep into your schedule.

Stay ruthless.

38 Best Affiliate Marketing Programs - Highest Paying for 2024

anthonypelle — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 15:36:59 +0000

Looking for a passive income stream? A popular (and highly lucrative) choice is earning revenue through affiliate marketing programs. As of 2023, affiliate marketing is a $17 billion industry, and it continues to grow every day.

Affiliate marketing is a powerful way to monetize networks and content -- across blogs, social media, podcasts, events, websites, or newsletters. Considering how everyone's so saturated and inundated with ads these days, people are looking for trusted recommendations and personal experiences from influencers before making a purchase -- and these referrals can earn you a ton of recurring revenue every month.

So which affiliate marketing programs should you join? We've cut the decision paralysis for you.

Here are the 38 best affiliate programs that are highest paying for 2024:

What if an affiliate program?

An affiliate marketing program is a partnership where a business pays an influencer a commission for referrals or sales. This influencer could be another business, or an individual with their own self-branded social media presence, blog, consulting model, or contacts network.

The benefit of an affiliate program is that it's performance-based -- influencers have the potential to generate thousands (sometimes millions) in uncapped revenue, while it also reduces the risk for businesses as every sale grows their business too.

How do affiliates earn money?

Joining an affiliate program is always free for the influencer (affiliate marketer). You simply create an affiliate link, and share it with your network -- and every signup or sale from that link puts money in your pocket. What are the standard terms of an affiliate program? Here's how affiliates make money:

Commission-based earnings: Most affiliate programs offer a commission structure for their rewards -- such as 20% of a purchase (sometimes recurring for subscription-based services), though some offer a fixed flat amount per sale.
Pay-per-lead (PPL): PPL rewards affiliates for every lead they refer, such as product signups, landing page submissions, or contact form inquiries. PPL programs are more common in high-touch enterprise sales.
Pay-per-click (PPC): PPC is a less common affiliate program payment structure (typically advertising programs) that compensates affiliates for generating web traffic, regardless of whether it leads to a sale.
Tiered commissions: Some affiliate programs offer tiered commission structures, where affiliates' earnings increase as they refer more customers, encouraging affiliates to continuously optimize their marketing efforts.

The 38 best affiliate programs of 2024

1. Reclaim.ai

Commission: $0.25/signup + 25% recurring commission for up to one year

Reclaim.ai is the #1 highest-paying affiliate program to check out. This AI calendar and productivity app automatically finds the best time for your tasks, habits, meetings, and breaks in your busy schedule. Perfect for large companies, individual employees, freelancers, personal life organization, and even students, Reclaim allows you to automatically plan the perfect workweek around what matters most to you. From building new healthy habits, finding time for tasks, optimizing your meetings, to even tracking your time, this smart calendar takes all the heavy lifting off your plate so you can focus on being productive.

Reclaim.ai is the best affiliate marketing program because it's an extremely viral self-serve tool (both in the B2B and B2C space). While most affiliate programs only reward on purchases, Reclaim rewards both purchases and signups so you can earn money on every person that explores the tool -- even free users. And over 26% of new visitors sign up within just 5 minutes of hitting the site -- making it extremely easy to start earning money on your first day with the program.

Commission: $0.25/signup + 25% recurring commission for up to one year
Cookie window: 90 days
Payout methods: PayPal, Stripe, or direct deposit
Payout threshold: $5 minimum payout
Industry: AI, Calendars, Productivity, SaaS
Best for: Social influencers, bloggers, podcasts, review sites, directories, consultants
Affiliate resources: Affiliate Partner Guide and Affiliate Help Doc offers brand assets, social templates, promotional assets, best practices, ROI stats, and more

‍

Join the Reclaim.ai affiliate program →

2. Hubspot

Commission: 30% recurring commission for up to one year

HubSpot, a widely popular CRM platform for marketing, sales, and customer service and offers one of the highest-paying affiliate programs. This all-in-one platform makes it easy to manage your inbound marketing efforts, optimize your sales funnels, and engage and delight your customers -- and it is one of the most robust marketing platforms for automation. HubSpot's plans vary from as little as $45/month to over $10,000/month -- catering to businesses of all sizes.

Outside of their generous commission structure, HubSpot also offers a welcome bonus of up to $80 for affiliates in their first 30 days of the program, and periodic challenges to generate even more revenue around your promotions. Becoming a Hubspot affiliate is open for anyone to apply, regardless of whether you have any experience with the platform. The company also offers a wealth of resources and promotional materials to help you promote Hubspot to your audiences.

Commission: 30% recurring commission for up to one year
Cookie window: 180 days
Payout methods: PayPal or direct deposit
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Marketing, Sales, Customer Service
Best for: Social influencers, bloggers, digital educators, review sites, consultants
Affiliate resources: Access to Affiliate Resource Center, 400+ promotional assets (including copy bank, banner images, demo videos, and more)

‍

Join the HubSpot affiliate program →

3. Amazon Associates

Commission: 1%-10% of purchase

When it comes to affiliate programs, Amazon Associates is the undisputed giant. As one of the biggest companies in the world, it remains the go-to choice for affiliate marketers looking to tap into the immense potential of its e-commerce reach. It is also the best affiliate program for beginners given its broad appeal and straightforward signup process.

Amazon affiliates can easily promote a staggering number of products, ranging from electronics and books to household items and more -- all through the Amazon Associates affiliate marketing network. With millions of products and programs available, associates use easy link-building tools to promote their product recommendations to their audiences while earning up to 10% in associate commissions from qualifying purchases and programs.

Commission: 1% - 10% of the item sale price
Cookie window: 24 hours
Payout methods: Check, Amazon gift certificates, or wire transfer
Payout threshold: $10 minimum payout for wire transfer, $100 for checks
Industry: E-commerce
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, review sites
Affiliate support: Publisher Studio extension, Product Advertising API, promotional materials, image banners, text link banners

‍

Join the Amazon Associates affiliate program →

4. eBay Partner Network

Commission: $ 1-4% of purchase

eBay is an online auction and e-commerce company where people and businesses buy and sell various goods and services worldwide. Since its founding, it has grown into a platform with over 1.9 billion listings and over 132 million users.

The eBay Partner Network allows affiliate marketers to earn commissions if a referral makes a purchase, places a bid on, or wins an auction within 24 hours after clicking your affiliate link. Like Amazon Associates, affiliates partnering with eBay can promote a wide range of items, from vintage collectibles to brand-new electronics. The company's dynamic marketplace caters to buyers with varied interests, and this diversity translates into lucrative opportunities for affiliates with general interest or broad audiences.

Commission: 1-4% of purchase
Cookie window: 24 hours
Payout methods: PayPal or wire transfer
Payout threshold: $10 minimum payout
Industry: E-commerce
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, publishers
Affiliate support: eBay Partner Portal provides creative gallery, custom graphics, banner ads, data & reporting tools, and eBay APIs

‍

Join the eBay Partner Network affiliate program →

5. PartnerStack

Commission: Varies between affiliate programs

PartnerStack is an affiliate marketing and partnership platform for affiliates, resellers, and customer referral programs. The platform allows both businesses and affiliates to streamline their partnership efforts through customized affiliate programs tailored to their unique needs. The platform's user-friendly interface simplifies the recruitment of affiliates, the tracking of performance metrics, and the automation of commission payouts.

As an affiliate, you can apply to the Partnerstack Network to explore over 300 affiliate programs which pay out over $45 million in commissions every year. Since it's a network of affiliate programs, the exact percentage commission, cookie length, payout methods, etc. vary from company to company. But this also means you can easily find the affiliate programs that best suit your own needs and audience.

Commission: Varies between affiliate programs
Cookie window: 90 days by default
Payout methods: PayPal, Stripe, or direct deposit
Payout threshold: $5 minimum payout
Industry: Affiliate marketing and partnerships platform
Best for: Social influencers, bloggers, podcasts, digital educators, review sites, directories, consultants
Affiliate support: Access to analytics & reporting tools, PartnerStack dashboard, PartnerStack Marketplace, and dedicated partner support team

‍

Join the PartnerStack affiliate network →

6. Clickbank

Commission: Average of 10-20%, but varies depending on product

Clickbank is an affiliate marketing and e-commerce platform with a library of over 4,000 unique products that reach over 200 million people worldwide. At the same time, Clickbank provides digital content creators and affiliate marketers the opportunity to earn commissions by promoting those products. You can think of it as a combination of something like Amazon Associates and PartnerStack.

ClickBank offers a wide range of digital and physical products for affiliates of nearly any niche to promote. However, it is one of the oldest affiliate networks around, and you'll be competing with hundreds of thousands of others, but, the good news is that there is no limit on the amount of products you can promote. Considering ClickBank is an affiliate network, the individual rates affiliates earn may vary. However, it is well-known for often boasting high commission rates, sometimes exceeding 50%.

Commission: Average of 10-20%, but varies depending on product
Cookie window: 60 days
Payout methods: Check, direct deposit, wire transfer, and Payoneer
Payout threshold: Minimum of 5 sales; default payout threshold is $100
Industry: E-commerce & affiliate network
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, publishers, review sites
Affiliate support: Affiliate Resource Center provides promotional materials, link banners, guides, and analytics reporting tools

‍

Join the Clickbank affiliate network →

7. Rakuten

Commission: Varies, but typically around 3 - 20%

Rakuten is a technology conglomerate primarily known for its e-commerce marketplace and cashback site of the same name. The site's main draw is the prospect of earning cash back while shopping at some of the world's top brands, such as Nike, Walmart, Target, Kohl's, and more. These merchants pay Rakuten for the promotion of their brands, and the company shares that revenue with customers in the form of Cash Back on purchases.

At the same time, Rakuten does offer a great affiliate program that allows you to earn commissions on sales referred for established, high-ticket brands like Sephora, Lululemon, Neiman Marcus, Under Armor, and more.

Commission: Varies, but typically around 3 - 20%
Cookie window: Varies depending on the merchant
Payout methods: PayPal, direct deposit, or check
Payout threshold: $50 minimum payout
Industry: E-commerce & affiliate network
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, publishers, review sites
Affiliate support: Varies depending on the merchant

‍

Join the Rakuten affiliate network →

8. SEMrush

Commission: $200/new subscription sale, $10/new lead, and $0.01/signup

SEMrush is a search engine optimization (SEO) tool for conducting search engine analytics, keyword research, competitor analysis, and Google Ad optimization. It has established itself as one of the most popular SEO and marketing reporting tools thanks to itslarge suite of features stretching across SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing.

SEMrush provides generous commissions for their affiliates. Every new trial referred earns $10, and $200 for every new purchase made through one of your referral links. Affiliates also have hundreds of promotional materials and brand assets, such as landing pages, videos, banners, and more at their disposal to help drive referrals, along with a dedicated partner support team.

Commission: $200/new subscription sale, $10/new lead, and $0.01/new signup
Cookie window: 120 days
Payout methods: PayPal or wire transfer
Payout threshold: $10 minimum payout
Industry: Online visibility management and content marketing/SaaS
Best for: Digital marketers, content creators, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, social influencers, podcasts, review sites, directories, consultants
Affiliate support: Access to brand assets, promotional material, banners, landing pages, widgets, and videos, and affiliate support team

‍

Join the SEMrush affiliate program →

9. Elementor

Commission: Up to 50% commission on every new sale

Elementor is a drag-and-drop page builder for WordPress designed to help you build beautiful, dynamic web pages using a visual editor. The tool has become increasingly popular thanks to its intuitive interface and rich feature set that aims to make it possible to build and launch top-of-the-line websites without the need for coding skills.

Elementor's affiliate program offers a chance to promote a product that already powers 8% (and growing) of all the world's websites, with one of the highest commissions among affiliate programs: 50% commission on every new sale. The company offers its customers several paid plans, from $59/year up to $399/year.

Commission: Up to 50% commission on every new sale
Cookie window: 45 days
Payout methods: PayPal
Payout threshold: $200 minimum payout
Industry: Website builder
Best for: Content creators, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, WordPress developers, digital marketers
Affiliate support: Access to Elementor marketing kit

‍

Join the Elementor affiliate program →

10. ConvertKit

Commission: 30% commission for 24 months for every sign-up

ConvertKit is an email marketing platform designed to help creators grow and monetize their audiences. Through custom landing pages, sign-up forms, link pages, and automated marketing flows, digital creators can market and sell their digital products and subscriptions while driving up their conversions. And thanks to a user-friendly interface and a focus on building meaningful connections with subscribers, it has become one of the most popular email marketing tools.

ConvertKit's affiliate program allows partners to promote a platform all about helping businesses and creators grow their audience and boost engagement. The company offers 30% recurring commissions for 24 months for every new customer referred. Affiliates also have access to dozens of resources to help promote the platform.

Commission: 30% recurring commission on sales for 24 months
Cookie window: 90 days
Payout methods: PayPal
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Email marketing software
Best for: Digital marketers, content creators, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, social influencers
Affiliate support: Access to affiliate training course, promotional & brand assets, webinars, and analytics dashboard

‍

Join the ConvertKit affiliate program →

11. Fiverr

Commission: $15-$150 CPA, or $10 CPA plus 10% commission

Fiverr is an online marketplace that connects freelancers with businesses or individuals looking for their services. When the company was first founded, the platform was designed for smaller-scale projects with an initial $5 price per job. However, many freelancers and merchants on the platform now charge more, from the standard $5 to over $1,000.

Fiverr's affiliate program allows partners to earn commissions on countless service offerings, such as digital marketing, web development, graphic design, content writing, and more. No matter the service or the merchant, you can receive a percentage for every first-time buyer you refer, with no limit on referrals you can make. Their Fiverr CPA affiliate program rewards $15-$150 CPA (depending on the service purchased), and their Fiverr Hybrid affiliate program offers $10 CPA, plus a 10% revenue share commission for 12 months.

Commission: $15-$150 CPA, or $10 CPA plus 10% commission
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal, Payoneer, or wire transfer
Payout threshold: $100 minimum payout
Industry: Freelance services marketplace
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, publishers, review sites
Affiliate support: Access to professional support, tutorials, and a dedicated Affiliate manager

‍

Join the Fiverr affiliate program →

12. Shopify

Commission: One-time bounty payment equal to 200% of the monthly subscription

‍

Shopify is an e-commerce platform designed to easily start, grow, and manage an online business. Its ease of use and rich feature set have made it one of the most popular platforms for entrepreneurs and businesses looking to establish, grow, and scale their online stores.

Shopify's affiliate program allows partners to promote a widely popular and versatile e-commerce solution with an exceptional reputation. The platform's user-friendly interface, customizable themes, and a vast ecosystem of apps cater to businesses of all sizes. Affiliates can earn commissions on all of Shopify's standard plans they refer, ranging from $39/month to $399/month.

Commission: One-time bounty payment equal to 200% of the monthly subscription
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal or wire transfer
Payout threshold: $10 minimum payout
Industry: E-commerce hosting
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, publishers, review sites
Affiliate support: Access to a library of promotional assets, lead magnets, a monthly newsletter, and curated email programming

‍

Join the Shopify affiliate program →

13. Etsy

Commission: 4% commission per sale

Etsy, the beloved online marketplace for handmade and unique products, continues to thrive as a hub for artisans, crafters, and shoppers seeking one-of-a-kind goods. The company's charm lies in its commitment to supporting independent creators and fostering a community of like-minded individuals.

Etsy's affiliate program allows partners to promote a platform that celebrates creativity and individuality. Affiliates can introduce their audience to a treasure trove of handmade and vintage items, as well as unique art and craft supplies for a flat 4% on referred sales.

Commission: 4% commission per sale
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: International wire, wire transfer, check
Payout threshold: $20 minimum payout
Industry: Online marketplace
Best for: Social influencers, content creators, bloggers, entrepreneurs, publishers, review sites
Affiliate support: Access to promotional materials, brand assets, curate paged, affiliate newsletter

‍

Join the Etsy affiliate program →

14. Bluehost

Commission: $65/purchase

Bluehost is a web hosting company that provides shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and WooCommerce hosting for companies of all sizes. The company has established itself as one of the best web hosting providers due to their emphasis on helping small businesses build high-quality websites quickly.

Bluehost's affiliate program allows partners to earn a flat $65 commission for every qualified purchase of their monthly plans. These plans go for as little as $4.95/month to $89.98/month, which gives affiliates plenty of opportunities to drive referrals toward Bluehost to start earning.

Commission: $65/purchase
Cookie life: 90 days
Payout methods: PayPal or wire transfer
Payout threshold: $100 minimum payout
Industry: Web hosting
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, web developers, digital marketers, consultants
Affiliate support: Access to brand assets and affiliate support team

‍

Join the Bluehost affiliate program →

15. NordVPN

Commission: 40%-100% of initial subscription purchase, and 30% recurring commission on plan renewals

NordVPN, a leading name in the VPN industry, remains a trusted choice for internet users seeking privacy, security, and unrestricted online access. And given the increasing importance of online privacy and security, NordVPN has become a prominent player in the affiliate marketing landscape.

The affiliate program at NordVPN has generously high payout terms of 100% commission of the first month of monthly plans, and 40% commission on annual plans, both with 30% ongoing commission for annual or monthly renewals for the accounts lifetime.

Commission: 40%-100% of initial subscription purchase, and 30% recurring commission on plan renewals
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal and wire transfer
Payout threshold: $10 minimum payout
Industry: VPN, Cybersecurity
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, podcasts, web developers, digital marketers, directories, consultants
Affiliate support: Access to brand assets, promotional material, and specialized account manager

‍

Join the NordVPN affiliate program →

16. Leadpages

Commission: 10-50% recurring commission forever

Leadpages is a tool designed to build landing pages from scratch, without the need for a professional designer. The tool centers around a drag-and-drop editor, along with countless templates allowing anyone to optimize their online presence through high-converting landing pages and websites.

The company offers an affiliate program with recurring commissions anywhere from 10-50% for the lifetime of the subscription account. If your total referring sales are $49 or less you'll earn 10% commission, referred sales of $49-2,999 earn 40% commission, and referred sales over $3,000 earn the top 50% commission. Leadpages standard pricing plans range from as little as $37/month up to $99+/month.

Commission: 10-50% recurring commission forever
Cookie window: 90 days
Payout methods: PayPal or Stripe
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Marketing
Best for: Digital marketers, content creators, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, social influencers
Affiliate support: Access to affiliate support team, exclusive Facebook group, exclusive special promotions, promotional materials, brand assets, and early access to new features

‍

Join the Leadpages affiliate program →

17. Typeform

Commission: $20/annual plan purchase

Typeform is a dynamic online form builder that allows anyone to build surveys, questionnaires, and feedback forms. It's a SaaS platform designed to build anything from surveys, quizzes, forms, and more without needing to know how to code.

Typeform's affiliate program allows partners to receive a flat $20 commission for every annual plan they refer. Given the platform's focus on user experience and customization, it's an attractive offering that can be marketed to a diverse audience. However, they do offer a monthly plan, and it doesn't appear to reward on those purchases -- so you would want to make sure you're emphasizing their annual plan in your promotions.

Commission: $20/annual plan purchase
Cookie window: 90 days
Payout methods: PayPal, Stripe
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Online form building, online surveys/SaaS
Best for: Digital marketers, content creators, web educators, web developers, digital entrepreneurs, social influencers
Affiliate support: Promotional materials, HTML banners, link banners

‍

Join the Typeform affiliate program →

18. Teachable

Commission: 30% recurring commission for up to one year

Teachable is a leading online course platform that allows educators, coaches, and entrepreneurs to share their knowledge with the world. It has since become one of the largest and most reputable e-learning platforms, with over 18 million students and nearly 200,000 active courses.

Teachable's affiliate program allows partners to promote a platform recognized for its simplicity and robust course creation tools. Affiliates can earn recurring commissions of up to 30% on each Teachable subscription you refer. The company claims the average affiliate makes $450/month using their partner program, with many others earning over $1,000/month.

Commission: 30% recurring commission for up to one year
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal
Payout threshold: None
Industry: E-learning
Best for: Digital educators, content creators, bloggers, podcasts, digital marketers, entrepreneurs, podcasts, review sites, consultants
Affiliate support: Promotional materials, brand assets, affiliate dashboard, and monthly emails updates

‍

Join the Teachable affiliate program →

19. BigCommerce

Commission: 200% commission on the first monthly payment, or $1,500 per enterprise customer

BigCommerce is an e-commerce hosting and SaaS platform for business owners to build online stores and sell their goods or services. Users can easily create and run online stores with nothing more than access to a web browser. Best of all, BigCommerce hosts all the online stores on its own servers, so customers don't have to pay extra hosting services to run their shops.

BigCommerce's affiliate program offers its partners a 200% one-time commission on the first months payment for any purchasers you refer. This means affiliates can earn anywhere from $58 up to $500 per referral (or $1,500+ with enterprise customers) with a platform that caters to businesses of all sizes.

Commission: 200% commission on the first monthly payment, or $1,500 per enterprise customer
Cookie window: 90 days
Payout methods: PayPal, direct deposit
Payout threshold: None
Industry: E-commerce hosting
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, digital entrepreneurs, publishers, review sites, directories, consultants
Affiliate support: Access to promotional materials and a dedicated account manager

‍

Join the BigCommerce affiliate program →

20. Shutterstock

Commission: 20% of net sale

Shutterstock is a provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools with over 2 million customers. The company boasts one of the largest collections of royalty-free images at over 250 million images, adding over 200,000 added daily, along with over 14 million stock videos.

Everyone from small to medium businesses, to creative professionals, marketing agencies, filmmakers, production companies, and bloggers regularly turn to Shutterstock for access to high-quality, royalty-free content. The company's affiliate program allows you to receive 20% commissions on the net sales amount for each image, footage, or music purchase you refer.

Commission: 20% of net sale
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal or wire transfer
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Marketing, Design, Photography
Best for: Content creators, photographers, bloggers, social influencers, digital entrepreneurs, publishers
Affiliate support: Promotional materials and access to affiliate support team

‍

Join the Shutterstock affiliate program →

21. Kinsta

Commission: 5%-10% recurring commission forever, plus one-time commission of $50-$500

Kinsta is a cloud hosting platform designed for WordPress, application, and database hosting. Kinsta has established itself as a premier managed WordPress hosting provider, catering to website owners and businesses seeking top-tier hosting services.

The company also provides one of the most lucrative affiliate programs available, with its lifetime recurring commission structure. For any Managed WordPress Hosting referral, affiliates will receive a one-time commission of $50-$500, plus a 10% recurring commission monthly subscription forever. Affiliates can also earn a 5% recurring monthly commission on their Application Hosting and Database Hosting services. Commissions are available on all Kinsta plans from as little as $7/month to $500/month for their enterprise plans -- and they pay out over $1 million in commissions each year.

Commission: 5%-10% recurring commission forever, plus one-time commission of $50-$500
Cookie window: 60 days
Payout methods: PayPal
Payout threshold: $50 minimum payout
Industry: Web hosting
Best for: Content creators, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, web developers, software engineers, digital marketers
Affiliate support: Promotional materials, HTML banners, link banners

‍

Join the Kinsta affiliate program →

22. TripAdvisor

Commission: 50% on referred hotel bookings

Tripadvisor is one of the world's largest travel sites, boasting a vast database of user-generated reviews, insights, and recommendations to help travelers make informed decisions on their next travel adventures. Whether it's a family vacation, a romantic getaway, or a solo trip, the travel platform provides a treasure trove of information on over 795 million reviews and 1.4 million places to stay.

With Tripadvisor's affiliate program, you can earn at least 50% (or more) of the commission from hotel bookings. The company also provided access to text link generators, brand assets, and promotional materials, such as logos, buttons, badges, banners, widgets, and more to help you promote your affiliate links.

Commission: 50% on referred hotel bookings
Cookie window: 14 days
Payout methods: PayPal or wire transfer
Payout threshold: $50 minimum payout
Industry: Travel
Best for: Content creators, travel bloggers, social influencers, review sites, directories
Affiliate resources: Access to text link generator, brand assets, and promotional materials, such as logos, buttons, badges, banners, widgets, and more

‍

Join the TripAdvisor affiliate program →

23. Booking.com

Commission: 25%-40% commission on referred bookings

Booking.com is another global leader in online accommodation reservations. With a user-friendly interface and access to millions and millions of listings in over 230 countries and territories, Booking.com makes it easy for travelers to find and book their ideal accommodations, whether a luxury hotel, a cozy bed and breakfast, or a budget-friendly hostel.

As a travel enthusiast or content creator, you can earn money by joining the Booking.com affiliate program. You'll have access to over 28 million accommodations, transportation options, and attractions across 60,000 locations worldwide, and your audience can find everything they need for their travels, from hotels to rental cars.

Commission: 25%-40% commission on referred bookings
Cookie window: Single session
Payout methods: PayPal or wire transfer
Payout threshold: $20 minimum payment
Industry: Travel
Best for: Content creators, travel bloggers, social influencers, review sites, directories
Affiliate resources: Access to promotional materials, search boxes, deals finders, and link banners

‍

Join the Booking.com affiliate program →

24. Grammarly

Commission: $0.20/signup + $20 commission/premium plan purchase

Grammarly is an AI writing assistant that has become a trusted companion for millions of writers, students, professionals, and businesses worldwide. From crafting business documents, academic papers, or emails, Grammarly helps you improve your writing by highlighting grammar errors, suggesting better word choices, and providing real-time feedback on tone and clarity.

The Grammarly affiliate program is a standout opportunity with its high conversion rates and competitive commission structure. Affiliates can earn in two distinct ways. For every signup, affiliates earn $0.20, and when users upgrade to its premium plan, you make $20 on that sale. On top of that, high-performing affiliates are further rewarded with even higher payouts and regular cash bonuses.

Commission: $0.20/signup + $20 commission/premium plan purchase
Cookie window: 90 days
Payout methods: Wire transfer, direct deposit, or check
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Professional writing, academics
Best for: Social influencers, bloggers, podcasts, review sites, directories, consultants
Affiliate resources: Access to promotional materials, brand assets, and affiliate support team

‍

Join the Grammarly affiliate program →

25. SmartProxy

Commission: 50% commission (up to $2,500 per referral)

SmartProxy is a leading proxy service provider known for its reliable and high-performance proxy solutions for secure web scraping, data mining, market research, and enhanced online privacy and security. The company's extensive proxy network spans the globe, offering a wide range of residential and data center proxies in various locations.

The SmartProxy affiliate program is a lucrative opportunity for tech-savvy individuals and marketers looking to earn high commissions while promoting cutting-edge proxy solutions. With the potential to earn up to $2,500 per referral, Smart Proxy offers a commission of up to 50% of the sale making it one of the most rewarding affiliate programs in its industry.

Commission: 50% commission (up to $2,500 per referral)
Cookie window: 60 days
Payout methods: PayPal or wire transfer
Payout threshold: $100 minimum payout
Industry: Proxy infrastructure, data gathering, service provider
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, web developers, digital marketers, consultants
Affiliate resources: Access to promotional materials, brand assets, and partnership support team

‍

Join the SmartProxy affiliate program →

26. Thinkific

Commission: 30% recurring commission forever (up to $1,700 per referral)

Thinkific is a leading online course platform designed for individuals, entrepreneurs, and businesses to create and deliver high-quality online courses. With a user-friendly interface, customizable course design, and robust marketing features, Thinkific streamlines the entire course creation process, allowing you to effortlessly upload your course content, build interactive quizzes, and even set your pricing and payment options.

As a member of the Thinkific Affiliate program, you can enjoy a generous 30% lifetime recurring commission on all monthly or annual paid subscriptions referred through your affiliate link -- earning up to $1,700 per referral. So, for every customer you bring to Thinkific, you'll continue to earn commissions for as long as they remain a paid subscriber.

Commission: 30% recurring commission forever (up to $1,700 per referral)
Cookie window: 90 days
Payout methods: PayPal or Stripe
Payout threshold: $25 minimum payout
Industry: Online course and membership site platform
Best for: Web educators, digital marketers, content creators, digital entrepreneurs, social influencers
Affiliate resources: Access to exclusive, creative, promotional materials and brand assets

‍

Join the Thinkific affiliate program →

27. Liquid Web

Commission: Minimum $150 commission/sale (150% commission for purchases over $100)

Liquid Web is a web hosting and managed hosting service provider known for its exceptional reliability, performance, and customer support. The company offers a comprehensive range of hosting solutions to cater to the needs of businesses and individuals alike whether they require dedicated servers, scalable cloud hosting, or managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting.

For every customer you refer to Liquid Web, you'll enjoy an impressive 150% one-time commission on the monthly hosting price -- with a minimum payout of $150/sale. The company provides a range of products at prices as low as $8.40/month up to $7,000/month. Liquid Web also goes the extra mile by offering a 50% bonus for pre-paid plans, providing even more opportunities for you to boost your earnings.

Commission: Minimum $150 commission/sale (150% commission for purchases over $100)
Cookie window: 90 days
Payout methods: PayPal, check, wire transfer, direct deposit, and bank transfer
Payout threshold: $150 minimum payout
Industry: Managed web hosting, cloud server provider
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, podcasts, web developers, digital marketers, directories, consultants
Affiliate resources: Access to promotional materials, brand assets, a library of banner ads, links, landing pages, and dedicated affiliate managers

‍

Join the Liquid Web affiliate program →

28. Logitech

Commission: 4%-10% of net sales

Logitech is a globally recognized leader in personal computer products and accessories, known especially for computer mice, keyboards, and headsets. With a rich history spanning decades, Logitech has consistently delivered high-quality products designed to make your computing and entertainment tasks more efficient and enjoyable.

The Logitech affiliate program allows partners to promote a diverse catalog of high-quality tech products. Logitech's family of brands, including Logitech, Logitech G, ASTRO, Blue, and Ultimate Ears, are all eligible for commissions. And with rates ranging from 4%-10%, you have the potential to earn substantial income, especially considering the average order price of $125.

Commission: 4%-10% of net sales
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal, check, wire transfer, direct deposit, and bank transfer
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Consumer electronics
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, podcasts, web developers, digital marketers, directories, consultants
Affiliate resources: Access to promotional materials, brand assets, and partner dashboard

‍

Join the Logitech affiliate program →

29. Constant Contact

Commission: $105 commission/purchase

Constant Contact is a leading email marketing and online marketing platform designed to help businesses and organizations with their digital marketing efforts. With a user-friendly interface and a comprehensive suite of tools, users can create, send, and track engaging email campaigns with customizable templates, list management, social media integration, and robust analytics to help you connect with your audience effectively.

The Constant Contact affiliate program allows partners to earn a generous $105 commission for each referral who signs up and pays for a Constant Contact account. To help you make the most of your affiliate efforts, Constant Contact provides a diverse selection of market-tested creative assets. If you ever need assistance, the company provides access to dedicated program managers ready to provide personalized support, valuable insights, and expert advice.

Commission: $105 commission/purchase
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal, check, wire transfer, direct deposit, and bank transfer
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Digital & email marketing
Best for: Content creators, social influences, bloggers, webmasters, consultants, web designers, and digital marketers
Affiliate resources: Access to creative, promotional, and brand assets, along with a dedicated affiliate support manager

‍

Join the Constant Contact affiliate program →

30. Sephora

Commission: 5%-10% of net sales

Sephora is a globally renowned cosmetics company that offers the latest and most coveted beauty products. The company has established itself as a haven for those seeking the finest cosmetics, skincare, fragrances, and more. Sephora offers a wide range of makeup and skincare products, including their own Sephora Collection, making it one of the best destinations for those passionate about beauty.

Sephora also offers an affiliate program that allows partners to earn commission on the internet's largest and most varied assortment of beauty products. Affiliates benefit from a potentially lucrative revenue-generating opportunity with 5%-10% commissions on over 200 of the beauty industry's most sought-after brands, and more than 13,000 top-quality products (note: Sephora does not publicly list their affiliate commission structures).

Commission: 5%-10% of net sales
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal, check, wire transfer, direct deposit, and bank transfer
Payout threshold: $50 minimum payout
Industry: Cosmetics
Best for: Social influencers, content creators, review sites, bloggers, entrepreneurs
Affiliate resources: Promotional materials and brand assets

‍

Join the Sephora affiliate program →

31. Ulta

Commission: 2% commission on net sales

Ulta Beauty is another leading beauty retailer that has become widely popular with beauty enthusiasts across the United States. Ulta is a company that offers a wide range of beauty products, including cosmetics, skincare, haircare, and fragrances. They have options for every budget and preference, from popular drugstore brands to high-end luxury products. In addition to their products, Ulta Beauty also has in-store salons that offer various beauty services to help customers achieve their desired look.

The Ulta affiliate marketing program allows partners to receive a flat 2% commission on all referred sales of the 500 established and emerging beauty brands -- such as Benefit Cosmetics, bareMinerals, Pattern, Too Faced, Smashbox, Tarte, Essie, CHI, and more, that the company carries.

Commission: 2% commission on net sales
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal, check, wire transfer, direct deposit, and bank transfer
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Cosmetics
Best for: Social influencers, content creators, review sites, bloggers, entrepreneurs
Affiliate resources: Promotional materials and brand assets

‍

Join the Ulta affiliate program →

32. Adobe

Commission: 85% commission on first month of monthly subscription, or 8.33% commission on annual subscriptions

Adobe is a global technology leader well known for its suite of software tools and services for design, photography, video editing, web development, document management, and more. Their flagship products, including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Acrobat, and Creative Cloud, have become industry standards designed for professionals and enthusiasts alike to create, edit, and collaborate on digital content.

Adobe affiliates can earn substantial rewards with 85% commission on the first month of monthly-paid subscriptions to Adobe Creative Cloud, and 8.33% commission on annual plans. Additionally, the program offers $72 commissions on subscriptions for Adobe Stock, or 8.33% commissions on single purchases.

Commission: 85% commission on first month of monthly-paid subscription, or 8.33% commission on annual subscriptions
Cookie window: 30 days
Payout methods: PayPal, wire transfer, or check
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Digital Media, Digital Experience, Publishing and Advertising software, SaaS
Best for: Content creators, social influences, bloggers, webmasters, consultants, web designers, and digital marketers
Affiliate resources: Access to a comprehensive selection of ready-to-publish marketing banners and text links for Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Express, Document Cloud, and Adobe Stock

‍

Join the Adobe affiliate program →

33. Woorise

Commission: 30% recurring commission forever

Woorise is an all-in-one lead generation and marketing platform designed for creating engaging and interactive campaigns, including contests, giveaways, surveys, quizzes, and forms. With its intuitive drag-and-drop builder, Woorise simplifies the designing and launching of customizable campaigns that capture audience attention and drive valuable customer engagement. The platform also offers a range of features, such as email integration, analytics, and social sharing to maximize the impact of your campaigns.

With the Woorise affiliate program, you can earn a generous 30% recurring commission on any plan, which ranges from $23/month to $79/month. As a Woorise partner, you are not only promoting a strong marketing solution but also earning a reliable stream of revenue from referrals who appreciate the importance of interactive and captivating campaigns in their marketing plans.

Commission: 30% recurring commission forever
Cookie window: 90 days
Payout methods: PayPal
Payout threshold: $100 minimum payout
Industry: Lead generation, marketing platform, SaaS
Best for: Digital marketers, content creators, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, social influencers, podcasts, review sites, directories, consultants
Affiliate resources: Access to promotional materials, brand assets, and affiliate dashboard

‍

Join the Woorise affiliate program →

34. Kraken

Commission: 20% of referrals' trading fees forever, up to $1,000/referral

Kraken is one of the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchanges that has established itself as a leader in the blockchain industry. Founded in 2011, Kraken offers a secure and user-friendly platform for buying, selling, and trading a wide range of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many others. The company also provides advanced trading features, robust charting tools, and a seamless user experience for both beginners and experienced traders.

For those with online audiences interested in cryptocurrency and blockchain, the Kraken affiliate program presents an opportunity for earning substantial commissions. Affiliates can earn a generous 20% of the trading fees collected from clients they refer to Kraken for the lifetime of the client, with potential payouts of up to$1,000/referral. These commissions also include trading fee calculations for various transactions, including spot and futures trade fees, spot margin opening fees, and spot margin rollover fees.

Commission: 20% of referrals' trading fees forever, up to $1,000/referral
Cookie window: 180 days
Payout methods: Bank transfer
Payout threshold: None
Industry: Cryptocurrency Exchange
Best for: Digital marketers, content creators, web educators, digital entrepreneurs, social influencers, podcasts, review sites, directories, consultants
Affiliate resources: Promotional materials and brand assets

‍

Join the Kraken affiliate program →

35. FlexOffers

Commission: 5%-7% average commission rate, some over 10%

FlexOffers is a leading affiliate marketing network that connects publishers and advertisers to drive successful online partnerships. With a comprehensive platform and a vast network of affiliate programs spanning various industries, FlexOffers gives publishers the tools to monetize their online content effectively while helping advertisers expand their reach and grow their businesses. As an affiliate marketer, you'll gain access to an affiliate network that offers advanced payment options and over 10,000 affiliate programs.

Commission: 5%-7% average commission rate, some over 10%
Cookie window: N/A, uses cookieless tracking
Payout methods: PayPal, wire transfer, bank transfer, check
Payout threshold: $100 minimum payout
Industry: Advertising & affiliate marketing platform
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, publishers, review sites
Affiliate resources: Access to APIs, real-time reporting, product & offer feeds & more

‍

Join the FlexOffers affiliate network →

36. Commission Junction (CJ)

Commission: 5-10% average commission rate

Commission Junction is a global affiliate marketing network that connects publishers, advertisers, and marketers to create profitable partnerships. With a vast network of advertisers spanning various industries, and over 14 billion annual customer interactions, CJ Affiliate allows affiliates to monetize their online presence by promoting products and services from leading brands such as Barnes & Noble, Office Depot, Zappos, Verizon, and more.

The platform offers a robust suite of tools, in-depth reporting, and cutting-edge tracking technology to help publishers maximize their earnings.

Commission: 5-10% average commission rate
Cookie window: Varies based on merchant
Payout methods: Payoneer, direct deposit, or check
Payout threshold: $50 minimum payout
Industry: Performance-based and affiliate marketing platform
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, publishers, review sites
Affiliate resources: Varies based on merchant, reporting & analytics tools, access to affiliate support team

‍

Join the Commission Junction affiliate network →

37. Impact

Commission: Varies based on merchant

Impact is a comprehensive affiliate marketing and performance marketing platform that enables advertisers, publishers, and agencies to manage and optimize their affiliate programs and partnerships. The platform offers a suite of tools for tracking, reporting, and managing campaigns to allow Content creators, digital marketers, and publishers to use Impact's network of affiliate programs to promote products and services from some of the globe's biggest companies, such as Uber, Walmart, DoorDash, Adidas, and more.

Commission: Varies based on merchant
Cookie window: Varies based on merchant
Payout methods: PayPal, wire transfer, direct deposit, or check
Payout threshold: $10 minimum payout
Industry: Affiliate network and performance-based marketing platform
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, publishers, review sites
Affiliate resources: Varies depending on merchant, merchant search tool, reporting & analytics tools, dedicated support team

‍

Join the Impact affiliate network →

38. ShareASale

Commission: Varies depending on the merchant

ShareASale is one of the oldest affiliate marketing networks that has been connecting advertisers and publishers since 2000. With a network of over 25,000 affiliate programs across various industries, ShareASale provides a platform for publishers to find, manage, and build relevant brand partnerships. Affiliates can track their campaign performance, see which transactions earn commissions, access reporting, and analytics tools, and receive their earnings each month.

Commission: Varies depending on the merchant
Cookie window: Varies depending on the merchant
Payout methods: Payoneer, wire transfer, direct deposit, or check
Payout threshold: $50 minimum payout
Industry: Affiliate network and performance-based marketing platform
Best for: Content creators, bloggers, social influencers, publishers, review sites
Affiliate resources: Varies depending on the merchant, merchant search tool, reporting & analytics tools, dedicated support team

‍

Join the ShareASale affiliate network →

Start earning with affiliate marketing programs 💸

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to monetize your audiences online and build passive affiliate income streams with win-win partnerships. Affiliates leverage their marketing skills, creativity, and audience reach to promote exceptional products and services, while businesses benefit from increased exposure, sales, and brand advocacy.

Did we miss any on our list? What are your favorite affiliate marketing programs? Tweet us at @reclaimai and let us know!

12 Best Goal Tracker Apps for 2024

anthonypelle — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 15:58:49 +0000

Looking for a goal-tracking app to set and track your goals? If you're struggling to make progress on your daily tasks and long-term aspirations, it's time to get organized.

Reaching your professional or personal goals can feel like an uphill battle when you're already so busy. Even with the best intentions, it's hard to stay consistent when life and work throw a hundred new challenges your way every day. But tracking habits and managing your time doesn't have to be challenging if you're tracking goals with the right tools.

So what is a goal-tracking app? A goal-tracking app allows you to set and track your progress towards your goals. It has everything you need to be successful, including goal setting, time tracking analytics, tasks and habits, reminders, time management, and templates to help you get started.

Ready to get started on your goals? Here are the 12 best goal-tracking apps of 2024.

The top 12 goal tracker apps

1. ClickUp

ClickUp is a productivity platform and goal-tracking app that serves as an all-encompassing solution for both individuals and teams. Staying organized towards your goals is a breeze through their deep feature set of flexible task management tools, goal setting, time tracking, collaboration features, automation, and robust reporting, all in a single platform -- making it the best goal tracker app on our list.

Whether you're a freelancer, small business, or large enterprise, ClickUp's user-friendly interface and wide range of integrations help you boost your productivity while managing progress across multiple goals. While ClickUp is designed as a comprehensive project management tool, it has many explicit goal-tracking features, alongside clear timelines, measurable targets, and automatic progress tracking.

Key features

Goal-setting: Set and track goals for yourself or your team, with high-level objectives, folders, actionable tasks and subtasks, timelines, and measurable targets.
Habit-tracking: Track daily habits through recurring tasks and progress monitoring.
Tasks: Create, assign, and organize tasks with due dates, descriptions, attachments, and subtasks.
Prioritization: Customize priority levels and task statuses by importance and urgency.
Time-blocking: Block time on your calendar for tasks, habits, and events with time estimates, due dates, sub-tasks, and dependencies (though there are some limitations outlined below).
Time-tracking: Track how much time you spend on tasks.
Analytics & reporting: Access analytics and reporting tools to track project progress, team performance, and workload distribution with customizable dashboards and charts.
Reminders: Stay on top of your tasks and deadlines via email, in-app alerts, and Slack notifications.
Templates: Use dozens of pre-built templates for various use cases, including project management, marketing, product development, and more.
Visual progress: Analyze progress through Gantt charts, Kanban boards, timelines, and other views.
Calendar view: See tasks and events in a calendar format for planning, scheduling, and resource management.
Collaboration: Build workspaces with your team to collaborate on tasks and projects.
Note-taking: Create documents and notes in your workspace, or within task descriptions.
Integrations: Connect with over 1,000 tools such as Google Calendar, Slack, Reclaim.ai, Github, Hubspot, Outlook, Figma, and more.
Syncs across devices: Accessible on various devices and platforms, including web browsers, mobile devices, and desktop applications.

Limitations

ClickUp's depth and comprehensive feature set may come with a steep learning curve for some users as they offer more features than necessary for day-to-day goal tracking.
Most features are designed with complex project management in mind, not necessarily goal tracking.
While it's possible to use time blocking with ClickUp, these scheduled time blocks are fixed events that can jam up your calendar availability, and they don't automatically reschedule if a priority level is changed for a task (unless you use the Reclaim.ai integration).

ClickUp Pricing:Free → paid plans start at $7/month

2. Reclaim.ai

Reclaim.ai is an AI calendar and time tracking app that automatically finds the best time for your tasks, habits, meetings, and breaks in your busy schedule. Perfect for both individual goal setting and team goal setting, Reclaim allows you to optimize your time around your most important priorities -- without having to stress over planning. With their Habits feature, you can block time for anything you want to do regularly (such as exercise, meditation, training, or strategic planning), and automatically find the best time to do it every day -- while tracking your progress towards your goals. You can also auto-schedule time for your tasks around your existing Google Calendar events while keeping your schedule flexible for priority changes if something more important drops on your plate.

And that's just the start! Outside of tasks and habits, you can automatically schedule your one-on-one meetings, breaks, and create scheduling links, sync multiple calendars, and analyze your productivity through advanced time tracking every week.

Reclaim.ai is the best goal-tracking app for anyone with a busy calendar, and their free plan is loaded with features so you can set and track goals at no cost.

Key features

Goal tracking: Set actionable goals for everything you want to get done, including daily/weekly habits, tasks, and people you want to meet with -- and automatically make it happen by scheduling time in your calendar.
Habit-tracking: Auto-schedule your recurring routines at the best time (within a preferred window) around your existing events.
Tasks: Auto-schedule your tasks in Google Calendar by priority before your due dates (while keeping your schedule flexible for changes).
Prioritization: Set priorities for your tasks, habits, 1:1 meetings, and Scheduling Links to auto-schedule them by urgency.
Time-blocking: Find and create time blocks on your calendar for all your events, whether tasks, habits, meetings, or breaks.
Time-tracking: Analyze how much time you spend in meetings vs. tasks vs. habits vs. free time.
Analytics & reporting: Analyze both individual and team stats, including time spent in meetings, hours on tasks/habits, work-life balance metrics, and more.
Reminders: Receive notifications to keep you updated on what's coming up in your schedule so you can better manage your time.
Templates: Choose from dozens of habit templates across a variety of domains and roles, including engineering, product, student, personal, and more.
Calendar view: Manage all of your Tasks, Habits, Smart 1:1 meetings, and breaks on your schedule with the Planner's daily or weekly calendar views.
Collaboration: Create teams to better schedule tasks, habits, and meetings across everyone's busy schedule so you can stay productive and hit more goals.
Integrations: Integrates with ClickUp, Asana, Jira, Todoist, Linear, Google Tasks, Zoom, and Slack.

Limitations

Currently only supports Google Calendar (Outlook coming soon).

Reclaim.ai pricing: Free → paid plans start at $8/month

3. Todoist

Todoist is a user-friendly task management app that allows users to effortlessly add, organize, and prioritize tasks across projects. As the name suggests, their core features are built around to-do lists and creating manageable tasks, with components like due dates, reminders, labels, and filters to keep you on top of your to-dos.

It also includes many collaborative features to support team projects. With dozens of third-party integrations and its straightforward design, Todoist is a top choice for boosting productivity and accomplishing both personal and professional goals. While it does have a premium version, it is among the best free goal-tracking apps.

Key features

Goal-setting: Set specific goals using "Projects" and "Sections" features and create project folders to organize related tasks.
Habit-tracking: Track recurring tasks to build and maintain daily or weekly habits.
Tasks: Easily add tasks, set due dates, create labels, assign priorities, and organize them into projects.
Prioritization: Assign p1, p2, p3, or p4 labels to prioritize your tasks.
Reminders: Set due dates with notifications, automatic reminders, location-based reminders, or push notifications.
Templates: Access pre-designed templates for common task types and projects, such as project management, trip planning, goal tracking, and more.
Visual progress: Visually track your progress over time through the "Karma" feature, accumulate points when completing tasks, and maintain streaks.
Collaboration: Assign tasks to team members, leave comments on tasks, and work together on shared projects.
Note-taking: Add notes or comments to tasks to provide additional context or details.
Integrations: Connects with dozens of apps and tools such as Google Calendar, Slack, Reclaim.ai, Trello, and more.
Syncs across devices: Access to-do lists across iOS, Android, and desktop.

Limitations

Does not offer time-blocking features (though you can integrate with Reclaim.ai).
Limited when it comes to detailed analytics and stats on tasks completed.
No native calendar view for your tasks.
No native notetaking features.

Todoist pricing: Free → paid plans start at $4/month

4. TickTick

TickTick is a task management and productivity app (similar to Todoist) that makes goal-tracking simple with its structured project organization, calendar integrations, and flexibility with your specific workflow. Its intuitive interface allows you to create, organize, and prioritize tasks, set reminders, and even integrate with your calendar for a comprehensive view of your schedule. TickTick also includes personalized summaries and achievement scores to provide an overview of your progress and the effectiveness of your workflows.

On top of that, you can make use of several different views, such as calendar, list, or Kanban. With smart lists, cross-device synchronization, a built-in Pomodoro timer, and other collaborative features, TickTick can help you tackle daily tasks, manage your projects, and achieve your long-term goals. However, while it is a free goal tracker app, many of its features are only available in the premium version.

Key features

Goal-setting: Set long-term and short-term goals using the "Goal" setting for habits.
Habit-tracking: Create and monitor habits alongside your tasks, making it easy to manage both daily tasks and habits in one place.
Tasks: Create and manage tasks with due dates, descriptions, subtasks, and attachments.
Prioritization: Assign priority levels to your tasks.
Analytics & reporting: Analyze productivity reports on your completed tasks, habits, and goals.
Reminders: Set reminders for tasks, habits, and goals such as pop-ups, email notifications, location reminders, and more to stay on top of your tasks.
Templates: Choose pre-designed task and project templates to help quickly create common lists and plans.
Visual progress: Visually analyze your progress across completion percentages and charts for goals and habits.
Calendar view: Switch to a monthly, weekly, three-day, or daily calendar view to see tasks, events, and time blocks.
Collaboration: Collaborate with others by sharing tasks, assigning tasks, and tracking shared project progress.
Integrations: Gmail, Google Assistant, Zapier, Slack, Outlook, and more.
Syncs across devices: Syncs tasks, habits, and calendar events across multiple devices and platforms.

Limitations

Does not include any time-tracking or time-blocking features.
Lacks any native notetaking features.
Most of TickTick's features are locked behind premium plans.

TickTick pricing: Free → $3.99/month

5. Way of Life

Way of Life is a habit-tracking app designed to help you build positive habits and break negative ones. With a user-friendly interface, it simplifies tracking goals and habits with visual progress charts to keep you informed, accountable, and motivated. Customize your goals, set flexible reminders, use the built-in diary function, and delve into insightful analytics to gain a deeper understanding of your positive and negative behaviors.

If you're someone who loves or needs several ways to visually gauge your progress on your goals, Way of Life may be the best goal-tracking app for you.

Key features

Goal-setting: Set specific goals for the habits you want to establish or break, such as fitness, health, productivity, or personal development.
Habit-tracking: Track daily (both positive and negative) habits by logging progress and marking whether each habit was completed for the day.
Analytics & reporting: Access detailed statistics, weekly summaries, and visual graphs to gain insights into your habit-building over time.
Reminders: Stay on track with customizable daily or periodic reminders for specific activities or avoiding certain behaviors.
Visual progress: Visually represents habit progress through charts and graphs to present accomplishments and setbacks at a glance.
Note-taking: Add notes and comments to each habit entry to record thoughts, reflections, or reasons for success or failure related to specific habits.

Limitations

Some may find the interface unintuitive and difficult to navigate.
Highly focused on habits and lacks task management features commonly found in other goal-tracking apps.
Lacks time tracking and time blocking features.
No pre-designed templates for common habits.
No collaboration features.
Only available as a mobile app.
No integrations with third-party apps.

Way of Life pricing: Free → $4.99/month

6. aTracker

aTracker is a time-tracking app that simplifies tracking your daily activities and staying on top of your goals. Their simple and intuitive interface allows you to start and stop timers for various tasks with a single tap while also providing detailed analytics into how you're spending your time. It includes several ways to visually view your progress and time spent, such as pie and bar charts, with custom categories, daily or weekly goals, and seamless synchronization across your devices.

Key features

Goal-setting: Set specific goals for personal and professional tasks to track your progress and accomplishments.
Habit-tracking: Create and track habits to establish and maintain good daily routines.
Tasks: Create tasks and projects, and set estimated durations and priority levels to manage all of your work items.
Prioritization: Assign priorities to tasks and activities to focus on your important goals.
Time blocking: Allocate specific time slots on your calendar for different tasks and activities.
Time-tracking: Start and stop timers with a single tape for various tasks and activities to monitor how your time is spent.
Analytics & reporting: Analyze detailed reports on how your time is allocated, productivity patterns, and areas for improvement.
Visual progress: Visualize your progress through charts, graphs, and statistics to understand productivity trends and accomplishments over time.
Calendar view: View tasks and activities in either a list or calendar view to plan and manage your time effectively.
Note-taking: Add notes, comments, details, or reminders to tasks or specific activities and projects.
Syncs across devices: Syncs data across smartphones, tablets, and computers.

Limitations

Heavily reliant on manual inputs.
No pre-designed templates for common habits or tasks.
No collaboration features.
Does not integrate with third-party apps or tools.
Time blocking features are limited compared to other options, requiring you to manually block time for each task, and these time blocks do not offer flexible availability or automatic rescheduling around priority changes.

aTracker pricing: Free → $2.99/month

7. Strides

Strides is a goal-tracking and habit-forming app for iOS devices filled with many great features for achieving your goals. Strides's core features are centered around visual progress tracking in the form of charts, dashboards, graphs, and more. Specifically, the app provides plenty of customization regarding the goals being tracked. Whether it is a daily aim like drinking enough water or long-term goals such as building your retirement accounts, Strides provides the flexibility to stay on top of your goals, no matter what they may be.

Key features

Goal-setting: Define specific objectives, such as fitness goals, financial milestones, or career aspirations, with four unique tracker types to measure your progress.
Habit-tracking: Create and monitor daily, weekly, or custom schedules for your habits.
Analytics & reporting: Analyze a dashboard of your tracked habits, with charts and graphs illustrating your success rates, streaks, and trends.
Reminders: Set customizable reminders at specific times or locations.
Visual progress: Offers visual progress tracking with charts and graphs of how well you perform your goals and habits.
Calendar view: Includes a calendar view that displays past and upcoming tasks, habits, and goals.
Syncs across devices: Syncs across multiple devices, including iOS and desktop.

Limitations

Only available on Apple devices.
Focused primarily on habit tracking, no task management features commonly found in other goal-tracking apps.
No time blocking or time tracking features.
No pre-designed templates for common habits.
Primarily designed as a personal progress app with no collaboration features.
No integrations with third-party apps or tools.

Strides pricing: Free → $4.99/month

8. Coach.me

Coach.me is a goal-tracker app that combines personalized coaching with goal-monitoring and habit-tracking features. Its standout feature is the access it offers to a diverse network of certified coaches, spanning fitness, productivity, mindfulness, and more. These expert guides can provide tailored support on your journey to achieving your goals.

Besides the directory of coaches, Coach.me also provides its users with a built-in community. You can share your progress with other users, ask questions, and support one another for that extra boost of motivation and accountability in your goal-setting.

Key features

Goal-setting: Create and track your individualized goals across various categories.
Habit-tracking: Add daily habits to your dashboard and track your progress through weekly targets, check-ins, and reminders.
Analytics & reporting: Access detailed analytics and reports to evaluate your goal progress, including historical data and performance trends.
Reminders: Customize reminders to stay on top of your check-ins and milestones.
Templates: Choose from predefined goals in various life areas, such as fitness, financial health, diet, wellness, business, and more.
Visual progress: Visualize your achievements through charts and graphs, providing a clear overview of your goal progress and daily habit streaks.
Collaboration: Engage with a community of fellow goal-setters, offering support, motivation, and mutual accountability.
Certified coaches: Access certified coaches within the app who provide personalized guidance and expertise in specific goal categories like fitness, productivity, mindfulness, and others.

Limitations

Highly focused on paid coaching features.
No time-tracking or time-blocking features.
No task management features.
No calendar view.
No note-taking or journal features.

Coach.me pricing: Free → $25+/week for coaching

9. Habitica

Habitica is a unique habit-tracking and productivity app that turns your daily tasks and goals into an engaging role-playing game. By gamifying your life, it rewards your progress with experience points and gold to spend on battle armor, mysterious pets, magic skills, and more. You can reinforce positive behaviors, break bad habits, and collaborate with friends through parties and guilds.

With a range of challenges and rewards, Habitica can transform your productivity journey into an enjoyable adventure, making it the perfect tool for those seeking some extra motivation and fun in achieving their goals.

Key features

Habit-tracking: Track and customize habits by setting their frequency (daily, weekly, etc.) and assigning positive or negative values to each.
Tasks: Create and manage your tasks and projects.
Reminders: Get both email and push notifications and emails to remind yourself to complete your quests.
Collaboration: Form parties and join guilds to work together with other users to achieve common goals.
Gamification: Gamifies task and habit management by turning productivity into a role-playing game, through customizable characters, XP points earned upon completion of tasks, and in-game currency to buy rewards.
Integrations: Offers many official and user-created apps, tools, extensions, and integrations.
Syncs across devices: Available on multiple platforms, including web, iOS, and Android

Limitations

The gamification features may deter users from looking for a more straightforward and serious goal-tracking app.
Lacks any explicit goal-tracking features.
No visual progress, statistics, analytics, or reporting features to help track progress on your goals.
Restricted to a list view with no calendar views available.
No pre-designed templates for common tasks or habits.
No way to prioritize tasks beyond manually sorting to-do lists.
No time blocking or time tracking features.
No native note-taking or journal features.

Habitica pricing: Free → $9/month +$3 per member for teams

10. LifeRPG

LifeRPG is a gamified task management app that turns daily tasks and goals into exciting quests and missions, assigning rewards and experience points (XP) for each accomplishment. The app allows you to break down your missions (tasks) into sub-missions, add steps for each, and take notes with its scratchpad feature.

As the name suggests, the app is designed to turn your real-life goals into an RPG (role-playing game), while helping you to build positive habits, level up your character, and track your progress. With time tracking, challenges, and rewards, LifeRPG offers an engaging way to make personal development and task management an enjoyable adventure, making it an excellent choice for those seeking motivation and excitement as they achieve their goals.

Key features

Habit-tracking: Create and track daily habits and routines as "skills," which gain XP as you complete related missions.
Tasks: Create and manage tasks and to-do lists as "missions," with due days, duration, rewards, and related skills.
Prioritization: Assign urgency levels to missions, along with parameters such as difficulty and fear.
Analytics & reporting: View your progress over time, track completion rates, and identify patterns in your productivity.
Visual progress: Analyze your progress through radar charts, skills lists, line graphs, and more.
Gamification: Earn experience points (XP) and level up as you complete missions and develop your skills.
Note-taking: Jot down ideas, thoughts, and additional details related to tasks, habits, or projects within missions.

Limitations

Overly reliant on manual input.
Developed and maintained by a solo developer, rather than an established company.
No explicit goal-setting features.
No time blocking or time tracking features.
No pre-designed templates for common tasks or habits.
No calendar view.
No collaboration features.
No integrations with third-party apps or tools.
Only available as a mobile app.

LifeRPG pricing: Free

11. Toodledo

Toodledo is a versatile and flexible task management and goal-tracking app that simplifies task organization, prioritization, and productivity. Like other apps, such as Todoist, Toodledo is primarily built around the to-do list. However, it includes many features like due dates, customizable lists, subtasks, notes, and cross-platform sync to help you manage your tasks, stay on top of deadlines, and align your to-dos with personal and professional goals. It also includes many collaborative features, allowing you to share your to-do lists and goals with family, friends, and colleagues.

Key features

Goal-setting: Set specific goals and objectives, and link tasks to each for better goal tracking and progress monitoring.
Habit-tracking: Create and track daily, weekly, or monthly habits through repetition to build positive routines.
Tasks: Create, organize, and prioritize tasks with due dates, folders, tags, and custom fields.
Prioritization: Prioritize your tasks based on urgency and importance to automatically sort your to-do list.
Time-blocking: Schedule and allocate specific blocks of time for your tasks and appointments.
Time-tracking: Offers built-in time-tracking capabilities with detailed reporting.
Analytics & reporting: Analyze your task completion rates, productivity trends, and goal progress, along with custom graphs and charts.
Reminders: Set reminders and alarms for tasks and events, including push notifications, email, SMS, and popup notifications.
Templates: Create task templates for recurring tasks you'll need to complete regularly.
Calendar view: See your tasks on a calendar to better visualize and plan tasks, events, and appointments.
Collaboration: Share tasks and projects with colleagues or collaborators with granular sharing options to control who can view and edit shared tasks and projects.
Note-taking: Attach notes and documents to tasks and projects with a native note editor.
Integrations: Integrates with various third-party apps and services, using free and open API.
Syncs across devices: Syncs data across multiple devices, including iOS, Android, desktop, and browser.

Limitations

UI is relatively dated compared to newer options.
Limited ways to visually track your progress.
Time blocking features are limited, requiring you to manually block time for each task without any flexibility around availability or automatic rescheduling for priority changes.

Toodledo pricing: Free → $5.99/month

12. GoalsonTrack

GoalsonTrack is a goal-setting and productivity software specifically built around setting and achieving SMART goals. With features like goal visualization, task management, habit tracking, and progress monitoring, GoalsonTrack markets itself as "a goal software for high achievers." The app allows you to categorize your tasks and set up recurring tasks while providing the flexibility to drag and drop them on your calendar as you see fit.

Key features

Goal-setting: Set SMART goals, break them down into milestones or sub-goals, and organize them into categories.
Habit-tracking: Create, track, and link habits with your SMART goals, while customizing frequency and reminders.
Tasks: Break down goals into actionable tasks with task dependencies and subtasks to create intricate task hierarchies for managing complex projects.
Time-tracking: Track time spent on tasks with timers, and start or stop task timers to accurately track your time across each task.
Analytics & reporting: Interactive stats charts display goals achieved, tasks completed, habits checked, and time spent working on goals.
Templates: Create goals from built-in goal templates with detailed action plans.
Visual progress: Visualize your progress through charts and graphs, and achievements through a native vision board.
Calendar view: View your daily tasks with their calendar view.
Collaboration: Share goals with your team while logging team activities in real-time.
Note-taking: Take notes related to your goals and progress using a native goal journal.

Limitations

UI is very dated compared to many other options.
Overly reliant on manual input.
Does not offer time-blocking features.
No integrations with third-party apps or tools.

Goalsontrack pricing: $5/month

Achieve your goals with these top apps 🏆

Whether your goals are professional or personal, these tools offer essential features to help you stay organized, track habits, and make meaningful progress. Remember that the power to achieve your goals is in your hands, but you can significantly increase your chances of success by managing your goals through a simple, yet powerful, goal-tracking app. Make this year a standout one by using the right tools to help you thrive and accomplish what matters most to you.

Did we miss any on our list? What is your favorite goal-tracking apps? Tweet us at @reclaimai and let us know!

What is People Analytics? 2024 HR & Ops Guide

anthonypelle — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 15:27:26 +0000

Organizations have to make a lot of big people decisions -- especially in the HR department. Did we hire the right person? Are employees feeling engaged? How many are at risk of burnout?

There's no way around it: people decisions are hard. And while these decisions have massive ramifications for your company, they're extremely necessary. Simply hiring the wrong person can cost your organization 30% of that hire's annual salary, and 6 to 9 months' salary to replace an employee who has left the company.

HR professionals need better ways to make these critical people decisions that bring strategic value to the organization. That's where people analytics comes in --- an ongoing paradigm shift that empowers human resource teams to make data-driven decisions, identify trends, and predict future workforce needs by leveraging the wealth of data around their people.

In this article, learn everything you need to know about people analytics -- what it is, why it's essential, and how HR managers and executives can drive ROI through employee insights.

What is people analytics?

As businesses become more complex, so do the challenges of managing a diverse workforce. Employee expectations are shifting, remote work is on the rise, and the demand for skilled talent is fiercer than ever.

People analytics, often referred to as HR analytics, talent analytics, or workforce analytics, is the application of data analysis and data science methods to human resources processes. Ultimately, it's about using data to make informed decisions about an organization's most valuable asset: the people.

People analytics combines HR expertise with that of data scientists. Advanced statistical analysis, machine learning, and data visualization can be used to extract meaningful insights from a vast pool of HR-related data to drive successful business outcomes. At its core, people analytics seeks to answer critical questions about your workforce, such as:

What are our top performing teams, and what sets them apart?
Can we improve productivity in our current workforce, or do we need to hire?
How can we optimize our workforce planning?
Do employees have enough time for productive work?
Do employees spend too much time in meetings?
How can we improve our diversity and inclusion?
What's impacting employee engagement and satisfaction?
What's driving employee turnover and burnout?

By analyzing employee performance and talent data, people analytics can identify the characteristics and behaviors of high-performing individuals and teams within your organization. And as many companies are pausing hiring, or even facing layoffs, these insights are incredibly valuable for implementing both training and new tools to optimize productivity in current employees and workforce planning -- so organizations can reach goals faster with their existing workforce.

For example, you may find that employees actually only spend a couple hours a day on productive heads-down work because they're overloaded with meetings and distractions all day. So instead of hiring another 20 people to meet their project goals, leaders can identify the problem and implement more productive workplace culture practices to protect employees from time-wasters that eat into their daily routines.

People analytics can also give you and your team a better understanding of what's actually going on within your workforce. It allows you to look at the diversity of your new hires, who is being promoted within the organization, and the makeup of the leadership team. HR teams can also uncover the underlying causes of employee flight with people analytics so you can take proactive steps to retain key talent and reduce recruitment expenses.

Top 8 people analytics benefits

In the movie Moneyball, Oakland Athletics' General Manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) and his assistant Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) revolutionized baseball by using statistics and metrics largely overlooked by traditional baseball scouts and managers. By focusing on undervalued statistical measures, such as on-base percentage and slugging percentage, rather than relying on conventional wisdom and subjective judgment, they could lead to better player selection and team performance.

This groundbreaking approach in baseball mirrors the evolution happening in human resources. Whereas Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt used "sabermetrics,"HR professionals are using people analytics. And just as baseball scouts had traditionally relied on gut feelings and observations, HR professionals have also often made talent decisions based on intuition and personal experience. But with key people analytics trends in hand, data and analytics can be used to make more informed, evidence-based decisions.

So, what are the top benefits of people analytics?

1. Informed decision-making

People analytics equips HR leaders with the data and insights needed to make informed, evidence-based decisions. This isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a necessity in today's rapidly changing business landscape. Whether it's making critical hiring choices, optimizing training and development programs, or addressing employee retention issues -- this data allows you to identify your biggest challenges and take action to improve before your problems get worse.

2. Competitive advantage

Talent is a precious resource in our global market, and organizations that leverage people analytics have a major competitive edge. By identifying top talent, reducing turnover, and enhancing workforce productivity, you can position your organization as an employer of choice and attract the best candidates in your industry.

3. Cost savings

High employee turnover and suboptimal workforce planning can be costly. People analytics helps you pinpoint the factors contributing to turnover, forecast future staffing needs, and reduce time-wasting activities from the workweek so employees can spend more time on their important team goals.

4. Employee engagement & satisfaction

Engaged employees are more productive, innovative, and loyal. People analytics allows you to measure and track employee engagement, identify drivers of satisfaction, and implement targeted strategies to create a positive workplace culture.

5. Diversity and inclusion

Promoting diversity and inclusion is not just a matter of ethics; it's a business imperative. People analytics enables you to track diversity metrics, identify areas for improvement, and measure the effectiveness of diversity and inclusion initiatives. A diverse workforce can lead to better decision-making and innovation.

6. Agility & adaptability

In a world where change is constant, agility and adaptability are paramount. People analytics provides real-time insights into workforce trends and so you can adjust your HR strategies to stay ahead. Whether it's responding to shifts in market demand or adapting to remote work trends, data-driven decisions make your organization more agile.

7. Aligning HR with business objectives

People analytics bridges the gap between HR and broader business goals. It enables HR to demonstrate its impact on the bottom line by aligning talent strategies with the company's strategic objectives.

8. Employee development

Identifying skills gaps and opportunities for employee development is a must-have for building a high-performing workforce. People analytics helps you identify areas where training and development efforts can have the most significant impact.

How to get started with people analytics?

Sounds great, right? So, what does people analytics involve?

Truth be told, there's no one-size-fits-all metric when it comes to this burgeoning field of HR data analysis. Every organization is different, so their people reporting will need to be different too.

For example, your company may be struggling with retention, while others may grapple with an unengaged, unproductive workforce. Your company may need to conduct analysis on things like promotions and compensation structures to alleviate employee flight risk, whereas the other organization may need to study their learning and development opportunities.

Here's a general framework you can follow to start implementing people analytics in your organization:

1. Define clear objectives

You'll want to start by setting clear and specific objectives for your people analytics initiatives. What HR challenges or goals do you want to address? Whether it's reducing turnover, improving employee engagement, or enhancing talent acquisition -- well-defined and clear goals are necessary to choose and understand your metrics.

2. Identify the right metrics

Once you have your objectives, you'll need to choose HR metrics that align with these goals. This is where you'll set key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure progress in your organization. Of course, this is not always easy and may require some prior research on the part of your people analytics teams to discover which factors are most important for a given HR goal/challenge in your company.

3. Collect your data

From here, you can start collecting your people's data. But what are some typical people's data sources? Oftentimes, people analysts will investigate employee demographics, payroll, promotions, tenure, performance, time across activities, and employee engagement, along with other sources such as labor market statistics, population information, social networks, and more.

4. Invest in the right analytics tools

They say data is the new oil. However, just like oil, raw data is useless if it isn't refined. Given the complexity that comes with any kind of data analysis, you may need to invest in the right people analytics tools.

People Analytics tools like Reclaim.ai, for example, can help you make sense of your people data to improve operational efficiency across focus time, meetings, and work-life balance --- without the need for intrusive employee monitoring.

6. Visualize & present your data

Collecting new and intriguing people data is great and all. But, it won't do HR departments any good if business leaders can't make sense of your findings.

That's where data visualization comes in. In short, data visualization helps people see, interact with, and understand data. Proper visualization techniques will help make complex HR data more accessible to your organization's executives, employees, and your own people analytics teams.

7. Regularly conduct people analysis

People are complex, and things change all the time -- especially in an organizational context. Your HR data needs to be analyzed on an ongoing basis. Monitor trends, patterns, and anomalies so you can proactively identify issues or opportunities that require attention.

Use Google as an example. The Google People Analytics team is conducting its own longitudinal study (meaning they continually examine the same subjects over a long period of time) of Googlers at work that will run for decades to come.

8. Experiment & iterate

Finally, take an experimental approach to the people analytics at your company. Considering how nascent the field is, there are no set-in-stone methods or techniques. So, continuous experimentation is necessary if you want to unearth the best insights within your data.

Data-influenced decision-making

Of course, the power of data is undeniable -- but you can't solely rely people decisions on the analytics alone.

Effective human resources management is not solely data-driven; it's about being data-influenced.

Perhaps more than any other company, Google has blazed the trail on people analytics -- and how to implement within large companies. As Prasad Setty, Vice President of People Analytics & Compensation explained, twice a year, thousands of Googlers convene to form committees to evaluate who should get promoted within the company.

The Google people analytics team developed a formula to improve the efficiency of their promotion process. The algorithm predicted, with 90% accuracy, the right promotion decisions. But Googlers weren't interested. In fact, they actively opposed "hiding behind a black box." They wanted to make their own decisions.

People's decisions should ultimately be made by people, not by algorithms. Statistics, as powerful as they are, don't always tell the whole story. They provide snapshots, but may not capture the nuances of individual situations or the intangible qualities that make an employee valuable.

That's why people analytics should be used to influence your decisions, not mandate them. While data provides valuable insights, there's still a place for human intuition and judgment in HR decisions. Factors like cultural fit, creativity, and adaptability can't always be quantified in data.

Striking the right balance between data-influenced decision-making and the human touch is key to harnessing the full potential of people analytics while respecting the complexities of human resources management.

Corporate examples of people analytics

Let's take a look at some real-world examples of organizations that have harnessed the power of data-driven HR strategies via people analytics:

Google's Project Oxygen

Google's HR team embarked on Project Oxygen to identify the key attributes of their best managers. Through extensive data analysis, they found that technical skills, often considered paramount in the tech industry, ranked lower in importance than soft skills like good communication and a willingness to empower their teams. In fact, Google found that these 10 qualities made for the best managers:

Is a good coach
Empowers team and does not micromanaging
Creates an inclusive team environment, showing concern for success and well-being
Is productive and results-oriented
Is a good communicator --- listens and shares information
Supports career development and discusses performance
Has a clear vision/strategy for the team
Has key technical skills to help advise the team
Collaborates across Google
Is a strong decision-maker

Armed with this insight, Google tailored its leadership development programs to emphasize these crucial qualities, resulting in more effective and engaged managers.

IBM's Predictive Attrition Program

IBM's HR team developed a predictive attrition program that uses machine learning (via their own AI, Watson) to forecast which employees are at the highest risk of leaving the company. By proactively addressing the concerns of these employees and tailoring retention efforts, IBM managed to save over $300 million in retention costs, specifically by focusing on the company's high performers with in-demand skills.

JetBlue's People Assessment & Analytics

JetBlue's People Assessment & Analytics team, working with the customer support leadership team, sought to determine the most challenging aspects of working in their call centers, along with the characteristics that allow employees to thrive. They used focus groups, on-the-job observations, and interviews with employees and supervisors to gather data.

They identified the most essential qualities of successful call center employees.As a result, JetBlue improved its hiring efficacy and is now working to develop similar people analytics for talent acquisition across all customer-facing positions.

Unlocking HR's data potential with people analytics 📊

By blending data-influenced decision-making with human intuition, HR can harness the power of data to make informed, strategic choices that drive organizational success and create a thriving workplace.

As you go on to use people analytics in your own companies, remember that it's not just about the numbers; it's about the people behind them.

Did we miss anything? What do you think about people analytics? Tweet us @reclaimai to let us know!

12 Best HR Apps for 2024 — Comparison Guide

anthonypelle — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 16:12:00 +0000

Human Resources, (aka HR) a department known for managing mountains of paperwork and endless spreadsheets, has experienced a major transformation in productivity. Instead of manually maintaining these operational processes, HR teams have access to amazing human resource apps to easily streamline processes, boost productivity, and engage and motivate employees.

With so many options across workforce management software, HR mobile apps, people analytics, and payroll tools, the biggest challenge is deciding which one is right for your HR department. But you're in luck, we've researched hundreds of apps to save you the legwork of finding your next HR software solution. Let's see how we can tackle your biggest challenges across recruitment, onboarding, performance management, and employee engagement in 2024.

12 best HR apps for 2024

Reclaim.ai -Best for productivity & work-life balance
BambooHR- Best employee experience
Rippling- Best for small & medium-sized businesses
Paychex Flex- Best for new companies
Workday - Best for enterprise
Monday.com- Best for customization
Deel- Best for remote teams
Justworks- Best for PEO
Paycor - Best for overall payroll
Zenefits- Best for freelancer management
Homebase- Best for managing hourly employees
Sage HR- Best for employees

1. Reclaim.ai - Best for productivity & work-life balance

Reclaim.ai is an AI calendar app that HR leaders love for helping teams defend focus time for productive work, get their meetings under control, and protect their work-life balance to combat employee turnover. The app automatically finds the best time for employees' tasks, habits, meetings, and breaks in their busy schedules while keeping their calendars flexible for priority changes. This is the best overall HR app because it truly optimizes employees' most valuable resource -- their time.

If you're looking for a big ROI boost in 2024, Reclaim can help your current employees operate up to 40% more productively by eliminating thousands of wasted hours in meetings, inefficient fragmented time blocks on the calendar, and all those daily distractions that pull employees out of productive work. Build a more productive culture in your organization with Reclaim, and track the transformation with advanced People Analytics to understand where employees spend their time -- and give company leaders the data they need to make strategic decisions around performance and goals.

Key features

Tasks: Employees and managers can auto-schedule tasks to their calendars at the best time around existing events(while keeping schedules flexible for priority changes).
Habits: Auto-schedule recurring routines at the best time around existing calendar events (hundreds of role/department templates available).
Smart 1:1 Meetings: Find the best time for one-on-one meetings across both attendees' calendars.
Scheduling Links: Share availability for meetings with high-priority and flexible duration settings to book important meetings sooner.
Buffer Time: Auto-schedule breaks and travel time around calendar events.
No-Meeting Days: Defend time for your team to get stuff done every week.
Slack Status Sync: Allow employees to auto-sync their Slack status to their calendar to prevent interruptions and context switching.
People Analytics: Analyze where employees spend time across meeting types, tasks, habits, and work-life balance metrics.
Personal time tracking: Allow employees to track their time across activities so they can defend more time for productive work and monitor their time in meetings.
Calendar Sync: Allow employees to protect personal commitments on their work calendar to avoid conflicts.
Integrations: ClickUp, Asana, Jira, Todoist, Linear, Google Tasks, Zoom, and Slack.

Limitations

Currently only supports Google Calendar (Outlook coming soon).

Reclaim.ai pricing: Free → paid plans start at $8/user/month

2. BambooHR - Best employee experience

If you need to manage employee data and streamline HR processes, BambooHR is the HR app for you. This cloud-based HR software offers a range of features, including onboarding for new employees, self-service options, and simplified reporting. Plus, with valuable insights into your workforce, BambooHR can help businesses of any size optimize their HR operations.

We consider BambooHR to be one of the best HR software apps on this list because it simplifies and supports every step of the employee experience through its intuitive features such as data, reporting, hiring, onboarding, payroll, time off, benefits, employee experience, and performance -- along with its many integrations with other apps and services like Indeed, Slack, Greenhouse, and more.

Key features

All-in-one platform: Nearly all HR functions, including HR data & reporting, employee experience & performance, payroll, time, & benefits, and more, are simplified and supported, connected to a single secure data source.
Hiring & onboarding: Applicant tracking system and proactive tasks make hiring and onboarding easy, and provide a great experience for candidates and new hires.
Payroll: Supports several payroll functions, including direct deposit, pay stubs, runs, reporting, automatic tax filing, and employee self-service platform.
Benefits: Streamline the entire benefits administration process, including open enrollment, new hires, QLEs, along with comprehensive reporting.
Compliance: Automatically handles all federal, state, and local taxes to keep your organization compliant with all necessary regulations.
Time tracking: Supports hourly time management features, including timesheet management, automated reminders, self-service time entry, time clock, and remote worker support.
Data & reporting: Offers instant reports, automated workflows, employee data management, and analytics.
Employee experience: Provides various tools to collect feedback, enhance employee contentment, and nurture your workforce.
Integrations: Indeed, Google, Slack, Microsoft, Human Interest, Checkr, and more.

Limitations

Pricing is not transparent.
Access to BambooHR's marketplace and open API is limited to specific paid plans.

BambooHR pricing: contact sales for quote

3. Rippling - Best for small & medium-sized businesses

Rippling is an HR app that is a top choice for small to mid-sized businesses. Rippling makes it simple to handle payroll, benefits, expenses, devices, apps, and more from a single platform. This all-in-one approach simplifies HR management, saving businesses time and money while ensuring compliance with ever-changing laws and regulations. Whether it's a small team in the US or a fully distributed workforce around the world, Rippling gives you a single system to run everything you need to hire, pay, and manage your team.

Key features

All-in-one platform: Combines dozens of HR, IT, and operations functions into a platform.
Recruiting, hiring, & onboarding: Automate the hiring process across headcount planning, candidate sourcing, recruiting, hiring, and employee onboarding.
Payroll: Sync all your HR data with payroll for both US and global payments.
Benefits: Manage employee health insurance, 401(k), commuter, and more, while automating benefits administration across enrollment, updating deductions, and administering COBRA.
Compliance: Automatically handle all tax and compliance work, for local, state, and national regulations.
Time, attendance, & PTO: Track various workforce-related information such as time, attendance, paid time off (PTO), sick time, and schedules.
Employee engagement: Engage employees with the Pulse library of employee survey templates, or create your own to send employee-wide or to specific teams.
IT management: Manage employees' apps, devices, data, and security across all locations.
Finance: Automate dozens of financial tasks such as managing corporate cards, expense accounts, bills, and more.
Self-service portal: Allow employees to access and update their own information.
Customization: HR administrators can customize their workflows to accommodate their unique processes*.*

Limitations

Rippling does not include modules for performance or engagement, and instead relies on third-party ATS (applicant tracking system) and LMS (learning management system).
Rippling isn't well suited for larger companies or enterprises.
Rippling's feature set is not as comprehensive as other established HR and payroll apps.

Rippling Pricing: Starting at $8/user/month

4. Paychex Flex - Best for new companies

Paychex is one of the leading providers of payroll, HR, and professional employer organization (PEO) solutions. Paychex Flex is especially notable for its highly-rated mobile apps, available for both iOS and Android devices. While the backbone of their platform is the Paychex Flex payroll software, which provides easy payment options for desktop and mobile users, Paychex does offer flexible solutions for managing basic to advanced HR payroll processes, making it an ideal choice for small businesses looking to scale.

Key features

Self-service portal: Allow employees to access and review their own pay stubs and tax forms.
Onboarding: Leverage electronic onboarding and online employee handbooks to streamline new employee setup.
Payroll: Offers payroll package bundles and custom solutions to support self-employed businesses through large enterprise companies.
Benefits: Access to cost-effective and comprehensive employee benefits packages, including 401k, HSAs, FSAs, health, vision, and dental insurance, and ancillary benefits.
Compliance: Work with compliance experts to guarantee your reporting and tax filing comply with state and local regulations.
Time & attendance: Track time and attendance with Paychex's web punch, mobile app, kiosk app with facial verification, biometric iris and fingerscan time clocks, and interactive voice response system.
Accessible mobile app: Paychex Flex HR mobile app allows employees to view pay and tax information, while employers can submit payroll and view reports.

Limitations

Can be expensive for smaller companies.
UX and UI is a bit clunky and could be improved.
Users have shared that customer support is inconsistent.

Paychex Flex pricing: Starting at $39 + $5/user/month

5. Workday - Best for enterprise

Workday is a cloud-based HR software designed to manage various HR functions like payroll, benefits, recruiting, talent management, and time tracking. It is a comprehensive tool that simplifies nearly all HR processes by automating tasks and streamlining workflows. With its advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, Workday helps organizations make data-driven decisions and gain insights into their workforce. However, while its scope does make it one of the most powerful HR tools on our list, it is fairly expensive and better suited to larger enterprise companies.

Key features

Suite of HR apps: Seamless suite of apps across financials, HR, talent, payroll, analytics, and more.
Recruiting: Gives recruiters a single platform to manage their entire hiring workflow, including application assessments and interviews.
Payroll: Unified system that syncs HR, payroll, and time data all in one, along with several payroll partners, such as Alight, everBe, and OneSource Virtual, to give you more control over your payroll operations.
Time tracking: Employees can use a desktop, tablet, or mobile device to clock in and out, along with physical time clock integrations via Workday APIs.
Analytics & reporting: Provides a complete picture of your people data, including their skills, well-being, performance, and location.
Talent management: Provides tools to promote employee development, reward employees, and help managers assist in career planning.
Vendor management: Uses AI and machine learning to help HR, finance, and procurement teams optimize their operations, along with additional features like consolidated invoicing, streamlined approval processes, SOW milestone payment, simplified time and expense entry, and more.
Finance: Automates your financial processes and delivers data from all corners of your organization while automatically ingesting, enriching, and transforming event data into accounting.
Planning: Provides budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and analytics features for companies of all sizes.
Employee self-service: Employee portal helps quickly onboard new hires with important company documentation.

Limitations

Can be slow to load for some users.
Can be prohibitively expensive for some organizations.
Not suited for smaller or mid-sized companies.

Workday pricing: Starting at $45/user/month

6. Monday.com - Best for customization

Technically, Monday.com is not necessarily an "HR app". However, it has many useful work and project management features that can be applied to many HR tasks. For example, if you're recruiting new employees, you can use its Kanban boards and dashboards to efficiently create, assign, and track hiring-related tasks. The platform also offers HR templates (which can be customized) to assist you in monitoring and managing the recruitment pipeline, new hire onboarding, and more.

Key features

Dashboards: Create custom dashboards for easy data analysis of HR activities.
Kanban boards: Help teams manage their workflow and improve their efficiency.
Gantt charts: Easily track project timelines by visualizing key dates and dependencies.
Recruitment & onboarding: Create custom workflows and templates to track your recruitment pipeline and automate the onboarding process for new hires.Automations: Avoid time-consuming meetings and email chains by creating custom automation in minutes.
Performance monitoring: Track employee progress across tasks and teams to improve performance toward company goals.
Time off: Collect and monitor PTO requests from employees, and receive reminders for pending leave requests.
Performance reviews: Manage your performance reviews, streamline meetings, and track outcomes from the discussions.
Integrations: Google, Microsoft 365, Calendly, Miro, DocuSign, Jobflows, Growstars, & more.

Limitations

Powerful project management capabilities that can help HR, but itself does not contain most HR functions found in other apps.

Monday.com pricing: Free → $16/user/month

7. Deel - Best for remote teams

Deel is an all-in-one HR platform that provides hiring and payment solutions to businesses recruiting globally. It's one of the best HR apps for remote teams because it simplifies the process of managing payroll and compliance obligations across different countries, eliminating the need to establish legal entities in each country in which they operate. This saves remote teams time, money, and resources by centralizing all of their payroll and compliance obligations in one easy-to-use platform.

Key features

All-in-one platform: Manage your entire workforce and provide an exceptional experience for contractors, EOR employees, and in-house employees by consolidating them onto one platform.
Hiring: Onboard employees and contractors abroad, fend off misclassification risks, and run background checks globally.
Payroll: Facilitate payments and taxes to workers all around the world.
Benefits: Offer all statutory, common, and competitive benefits in each market.
Compliance: Offers extensive assistance for addressing compliance, legal inquiries, and potential contractor misclassification.
Numerous payment methods: Supports a variety of payment methods companies can use for their payroll operations.
In-house visa support: Streamline international hiring in 30+ countries with in-house immigration support.
Equipment shipping: Ship and manage all the necessary tools and equipment to your team members.
Integrations: BambooHR, Greenhouse, Ashby, Quickbooks, and more.

Limitations

Does not offer performance management features found in other HR apps.
May not be well-suited to larger companies.

Deel pricing: Free → $599/month

8. Justworks - Best for PEO

Justworks is another excellent PEO and payroll platform that helps businesses streamline many HR functions. Justworks bundles payroll, compliance, HR, and benefits access all into a single platform, so you don't need to worry about administering employment-related responsibilities. Not only that, but with group buying power, you can access several PEO health insurance options and other perks. Finally, it is designed for small and medium-sized businesses, offering scalable pricing plans.

Key features

Fully centralized HR dashboard: Automate administrative tasks and visualize important information, such as permissions, organization charts, company directories, employee database, handbooks, policies, and company docs.
Hiring & onboarding: Easily expand into new states for remote hires, organize employee documentation, and integrate with Greenhouse applicant tracking to streamline hiring and onboarding.
Payroll: Automates the payroll process, including automatic direct deposit for full-time and part-time employees, and support for a global workforce.
Benefits: Manage employee benefits and access a variety of high-quality health insurance plans, and access top-tier benefits and perks usually only available to large companies.
Compliance: Helps employers stick to all employment regulations, covering federal taxes, state taxes, employment practices liability insurance, workers' compensation, and local regulations.
Time-tracking & attendance: Monitor contractor work, employee work, and overtime with time and attendance features.

Limitations

The ATS heavily relies on Greenhouse's third-party integration.
Can be expensive for larger teams.

Justworks pricing: $59/month → $99/month

9. Paycor - Best for overall payroll

If you're looking for more than just a payroll platform, Paycor is a great option. Automate your tedious HR tasks so you can spend more time on your important work. With Paycor, your employees can use self-service tools to update their profiles, sign digital documents, and complete tasks without interrupting your workflow.

One of the best things about Paycor is its transparent reporting system. You can easily access reports on headcount, turnover rate, compensation levels, and absenteeism, and communication is a breeze with mobile push notifications and chat messages. Plus, you can create unlimited workflows and automate as many tasks as you need. Paycor also has several pre-made workflows for recruiting, scheduling, and paying staff designed for several different industries.

Key features

All-in-one platform: Comprehensive human resources tools that encompass payroll, benefits, workforce management, and analytics tools.
Recruitment & hiring: Find qualified candidates, source new talent, and easily streamline your onboarding through automated processes.
Onboarding & talent development: Easily onboard new employees, share access to all necessary paperwork, tax forms, and direct deposits, and support continuous development for existing employees.
Payroll: Automate your payroll processes for all employee types, for organizations with 1-1,000 employees.
Benefits: Manage and administer employee benefits across health insurance, life insurance, retirement plans, and disability insurance, manage workers comp, and streamline ACA reporting.
Compliance: Handles all tax calculations, filing, and payments, including sending out W-2 and 1099 forms along with tracking and storing critical regulatory documentation.
Time tracking: Create and manage employee schedules, and monitor attendance from your dashboard.
Analytics & tracking: Use pre-made reports to easily analyze data and make informed decisions.
Employee engagement: Create pulse surveys to gather feedback, offer career management support, and build personalized training and development plans.
Mobile app: Available as a browser-based application, and a mobile or tablet app.

Limitations

Can be slower to implement compared to other options.
More expensive than other HR platforms.
Some important features are exclusively included in higher-priced plans.

Paycor pricing: contact sales for quote

10. Zenefits - Best for freelancer management

Zenefits is a top-notch HR software solution that caters to the needs of startups and small businesses. It excels in benefits administration, making it the go-to choice for most small companies. Its benefits reporting features are unmatched compared to many other HR platforms, and it offers effortless administration, customizable add-on services, and expert human advisers to assist you when needed.

Key features

Comprehensive HR platform: Provides tools for a wide range of HR functions, such as hiring, onboarding, employee management, and more.
Recruiting & onboarding: Streamline job posting, candidate qualifications, and hiring, and automate onboarding documentation, benefits elections, and account setup.
Payroll: Handles a wide range of advanced payroll functions, including unlimited payruns, direct deposits, tips reporting, garnishments, contractor payments, and automatic syncing across entire HR department.
Benefits: Offer and manage employee benefits, including medical, life and disability, health savings account (HSA), flexible savings account (FSA), and 401(k).
Compliance: Automatically notify the right state when a new employee is hired, and automate federal and state tax filings, FLSA overtime, COBRA, and W2 and 1099s.
Time tracking & scheduling: Create, edit, and track employee shifts, time off, and activity.
Employee analytics: Provides detailed analytics and insights on headcount, employee demographics, compensation, equity, and more.
People Hub: Allows employees to collaborate with one another while allowing people teams to communicate important information.
User-friendly interface: Platform usability makes it easy for users to stay on top of their paperwork, benefits, and performance management tasks.
Transparent pricing: Pricing structure is more transparent than many competitors.

Limitations

Companies are required to pay for a minimum of five employees.

Zenefits pricing: Starting at $8/user/month

11. Homebase - Best for managing hourly employees

‍

If you manage hourly employees, Homebase is an excellent HR app that allows you to create schedules, monitor working hours, and enable employees to request shift trades, covers, and more. It's compatible with many POS (point of sale) systems, making it a perfect choice for retail businesses and restaurants. Also, Homebase includes a mobile app that is user-friendly and easy to use for both employer and employee.

Key features

HR platform: Offers a suite of tools and HR guidance to manage employee information, track employee certifications, and track PTO requests.
Hiring & onboarding: Post job openings, track applicants, schedule interviews, hire, and onboard new employees within the platform.
Hourly payroll: Transform nearly any device into a time clock for monitoring working hours, breaks, and overtime for payroll.
Compliance: Track breaks, calculate overtime, store time cards, stay on top of labor laws, and more to comply with federal, state, and city rules.
Employee scheduling: Create, share, and optimize schedules for your whole team.
Employee hub: Provides all the tools to help retain top employees with perks, including transparent communication, employee recognition, employee feedback, and more.
Integrations: Paychex, ADP, Gusto, Rippling, Square, Toast, Clover, and more.

Limitations

The available reports are limited and cannot be customized.
Mostly suited to hourly workers.

Homebase pricing: Free → $80/location/month

12. Sage HR - Best for employees

Sage HR is a cloud-based tool for small to medium-sized businesses, which is part of the Sage business management suite. Sage has developed various software solutions to help businesses manage their HR, accounting, customer outreach, and more. The primary advantage of Sage HR is its user-friendliness. Its intuitive interface and clean design make it easy for both employers and employees to use the platform immediately after logging in.

Key features

Core HR platform: Includes tools for a variety of HR functions, including org charts, employee information databases, company announcements, PTO review, expense reimbursement, eSigning, and automated workflows for common HR processes.
Hiring & recruiting: Create job postings, manage applicants, and schedule interviews within the platform.
Onboarding: Automate new employee onboarding through pre-assigned tasks and workflows.
Shift scheduling: Easily create, edit, and share shifts with your employees.
Performance management: Set goals, schedule 1:1s, manage performance feedback, and stay on top of goals and OKRs.
Reporting: Draw insights, see trends, and make predictions on future behavior or organizational needs in HR data dashboard.
Mobile app: Access HR functions through the mobile app on iOS & Android.
Integrations: G Suite, Slack, SSO, and Zapier.

Limitations

Many functions, outside Core HR, require add-ons with an extra cost.
No payroll support.

SageHR pricing: $5.50/employee/month

Enhance your Human Resources with the best tools 🙌

These powerful HR apps empower human resource teams to automate tasks, boost employee engagement, and make data-driven decisions. By streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency, your HR teams can focus on strategic initiatives and create a more productive, compliant, and harmonious workplace. As technology advances, the future of human resource management looks even more promising, making it an exciting time to embrace these digital solutions for a brighter, more efficient HR landscape.

Did we miss anything? What HR apps do you use? Tweet us @reclaimai to let us know!

154 Best Check-In Questions to Drop in Meetings

anthonypelle — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 16:24:35 +0000

Whether you're managing a small team, a department, or an entire company -- asking the right check-in questions can be the difference between an unproductive status update meeting, or an engaged discussion that leaves your employees feeling happy, empowered, and ready to do their best work. But when busy professionals are juggling a massive task load, 39.3 meetings/week on average, and trying to maintain their work-life balance, it's easy for proactive question planning to be put on the back burner before their check-in meetings.

And with a shocking 78.7% of professionals stressing about increasing workloads -- thoughtful check-in questions are more important than ever to stay updated, identify issues, offer support, and develop stronger relationships with your team.

So how do you start having better conversations with your direct reports in team meetings, one-on-ones, or your daily standups? In this blog post, learn the best practices for checking in with your team and the 154 best check-in questions for meetings-- as well as mental health check-ins and fun icebreaker questions to build rapport with your team.

Types of check-in questions covered

How to (effectively) check in with your team

The purpose of asking check-in questions in meetings is to keep the team leader or project manager up to speed on the progress of projects, examine blockers, realign direction with objectives, and get feedback on how to better support their work. But without a clear purpose, check-in meetings can distract employees from their focus work, negatively affect team morale, and strain the relationship between managers and employees.

You're probably here because you want to avoid the latter scenario with your team, so let's look at some do's and don'ts for managers to facilitate productive check-ins.

Do's for manager check-ins:

Do respect everyone's time by upholding planned meetings.
Do make it a safe space for your team to share ideas and concerns.
Do be transparent about progress, expectations, and goals.
Do ask for feedback on how you can better support your team.
Do help remove blockers that are preventing progress.
Do use smart tools to automate and optimize check-ins.
Do discuss career development on a regular cadence.

Don'ts for manager check-ins:

Don't let a few team members dominate the conversation or interrupt others.
Don't turn a group meeting into a one-on-one.
Don't make check-ins too formal where attendees feel stressed.
Don't just focus on status updates that aren't relevant to everyone.
Don't go off topic or consistently run over time.
Don't exclude remote team members in a hybrid work environment.

Now that we've covered the basics of effective check-ins, how do we implement them in our meetings? Let's break down some of the most valuable types of check-in questions by meeting type, and walk through tips for each.

Daily standup check-in questions

Daily standups are a standard check-in meeting for many teams' day-to-day workflows. The purpose of standup meetings is to get a status update on daily progress and identify any blockers from the team. These should ideally be short and sweet -- no more than a couple-minute update per team member -- so everyone can get back to their pressing work for the day.

Examples of standup check-in questions:

What did you accomplish yesterday?
What are you planning to accomplish today?
Do you have any blockers or concerns?
How can I support you in achieving your project goals?
Have you collaborated with any team members on this issue you're facing?
What did you learn from your previous project or task?
Are there any improvements or suggestions you have for our team's processes?
What is your number one priority for the day?
Do you have enough time for everything on your plate?
Do you think you'll be able to meet your task deadline?
What can we do to make our team communicate more effectively?
What can we do to make this meeting better every day?
Is there anything else you would like to share with the team?

Tips: A few other pointers to make daily standups more productive include keeping your standup groups small so daily updates are agile, concise, and relevant to attendees -- ideally at a 9-person maximum. Also, consider automating standup meetings to be more flexible for bigger teams with tools like Standuply or Geekbot

One-on-one meeting check-in questions

One-on-one meetings are a great opportunity to connect with individual team members, examine blockers more closely, realign priorities with company goals, build stronger interpersonal work relationships, and check in on employee job satisfaction. But unfortunately, more than 40% of one-on-ones are rescheduled every week because they often aren't prioritized highly enough by managers, and are considered 'moveable' meetings. In order to effectively lead your team, you need to make time to connect and discuss both challenges and opportunities with each team member so they can feel confident and supported in their role.

Examples of one-on-one check-in questions:

What milestones have you hit?
What obstacles or blockers are you facing in your work?
What are your goals between now and our next meeting?
What are your three highest priority tasks right now?
Are you able to find enough space for focus time in your calendar every week?
How is your meeting load -- do you feel you're attending any unnecessary or unproductive meetings?
Are you feeling overwhelmed with distractions or interruptions throughout the workday?
Are you having any issues with context switching balancing so many tasks?
How do you determine which task to take on next?
Do you feel you have enough flexibility in your work schedule to meet priority changes?
How do you plan your time every day or week?
Do you have any task work or meetings that are forcing you to stay late throughout the week?
How often do you feel you don't have enough time to meet your deadlines?
How is work at the company aligning with your career goals?
How can I better support your work?
Are there any changes you think we should consider for this project?
What do you like most about working for this team/company?
What do you like least about working for this team/company?
What's been on your mind lately?
Are there any recent projects or tasks that you're particularly proud of?
Which work items have you most excited right now?
How are you feeling about your workload this week?
Is there anything you need from me or the team to help you be more successful?
Have you learned any new skills or techniques since we last met?
Are there any areas where you'd like to receive more feedback or guidance?
How are you balancing your work and personal life at the moment?
How do you personally measure success?
How do you feel about the company culture and your place in it?
How do you see your role evolving in the coming months?
Where would you like to see your career in the next couple of years?
Are there any training or development opportunities that you're interested in pursuing?
What are your thoughts on our team's communication?
How well do you feel the team is collaborating today?
Do you have any new ideas you'd like to share?
How are you feeling about your current work-life balance?
Is there anything at work that could potentially lead you to burn out?
Are you taking enough personal time off -- when was your last PTO?
Are there any challenges you're currently experiencing that you'd like to discuss?

Tips: Of course, having more productive one-on-one check-ins starts with making sure they actually happen. Try using smart scheduling tools like Smart 1:1 Meetings at Reclaim to automatically find the best time for your meetings across both attendees schedules, and auto-reschedule when a conflict comes up to reduce cancellations by 83%.

Team meeting check-in questions

Team meeting check-ins can happen across staff meetings, cross-functional team meetings, leadership meetings, skip-level team meetings, and even all-hands meetings -- allowing managers and leadership to connect and facilitate conversation across the team. Check-in questions for team meetings can be especially valuable as groups come together to review performance against milestones, work through concerns, realign new objectives, take a pulse on team dynamics, and plan how to optimize collective progress moving forward. Since these check-ins usually involve more attendees, and are thus longer, they should be kept agile to maximize value for everyone.

Examples of team check-in questions:

What planned milestones did we meet in the last sprint, week, month, or quarter?
How can we improve how we're approaching this project?
Which tasks are taking up most of your time?
What are the biggest time wasters for you each week?
As a team, is there anything we should start or stop doing?
Are there any blockers slowing down our progress?
What additional support can I provide to help us reach our team goals?
What obstacles did you encounter this week, and how did you overcome them?
How did you come up with this creative solution to solve the problem?
Is there anything you're unclear about or need more guidance on?
Have you identified any skills you'd like to develop further, and how can I support you in doing so?
What feedback do you have for the team, or for me as a manager?
Are there any upcoming projects or deadlines you're particularly excited about?
What are some recent successes we've had as a team?
How can we improve communication and collaboration within the team?
What challenges are you currently facing in your work, and how can we address them?
Are there any tools or resources we need to be more effective in our roles?
What are some specific goals you have for the next week, and how can we help you achieve them?
What's our biggest bottleneck right now?
How can we work more productively as a team?
How can we better plan out our weeks around tasks?
Do we feel we have enough time to meet our current deadline?
How do we feel about our current meeting load?
Is there anything on the calendar preventing us from getting through our most important work?
How would you feel about implementing a no-meeting day once a week?
How can we better support each other?
How do we feel about daily interruptions through Slack/chat -- have we explored using Slack statuses, DND, or scheduled sends to prevent distractions?
Who has too much on their plate right now, and who has room or flexibility to help take on some of those responsibilities?
What's our favorite thing about this team?
What's our least favorite thing about this team that we can work on?
If we were to invest in some team development, what would we want to learn about?
If a new team member were to join, what skills do you think we could use on this team?
What should we do for our team fun time this week?
Who knocked it out of the park this week on the team?
Anything else you would like to share?

Tips: Team check-ins can be held at different intervals -- weekly, biweekly, monthly, and quarterly team meetings all serve different purposes for different teams (and should never be scheduled more than needed). One tip to avoid meeting conflicts across everyones busy schedules is to use an availability calendar to optimize the scheduling process and eliminate the back-and-forth of finding a time that works for everyone. And, if you're working in a hybrid work setup, be inclusive of remote employees by using video conferencing to get everyone together.

Mental health check-in questions

Supporting employee mental wellness and offering a healthy work-life balance has become a top priority for organizations, with over 92% of companies adding support for new mental health programs since 2020. And while programs are amazing additions at the organizational level, it's also up to managers to check in with employees to help prevent work-related mental health issues. Improving employee wellness and helping them feel supported at work isn't just the right thing to do for employees, it also benefits employers as positive job satisfaction actually improves employee productivity by up to 30%

Examples of wellness and mental health check-in questions:

What is going well in your role? What have been some recent wins?
What is your biggest challenge right now?
How does that challenge impact your day?
How fulfilled are you by your role?
What talents do you have that you would like to be using at work, but aren't?
What resources would be helpful to you at this time?
How can I (as your manager) better support your work life?
What's something that's been causing you stress or anxiety lately?
Are you feeling overwhelmed with your workload or responsibilities?
How are you balancing your work and personal life?
Have you been taking breaks throughout the workday to recharge and refocus?
Are you feeling overrun by meetings throughout the week?
Do you feel you have enough time in your work schedule for everything you need to get done?
Do you feel you have enough long time blocks throughout the week to dive deep into productive work without being interrupted?
What's eating up most of your time these days?
Which type of tasks do you enjoy most?
Which type of tasks do you enjoy least?
What strategies have you been using to manage your mental health and well-being?
Is there anything that you feel is hindering your productivity or ability to focus?
How in sync do you feel with your colleagues and team members?
Do you feel you're receiving too much, or too little, feedback and support around your work?
How can I optimize my management style to give you more of the support you need?
Have you been taking advantage of any mental health resources provided by the company?
What can I do to help you feel happier at work?
If you had to rate your burnout level 1-10, 1 being completely happy to 10 being completely burnt out, how would you rate your level today?
Are you feeling valued and recognized for your contributions to the team?
Is there anything that you would like to discuss or address concerning your mental health and well-being?

Tips: Mental health questions can apply in a one-on-one scenario, or on a team level, though if you think an individual is struggling, it's always best to check in individually. A good tip is to ask wellness questions regularly, and not just once you notice that a team member might need extra support. The key to preventing mental exhaustion and burnout in your team is to address issues proactively at the first signs. This creates a safe space and shows your team that you care, which also makes it easier for them to open up or approach you if something does come up in the future.

Fun icebreaker check-in questions

Let's wrap up this list of check-in questions on a fun note with some icebreaker questions you can bring to your next meeting. Including light-hearted check-in questions createcreates opportunities for team-building activities, rapport, and personal connections -- especially for remote working teams who only cross paths for specific work-related topics. Whether in a one-on-one, or a team meeting -- building interpersonal relationships with coworkers actually improves confidence in sharing opinions, brainstorming, and being enthusiastic about ideas from coworkers.

Examples of fun icebreaker check-in questions:

If you were going to cook for the whole team, what dish would you make?
What's your biggest irrational phobia?
What word or expression have you been saying too much?
What's your secret talent/party trick?
What is your zodiac sign and do you think it applies to you?
What's one thing many people hate but you love?
If you had to perform karaoke right now, what song would you pick?
What is the most used emoji on your phone right now?
Do you have a favorite mug? Show and tell the team why it's the best.
What's a hobby or side project you've been meaning to take up?
What's something new or interesting you've learned recently?
If you could be any fictional character, who would you be and why?
What's your favorite childhood memory?
If you could travel anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would you go?
What's the most interesting thing you've seen on the internet recently?
Who is your celebrity crush?
What's the best book you've read recently?
What's your favorite TV show or movie of all time?
What's the most adventurous thing you've ever done?
What's your go-to comfort food?
If you could switch lives with anyone for a day, who would it be and why?
What's the most challenging thing you've overcome in your life?
What's your favorite way to unwind after a long day?
What's the most beautiful place you've ever visited?
If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
What's your favorite sport to watch -- are you any good at it yourself?
What's the best present you've ever got for someone?
What inanimate thing in your life do you have a name for, and what is it?
Who's got the best knock-knock joke?
What's the worst thing about summer -- outside of the heat?
What's the best way to cook an egg?
What sport should be added to the Olympics?
What was your last "When I was your age.." story you told?
If you could go to Mars for free on the first mass passenger ship to set up a colony and never come back, would you go?
What's a new habit that you've been trying to introduce into your life?
What's one practice that improved your quality of life?
What is your favorite way to relax after a stressful day?
What is a gadget/accessory on your desk that you love?
If you were to be famous, what would it be for?
What decade has the best music?

Tips: As many of us have experienced remote work and dispersed teams, we no longer have those easy 'water cooler' conversations -- so these questions are really a great way to get everyone to open up and learn something new about each other. As for all check-in questions, it's important to be conscious and inclusive of everyone. Adding an icebreaker check-in at the beginning of a meeting can help set it up to be a more creative and productive session. Another tip is to implement a round-robin approach to answering fun questions to encourage involvement from the whole team and help take some of the pressure off more reserved members when it comes to their turn to answer.

Better check-in questions = better team productivity 🙌

Check-in questions are a great way to stay updated on your team's status, track progress, receive feedback, and remove blockers, but taking full advantage of these opportunities to connect with your team is an effective approach to boosting productivity in and outside of meetings.

When it comes to any check-in question, remember to prioritize the inclusivity of all team members and other teams, facilitate support, and encourage feedback for management. And make sure work progress check-ins are also balanced with mental health check-ins and fun team-building questions to keep your team both happy and productive. Try some of these example check-in questions at your next meeting to maximize insight and better connect with your team.

What are your favorite check-in questions that you would add to this list? Tweet us @reclaimai!

25 Best Productivity Apps: 2023 Review Guide

anthonypelle — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 16:02:01 +0000

Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed with tasks and deadlines? The average workweek is 45.6 hours long because employees are overworked with way too many tasks and meetings than they actually have time for. And there are countless productivity apps to help you save time every week -- but with so many options, the biggest challenge is deciding which one is right for you.

Fortunately, we've researched hundreds of apps to save you the time you don't have in finding your productivity solution -- and broke them down into 25 different categories so you can find the best productivity app to improve your top challenge.

Let's take a look at the top productivity apps in 2023. Say goodbye to procrastination and hello to efficiency with the help of these innovative tools.

25 Best Productivity Apps of 2023

Reclaim.ai- best productivity app
Todoist - best to do list app
Notion - best note-taking app
Superhuman - best email app
Asana - best project management app
Freedom - best distraction-blocking app
Raycast - best workflow automation app
Brain.fm - best for music
Headspace - best mindfulness app
1Password - best password manager
Ocoya - best for social media marketing
Fathom - best for sales meetings
Gong - best for sales
Canva - best for novice graphic designers
Figma - best for UX designers
Workday - best for enterprise HR
Rippling - best for small-mid-sized HR
Github Copilot - best for developers
Mint - best for tracking expenses
IFTTT - best for connecting apps
Hemingway - best for writing
Miro - best for flowcharts
Slack - best communication app
Loom - best for problem-solving
ChatGPT - best AI

1. Reclaim.ai --- best productivity app

Reclaim is an AI calendar productivity app that automatically finds the best time for your tasks, habits, meetings, and breaks in your busy schedule. This is the #1 productivity app across the board because it truly optimizes your most valuable resource -- your time. Reclaim helps you auto-schedule time for all of your tasks and work routines around your existing Google Calendar events, while still keeping your schedule flexible for priority changes if something more important drops on your plate.

And we all know meetings are the biggest offender of our time -- which is why you need Reclaim to both find the best time for them, while also protecting your calendar from being overloaded with meetings. Their Smart 1:1s meeting feature finds the best time across both attendees schedules and auto-reschedules around meeting conflicts or PTO. And if you're booking one-off meetings, the Scheduling Links tool lets you share your max availability over lower-priority events so it doesn't take weeks to get a meeting on the calendar.

Lastly, work-life balance is a must for productivity -- if you're fried out, you're not doing your best work. Reclaim allows you to auto-schedule breaks throughout your workday, create set working hours so meetings aren't scheduled during your personal time, and auto-sync your Slack status to your calendar so coworkers don't interrupt you when you're in a meeting or a focus time session. And if you're a data junkie, you can even track your productivity through advanced analytics on where you spend your time every week.

Reclaim.ai pricing: Free → paid plans start at $8/month

2. Todoist --- best to-do list app

Tired of juggling endless to-do lists and struggling to stay organized? Todoist streamlines your task management with its user-friendly interface, allowing you to effortlessly create, categorize, and prioritize your daily tasks. There are many to-do list apps out there, but Todoist is one of the best. Beyond personal efficiency, Todoist is also a great collaborative tool for teams, with shared tasks, real-time updates, and the ability to sync with tools like Google Calendar, Reclaim.ai, and more to keep projects on track. It's amazing how productive you can be when you're organized!

Todoist pricing: Free → paid plans start at $4/month

3. Notion --- best note-taking app

Notion is one of the best all-in-one productivity tools, merging note-taking, project management, and team collaboration under one digital roof. Its modular approach to organization allows users to create custom workspaces, accommodating everything from personal to team workflows. Notion's intuitive drag-and-drop interface enables the effortless creation of databases, to-do lists, wikis, and more. Whether planning a project, drafting a blog post, or coordinating team tasks, Notion's flexibility scales to meet your requirements. Real-time collaboration enhances teamwork, while its offline capabilities provide uninterrupted access to your critical information.

Notion Pricing: Free → $15/month

4. Superhuman --- best email app

Email is one of those unavoidable things that can eat up a ton of our time -- while causing a great deal of anxiety to boot. Superhuman is an AI-powered email app designed for busy professionals seeking a blazingly fast email experience. With dozens of features like automatically prioritizing emails based on the recipient, follow-up reminders, automated phrases and email copy, along with event scheduling, Superhuman can make you way more productive on your email. Free up all that time spent managing your inbox, so you can focus on your most important work while eliminating your email anxiety and maintaining your responsiveness with your team.

Superhuman Pricing: $30/month → $45/month

5. Asana --- best project management app

Asana is the gold standard when it comes to a project management tool, allowing teams to organize tasks, track progress, and keep everyone on the same page. With a focus on visual task management, Asana enables you to map out all your projects in customizable boards, lists, or timeline views, with deadlines and dependencies all there to see. Not only that, but teams can extend Asana's functionality even further by integrating it with dozens of tools. So if project management is a project in itself -- give Asana a try so you can put that time back towards productivity.

Asana Pricing: Free → $24.99/user/month

6. Freedom --- best distraction-blocking app

Ever find yourself unable to pull away from the digital distractions that disrupt your workflow? Well, Freedom is one of the best distraction-blocking apps that allows you to block websites, mobile apps, and any other digital distractions that prevent you from getting things done. Users can create personalized schedules that temporarily block access to distracting websites, apps, and even the entire internet if need be. Best yet, Freedom works on all your devices, keeping any and all digital distractions at bay so you can stay focused on productive work.

Freedom Pricing: $3.33/month → $8.99/month

7. Raycast --- best workflow automation app

Raycast is a crowd-favorite productivity app that redefines how users interact with their Mac computers, integrating tasks, searches, and workflows into a single command-driven interface. Raycast features workflow automation and a centralized hub for launching apps, executing scripts, and navigating through files right from the menu bar of your Mac. However, Raycast really shines after setting up some of its many extensions, such as Reclaim.ai's. Now, access to calendar events, GitHub repositories, Jira tasks, and more are all accessible with a few quick keystrokes.

Raycast Pricing: Free → $12/user/month

8. Brain.fm --- best for music

Many people like to work with some music in the background. But have you ever found that music can be a source of distraction? Maybe your favorite song comes on, you start mouthing the lyrics, or even start jamming out, and three minutes later you've completely forgotten what you were working on. Brain.fm is a cutting-edge app that harnesses the science of music and neural entrainment to optimize focus, relaxation, and sleep. The platform offers a selection of specialized audio tracks scientifically designed to enhance cognitive states. Whether you're striving for deep productive concentration, a calm mind, or restorative sleep, Brain.fm provides soundscapes that synchronize with your brain's natural rhythms.

Brain.fm Pricing: $6.99/month → $49.99/year

9. Headspace --- best mindfulness app

It's difficult, no matter what tools you're using, to stay productive if your head is full of noise. If your mind is always racing, you obviously can't stay focused. That's why Headspace, an app dedicated to mindfulness and mental well-being, is on our list. With a mission to provide tools for a healthier mind, Headspace guides users through several meditation exercises, breathing techniques, and mindfulness practices. Its inviting interface and soothing narration make it accessible to beginners and experienced practitioners alike.

Headspace Pricing: $12.99/month → $69.99/year

10. 1Password --- best password manager

Passwords are the first line of defense for protecting your digital information and your accounts. Weak or easy-to-guess passwords are often all it takes for nefarious actors to gain access to things they shouldn't. Even so, generating and remembering all these strong passwords can be a pain, and forgetting and resetting your passwords is also one of the least fun (not to mention time-consuming) activities we all struggle with. Luckily, 1Password simplifies the management of countless passwords across various accounts, guaranteeing both security and accessibility. Its encrypted vault securely stores passwords, credit card information, and even secure notes, safeguarding them from breaches and unauthorized access.

1Password Pricing: $2.99/month → $19.95/month

11. Ocoya --- best for social media marketing

Ocoya is a relative newcomer but has proved itself to be an incredible productivity tool for social media marketers. Ocoya merges the capabilities of AI-powered content creation with the efficiency of a comprehensive social media scheduling platform. Think of it as ChatGPT, Canva, and Hootsuite -- wrapped into a single package. By harnessing the power of AI, Ocoya optimizes social media marketing, allowing your marketing team to curate compelling posts tailored to their audience faster than ever before. No more endless hours of inspirational research, drafting, and design -- automate some unbelievable messaging for your social media with Ocoya.

Ocoya Pricing: $15/month → $159/month

12. Fathom --- best for sales meetings

If you're on a sales team, you're probably running dozens of remote sales meetings a week. And Fathom is the tool you need to capture, transcribe, highlight, and summarize these discussions. With the app recording and transcribing meetings in real time, you no longer have to carry the burden of taking notes yourself -- which not only saves you a ton of time after your calls, but also allows you to stay engaged in the discussion without worrying about missing a beat. Beyond transcription, Fathom's intelligent algorithm highlights key points and action items. The cherry on top is Fathom's summarization feature, which distills lengthy discussions into concise, insightful takeaways, great for sales teams.

Fathom Pricing: Free → $19/month

13. Gong --- best for sales

Gong is another great productivity tool for salespeople. By analyzing and transcribing sales calls, Gong unlocks a treasure trove of valuable data, providing a panoramic view of all your customer interactions. This in-depth analysis not only enhances coaching and training opportunities but also reveals patterns, objections, and opportunities that might have otherwise been overlooked. The app's integration with CRMs translates these insights directly into actionable steps, streamlining your sales process.

Gong Pricing: → $1600/user/month

14. Canva --- best for novice designers

Graphic design can be a time-consuming and daunting task for many, even for little things like social media posts or cover photos. But Canva helps transform even a complete novice into a proficient creator with an intuitive design platform and endless library of templates. From social media graphics to marketing collateral and presentations, Canva offers ready-to-use images, fonts, and design elements across any design type you need to create. Its print and digital output options cater to both online and offline needs, making it a great choice for a productivity design tool for all of your creative endeavors.

Canva Pricing: Free → $29.99/month

15. Figma --- best for UX designers

Like Canva, Figma is another impressive digital design tool that can really ramp up your productivity. With its rich set of tools, Figma allows designers to craft user interfaces, prototypes, and even animations with fluidity and precision. And the best part is multiple designers can work simultaneously on the same project, making your design reviews and feedback cycles way more efficient. Its version history feature ensures that no design iteration is ever lost, giving your team the freedom to experiment and iterate fearlessly.

Figma Pricing: Free → $75/user/month

16. Workday --- best for enterprise HR

Workday is a great productivity tool for HR teams that simplifies many critical business functions that keep a company operational. It's a sweeping platform that brings everything together in one place, allowing your HR team to efficiently manage human capital, payroll, benefits, and financial operations. HR professionals, managers, and employees can easily navigate through their tasks, whether it be recruitment and onboarding to performance management and talent development. Workday's real-time analytics also provide valuable insights into workforce trends and financial performance, enabling data-driven decision-making -- without all the manual legwork to pull these stats together.

Workday Pricing: → $45/user/month → $99/user/month

17. Rippling --- best for small-mid-size HR

Rippling is another popular choice for HR and business operations, merging human resources and IT management into a single unified platform. With a focus on efficiency and automation, Rippling empowers organizations to onboard, manage, and support their workforce with unparalleled ease. From employee benefits and payroll to device management and security protocols, Rippling helps you streamline all your administrative processes -- improving productivity across the entire HR and operations team. And its user-friendly interface provides a centralized hub for employees to access their information, benefits, and tasks.

Rippling Pricing: $8/month/user

18. Github Copilot --- best for developers

With all the hype over generative AI tools like ChatGPT (which we'll cover below), one of the most impressive demonstrations is its ability to generate usable code in countless programming languages. Needless to say, this could save developers an enormous amount of time and energy. And Github Copilot aims to do just that with its AI-powered code completion tool. Copilot assists developers in generating code snippets, functions, and even entire blocks of code. Supporting a wide range of programming languages and frameworks, it's a great companion and pair programmer for developers of all backgrounds looking to boost their daily productivity.

Github Copilot Pricing: Free → $21/user/month

19. Mint --- best for tracking expenses

Money makes the world go round, and managing it well can be pretty time-consuming. After all, entire professions, like financial planners and accountants, are centered around just that. However, Mint is a great tool for productively managing your own money, budgets, and financial goals, bringing together bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and investments into a centralized platform. Its real-time syncing and transaction categories provide users with a comprehensive view of their financial picture in no time. And its budgeting features also allow users to set financial goals, track spending, and identify areas for potential savings.

Mint Pricing: Free → $4.99/month

20. IFTTT --- best for connecting apps

Finding yourself spending way too much time bouncing between apps to reference and pull information together? You might not realize it, but it's a huge productivity loss if you're still doing this manually. IFTTT (If This Then That) is a powerful automation tool that allows you to connect and coordinate these online services and devices to maximize your productivity and time. With a simple "if this, then that" logic, IFTTT users can create automated workflows, known as applets, that trigger actions based on predefined conditions. Whether syncing data between apps, automating social media posts, or receiving notifications for specific events, IFTTT unlocks a world of possibilities and can free up a ton of time.

IFTTT Pricing: Free → $5/month

21. Hemingway App --- best for writing

No matter who you are or what you do, chances are, you're probably spending time writing every week. One of the biggest barriers to effective communication is clarity. If your writing isn't clear, concise, and impactful, many people will struggle to read and understand it. But the Hemingway App can help keep all your writing crisp and clean. Named after the writer renowned for his straightforward style, Hemingway offers a virtual editor that highlights complex sentences, unnecessary adverbs, and passive voice constructions. By emphasizing readability, the Hemingway App transforms dense text into approachable content. This is a must-have productivity app for anyone in a marketing writing or content creation role.

Hemingway Pricing: Free → $19.99

22. Miro --- best for flowcharts

In the current debate over remote work vs. return-to-office, the most common objection is the "remote isn't great for collaboration" line. While it's true that brainstorming may be a bit more spontaneous in an office setting, the same can be true of remote work with tools like Miro. With its interactive whiteboard interface, Miro transforms brainstorming sessions, project planning, and design processes into engaging and dynamic experiences. Teams can create, edit, and share visual content through visual flowcharts in real-time, no matter where they're located, and maximize productivity across their team. Miro also comes loaded with a range of customizable templates, allowing teams to tailor their boards to their specific needs, whether it's mapping out user journeys, agile sprints, or architectural diagrams.

Miro Pricing: Free → $16/user/month

23. Slack --- best communication app

Still wasting hours of your day over email? Slack is an awesome alternative for asynchronous communication that can really boost productivity for remote teams. This simple chat platform allows you to communicate in real time with individual team members, small teams, or your entire organization to share information and solve problems without needing endless meetings. Slack connects with hundreds of apps too so you can bring your work directly into your chat rooms, eliminating the need to open new tabs to search or review assets.

Pro tip - make sure to sync your Slack status to your calendar with a tool like Reclaim.ai so you can let coworkers know when you're busy, or even set DND to prevent interruptions during important meetings and focus time sessions. Slack's scheduled send feature also makes it easy to message someone when a topic comes up -- while scheduling it into the future so you don't disturb them when they're busy.

Slack Pricing: Free → $12.50/user/month

24. Loom --- best for problem-solving

Ever had an issue that takes more than a screenshot or a Slack message to explain? Screen-sharing communication tools like Loom allow users to easily create and share video messages, whether explaining a complex concept, providing feedback, giving a presentation, and more. Loom also integrates with many popular communication platforms, so video messages can be easily embedded into emails, chats, and other documents.

Loom Pricing: Free → $12.50/user/month

25. ChatGPT --- best AI

One of the most famous and popular tools on our list, OpenAI has made huge waves upon the release of its artificial intelligence-driven communication platform, ChatGPT. To use the advanced language model, all you have to do is submit a question and ChatGPT will think on the spot to provide thoroughly researched answers in a natural and dynamic conversation. By harnessing a vast array of knowledge and language patterns, ChatGPT can respond to queries, provide explanations, generate text, and even code in countless programming languages. Given its capabilities, ChatGPT can drive productivity boosts in numerous contexts, from content creation and customer support to brainstorming and learning assistance.

ChatGPT Pricing: Free → $20/mo

Boost productivity with the best tools 🚀

Did you know that, on average, only 53.5% of planned tasks get completed each week? Luckily, plenty of productivity tools are out there to help us stay on track and accomplish our goals. From AI calendars like Reclaim to distraction-blocking apps like Freedom, there's a tool out there for everyone. In the end, the key to productivity is finding the productivity software best for you and your workflow. So why not give some of these top productivity tools a try and see how they can help you achieve your goals?

Did we miss anything? What productivity tools do you use? Tweet us @reclaimai to let us know!

2023 Meeting Agenda Guide: 8 Free Templates

anthonypelle — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 15:13:01 +0000

Is your schedule so jam-packed with meetings that it's hard to find time to prepare? With the average professional attending over 25 meetings/week (a 69.7% increase since February 2020), meeting agendas are more important now than ever to make sure you don't waste your coworkers time.

We're all too familiar with the pains of a poorly planned meeting. You know the drill: a vague agenda, wandering discussions, and the feeling that this whole thing should have been an email. Yet, many meetings are necessary to keep our projects and teams moving forward.

In this blog post, we'll cover everything you need to create meeting agendas that are concise, purposeful, and powerful -- plus key tips and meeting agenda templates.

What are the benefits of a meeting agenda?

First, what is a meeting agenda? A meeting agenda is a list of topics participants want to discuss in the meeting.

We all know time is our most valuable resource, and a well-crafted meeting agenda is the best time-saving tool you can use to make sure the time you spend in meetings is actually productive. Here are the top benefits of using a meeting agenda:

Outline the purpose of the meeting so everyone is on the same page.
Ensure attendees know why they need to be there.
Allow attendees to contribute topics and ideas.
Help attendees to prepare before the meeting.
Keep the meeting on track and help your team stay focused.
Track follow-up action items from the meeting.

So if you're tired of walking into meeting rooms only to realize you're not sure why you're there, and finding yourself very underprepared -- it's time to start building agendas before your meetings. This isn't just about avoiding confusion; it's about setting the stage so everyone is on the same page, ready to dive headfirst into meaningful discussions. Your team is a treasure trove of ideas, experiences, and expertise. But without a roadmap, that treasure can remain buried.

And to make sure that creativity and productivity follows through after the meeting, make sure everyone leaves with clear action items from the discussion.

The anatomy of the meeting agenda

A meeting agenda is more than just a list of bullet points; it's a structured roadmap to a successful meeting. While agendas are relatively straightforward, they have some essential components:

1. Purpose of the meeting

The meeting agenda needs to specify the meeting objectives, aim, theme, or purpose. Why are you all gathered here? What's the overarching goal you're striving to achieve? This sets the tone and direction for the entire session.

2. Agenda items & topics

Each agenda item is a distinct, but central, topic of the meeting that is to be discussed by the participants. Attendees should contribute agenda items before the meeting so you can accurately estimate how much time you'll need for each.

3. Talking points

Some meeting agendas also include talking points alongside agenda items. These are a set of concise phrases that frame a proposal, project, or idea. They give structure to the conversation and ensure every vital point is addressed.

4. Supporting documents

Many meetings require context in the form of supporting documents -- such as data reports, documents, or designs. Sharing them in advance allows everyone to review them beforehand and come prepared to discuss -- not waste time reviewing during the meeting.

5. Action items & next steps

These are the follow-up tasks that result from the discussion. While you're in the meeting discussing each topic, you'll want to build this list of action items outlining next steps, who's responsible, and when each item is due. Action items keep the momentum going after the meeting concludes.

6. Key decisions

In order to track the results of the meeting, you should document the key decisions made to be able to look back on progress over a project, and how you ended up making decisions that affect your project and team.

Who's responsible for the agenda?

Meeting agendas are necessary -- that much is clear. So who's responsible for creating the agenda and maintaining it?

The meeting organizer will typically create the meeting agenda, but they should not be the only person contributing to it.

All the participants should be able to add their own topics, questions, comments, or concerns to the agenda -- and be able to contribute to the overall format. Otherwise, meetings run the risk of becoming one-sided lectures where the only speaker is the meeting organizer. This is not a valuable use of everyone's time, not to mention super unproductive.

If all attendees shoulder some weight in creating the agenda, it will help make the meeting a collaborative and productive discussion -- which it needs to be since you're taking time out of people's day to be there.

What makes a good meeting agenda?

Meeting agendas aren't all that mystifying. Their purpose is to give a logical structure and focus so your time together is well spent and productive. After all, meetings are expensive --- a 30-minute meeting with 3 employees costs $700 - $1,600 on average.

Of course, many meetings are necessary. And to make the most out of everyone's time, an agenda is key. Ultimately, a good meeting agenda (regardless of the type of meeting it is) consists of 5 things:

A list of meeting attendees.
The expected length/duration of the meeting.
The purpose of the meeting.
A list of topics, questions, or other items to discuss.
The action items (that will be generated in the meeting).

How to make a meeting agenda

With all that said, how do you actually write a meeting agenda? Here's how:

1. Determine the purpose

Before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), ask yourself: why are we having this meeting? Is it for brainstorming? Decision-making? Project updates? Understanding the purpose helps you define the scope and direction of your agenda.

2. Clearly state the meeting objective

Now that you know the purpose, spell it out. What's the most important thing you want to achieve at the end of the meeting? This objective becomes your North Star, guiding the rest of your agenda.

3. Clarify expectations

Let your meeting participants know what's expected of them. Are they required to prepare any materials or come ready with specific insights? Clear expectations ensure everyone comes prepared and ready to engage.

4. Make a list of topics, questions, or tasks

Time to brainstorm. Jot down the key topics, questions, or tasks that align with your objective. Keep them concise and focused.

5. Provide each item a realistic amount of time

Time is precious, and no one wants a meeting to run over time or, worse yet, skip key topics. Assign a time slot to each agenda item. Be realistic; don't squeeze an hour's worth of discussion into 10 minutes.

6. Include documents to review beforehand

Context is king. If there are reports, data, or documents that need to be discussed, include them in your agenda. Sharing these materials in advance saves precious meeting time for actual discussion.

7. Involve your team

While the meeting organizer will probably take the lead in writing a meeting agenda, they shouldn't be the only one. Involve your team by seeking their input on topics, questions, or tasks that matter to them.

Meeting agenda examples -- 8 templates

What does an effective meeting agenda look like, then? Check out our meeting agenda template to help create yours for your next meeting:

‍

Download our meeting agenda template here.

Here are 8 meeting agenda example templates you can use for your next meeting:

1. Weekly Team Meeting Agenda Template

Weekly Team Marketing Meeting Agenda

Date: 8/28/23
Time: 1:00 - 2:00 PM CT
Location: Zoom
Attendees: Kristi, Tony, Elizabeth, Henry
Supporting documents: Sales Report, Marketing Presentation

Objective: Discuss GTM progress for the week, and upcoming product launch strategy.

Agenda items

Welcome & icebreaker (5 minutes)
Review previous action items (10 minutes)
Team updates & progress (15 minutes)
Discuss challenges & blockers (15 minutes)
New business & announcements (10 minutes)
Closing remarks & feedback (5 minutes)

Action items & next steps

Key decisions

2. Board Meeting Agenda Template

Board Meeting Agenda

Date: 8/29/23
Time: 1:00 - 2:30 PM CT
Location: Zoom
Attendees: Bob, Rick, Karen, Jessica, Dan, Jason
Supporting documents: Financial Report, Proposed Initiatives

Objective: Review Q4 budget, investment strategy, product updates, and new business opportunities.

Agenda items

Call to order & welcome (5 minutes)
Approval of previous minutes (10 minutes)
Financial report & budget update (15 minutes)
Presentation of major initiatives/decisions (20 minutes)
Committee reports (10 minutes)
Strategic discussions (15 minutes)
Other business & announcements (10 minutes)
Next steps & adjournment (5 minutes)

Action items & next steps

Key decisions

3. Daily Sync Meeting Agenda Template

Daily Sync Meeting Agenda

Date: 8/30/23
Time: 9:00 - 9:30 AM CT
Location: Zoom
Attendees: Kristi, Tony, Elizabeth
Supporting documents: Weekly goals list

Objective: Cover daily priorities, provide updates on progress, and address any roadblocks.

Agenda items

Quick updates on yesterday's tasks (5 minutes)
Today's priorities and schedule (5 minutes)
Discussion of any blockers (10 minutes)
Team coordination & assistance needed (5 minutes)
Quick round of feedback/closing (5 minutes)

Action items & next steps

Key decisions

4. One-on-One Meeting Agenda Template

One-on-One Meeting Agenda

Date: 8/28/23
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 PM CT
Location: Zoom
Attendees: Kristi, Tony
Supporting documents: Tony's Performance Metrics, Development Plan

Objective: Discuss goals, concerns, and progress on current projects.

Agenda items

Check-in & rapport building (5 minutes)
Employee's updates & achievements (10 minutes)
Discussion of challenges & roadblocks (15 minutes)
Manager's feedback & guidance (15 minutes)
Action items & commitments (10 minutes)
Closing remarks & follow-up (5 minutes)

Action items & next steps

Key decisions

5. All-Hands Meeting Agenda Template

All-Hands Meeting Agenda

Date: 8/28/23
Time: 3:00 - 4:30 PM CT
Location: Zoom
Attendees: All employees
Supporting documents: Company Newsletter, All-Hands Presentation

Objective: Review progress made this quarter, and address major company updates.

Agenda items

Welcome & introduction (5 minutes)
Company news & updates (15 minutes)
Department/team highlights (20 minutes)
Special presentation (20 minutes)
Q&A session (15 minutes)
Recognitions & shout-outs (10 minutes)
Closing remarks & next steps (5 minutes)

Action items & next steps

Key decisions

6. Project Kickoff Meeting Agenda Template

Project Kickoff Meeting Agenda

Date: 8/28/23
Time: 10:00 - 11:30 AM CT
Location: Zoom
Attendees: Jeff, Katie, Chris, Sandy, Patrick, Stewart
Supporting documents: Project Scope, Data Analysis

Objective: Introduce project milestones, timeline, goals, and expectations, review project scope and deliverables, and establish communication and collaboration processes.

Agenda items

Welcome & introduction (10 minutes)
Overview of the project goals & objectives (15 minutes)
Presentation of project scope, timeline, & milestones (20 minutes)
Roles & responsibilities of team members (10 minutes)
Communication plan and tools (10 minutes)
Risk assessment & mitigation strategies (10 minutes)
Questions, clarifications, & next steps (10 minutes)
Closing remarks & enthusiasm for the project (5 minutes)

Action items & next steps

Key decisions

7. Sales Team Weekly Kickoff Agenda Template

Sales Team Weekly Kickoff Meeting Agenda

Date: 8/28/23
Time: 1:00 - 2:00 PM CT
Location: Zoom
Attendees: Jeff, Stewart, Kristi, Henry
Supporting documents: Sales Pipeline, CRM, Presentation

Objective: Review sales progress and new opportunities.

Agenda items

Review of previous week's sales performance (10 minutes)
Sharing success stories & challenges (15 minutes)
Presentation of the week's goals & targets (5 minutes)
Discussion of upcoming promotions & strategies (15 minutes)
Collaborative problem-solving session (10 minutes)
Closing remarks & motivation (5 minutes)

Action items & next steps

Key decisions

8. Retrospective Meeting Agenda Template

Retrospective Meeting Agenda

Date: 8/28/23
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 PM CT
Location: Zoom
Attendees: Product launch team
Supporting documents:

Objective: Reflect on the team's performance, identify areas for improvement, and develop action plans for future projects.

Agenda items

Opening & setting the retrospective's purpose (5 minutes)
Recap of the previous sprint/project cycle (5 minutes)
Discussion of what went well (10 minutes)
Identification of areas for improvement (10 minutes)
Brainstorming & prioritizing actionable solutions (15 minutes)
Selection of improvement actions & assignment (10 minutes)
Closing thoughts & commitment to change (5 minutes)

Action items & next steps

Key decisions

📅 Book your team meetings with Reclaim.ai

Now that we've covered the ins-and-outs of meeting agendas -- let's walk through the best way to actually schedule these meetings on your calendar.

You and your team can increase your available time slots by 524% using Reclaim.ai's Scheduling Links. After all, 33.6% of professionals manually clear out events to create more availability for their Scheduling Links. However, Reclaim can align meetings with your work and personal commitments.

You can make yourself available for urgent meetings with high-priority scheduling links, be flexible with adjustable meeting durations, coordinate easily with team scheduling links, and even create custom links for unique meetings.

And if you're still scheduling your one-on-one meetings through recurring meetings on your calendar -- check out Smart 1:1 Meetings at Reclaim. You can automatically find the best time for your one-on-ones every week across both attendees schedules, and automatically reschedule around meeting conflicts and PTO.

Top 9 Shared Calendar Apps — Best of 2023

anthonypelle — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 14:54:58 +0000

Is organizing and coordinating your schedule a complicated chore? Juggling meeting times with coworkers across your work calendar, while trying to defend your personal commitments --- you need a reliable tool to share calendars to see your actual availability.

Let's take a look at the top shared calendar apps in 2023 so you can get your scheduling visibility under control.

What's a calendar sharing app?

A shared calendar app is a digital tool that allows users to create, manage, and share calendars with others. They allow busy professionals to easily coordinate meetings across teams, defend time for productive work, and protect time for events across all of their calendar.

Why do you need a calendar sharing app? Because today's workweek is way too busy for a traditional calendar to handle our complication availability:

So as we can see, there's a lot going on with our calendars, and the lack of balance between our personal and professional lives are taking a serious toll on our mental health. Instead of taking a painful hit every time a scheduling conflict comes up, resulting in forced overtime and personal sacrifices, let's look into the best solutions out there to get your calendars under control. Here are the 9 best shared calendar apps to help you keep your schedule organized and synced with co-workers, friends, family, and more in 2023.

1. Reclaim.ai --- best for team calendar sharing

Reclaim is an AI calendar app for Google Calendar that helps you automatically sync all of your schedules. While many calendar sharing apps only allow you to see your synced events, Reclaim actually blocks your availability across both calendars so your coworkers (and family) can see when you're busy. The best part of Reclaim is that it also offers privacy controls so you can determine how you want shared events to look to people on your calendar --- you can set them to just show as "busy" events for all, anonymous "personal commitments", or show full event details.

This is the perfect tool for companies who want to improve work-life balance for employees, contractors juggling multiple calendars, or individuals who just want to protect personal events on their work calendars.

Additionally, Reclaim is much more than a calendar sharing app. This tool helps you automatically find the best time for your meetings, tasks, habits, and breaks across your existing schedule, with smart AI scheduling to automatically prioritize and reschedule smart events around what matters most to you.

Key features

Calendar Sync: Auto-sync unlimited calendars (and your availability) to prevent scheduling conflicts.
Connected Calendars: Schedule your smart calendar events (Habits, Tasks, Smart 1:1s, and Scheduling Links) around your availability of a Connected Calendar --- without syncing events to your work calendar.
Automatic color-coding: Automatically color-code and categorizes events so you can visually track how you'll be spending time across meeting types, focus work, travel, and personal commitments.
Tasks: Auto-schedule your tasks in Google Calendar, by priority, before your due dates (while keeping your schedule flexible for changes).
Habits: Auto-schedule your recurring routines at the best time (within a preferred window) around your existing events (hundreds of templates available).
Smart 1:1 Meetings: Find the best time for your one-on-one meetings across both attendees' calendars.
Scheduling Links: Share your availability for meetings with high-priority and flexible duration settings.
Buffer Time: Auto-schedule breaks and travel time around your calendar events.
Slack Status Sync: Auto-sync your Slack status to your calendar to prevent interruptions and context switching.
No-Meeting Days: Defend time for your team to get stuff done every week.
Stats: Analyze how much time you spend in meetings vs. tasks vs. habits vs. free time.
Integrations: ClickUp, Asana, Jira, Todoist, Linear, Google Tasks, Zoom, and Slack

Limitations

Currently only supports Google Calendar (Outlook coming soon).

Reclaim.ai pricing

Free (includes 1 shared calendar)
Paid plans start at $8/month (unlimited shared calendars)

2. Cozi --- best for family sharing

If you're looking for a shared calendar app tailored for family life, Cozi is the app for you. Cozi stands out as an all-in-one family organizer that simplifies the coordination of the whole family's schedules and activities. It allows you to view and edit calendars together, keeping everyone up-to-date and informed about family events, school activities, and more. You can color-code each member's calendar for easy identification, making it easy to keep track of everyone.

Beyond that, Cozi also includes additional features, like a shared to-do list, shopping list, and recipe box.

Key features

Family-centered design: Interface is designed with families in mind, making it easy to organize and share schedules seamlessly.
Shared to-do lists: Collaborate on household tasks and responsibilities with a shared to-do list.
Shopping lists: Keep track of grocery needs and other shopping items with a shared shopping list accessible to all family members.
Recipe box: Store and share favorite family recipes within the app, making it a digital cookbook for the entire household.
Notifications & reminders: Set reminders for important events, appointments, or tasks.
Birthday tracker: Automatically imports birthdays from your contacts and displays them on the calendar, helping you plan ahead for special occasions.

Limitations

Lacking features common in similar apps: No in-app messaging, expense tracking, or other features usually found with co-parenting apps.
Ads in the free version: Includes in-app ads unless you pay for a premium account.

Cozi pricing

Free (unlimited shared calendars)
Paid plans start at $29.99/year (unlimited shared calendars --- ad-free)

3. TimeTree --- best for scheduling group activities

TimeTree is a great calendar-sharing app for coordinating events and schedules with multiple people, making it ideal for families, friends, teams, and organizations. Best known for its shared calendar, TimeTree allows multiple users to contribute, edit, and view events all in one place.

The app also supports chat so users can communicate directly within the calendar. Discussing event details, sharing important updates, coordinating schedules, and even voting on potential dates is seamless and convenient with TimeTree.

Key features

Shared calendar for groups: Collaborate with family, friends, or colleagues in real-time, creating a centralized hub for all group activities and events.
Event reminders: All members receive reminders for upcoming events, so no one forgets important gatherings or appointments.
Discussion & chat features: Each calendar includes a chat room where users discuss event details and make decisions on potential dates or activities.
Integration with external calendars: Syncs with existing calendar apps like Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook.
Supports multiple calendars: Users can set up several calendars on TimeTree for different groups or personal use.

Limitations

Primarily designed for mobile: TimeTree's web version is rather difficult to use compared to the mobile version, with some features only usable on mobile.
Learning curve: New users may need time to get accustomed to the app's full range of features and collaboration options.

TimeTree pricing

Free (includes 20 shared calendars)
Paid plans start at $4.49/month (includes 20 shared calendars --- ad-free)

4. Asana --- best for project visualization scheduling

Asana is well-known as a project management app. Still, it also has some calendar-sharing functionality with task tracking and event organization for teams. Asana's calendar view offers a visual representation of tasks and deadlines, allowing users to view project timelines and milestones in a clear, intuitive format. You can assign due dates to tasks, set priorities, and even create dependencies between tasks.

However, while Asana can get events on the calendar, it's limited once it does. After a task is added to the calendar, it won't automatically reschedule if priority levels or deadlines change. It also can end up making your schedule jam-packed with tasks if you're managing a big to-do list, making it very difficult to find time for a new meeting. Asana's own Google Calendar sync is also just one-way, so it doesn't mark tasks as done bi-directionally. Fortunately, Asana integrates with Reclaim.ai, so you can automatically schedule your tasks in Google Calendar as smart events while keeping your schedule flexible for changes and set up a two-way sync between platforms.

Key features

Shared calendars: View your team's work in one online calendar to plan, manage, and visualize upcoming work.
Scheduling rules: Automatically add events to the team calendar and create Google Calendar meetings when tasks reach a specific stage.
Task management: Create and manage all of your tasks, and organize them in projects to easily collaborate with your team.
Visual project timeline: The calendar view provides a bird's-eye view of project schedules and helps understand task dependencies and critical deadlines.
Portfolios: Manage larger strategic initiatives and monitor important projects as a list or on a timeline in a single place.
Collaborative teamwork: Facilitates team collaboration, allowing members to discuss tasks, share files, and track project progress together.
Notifications & reminders: Users receive notifications and reminders for upcoming tasks and deadlines.
Cross-platform compatibility: Accessible via desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.

Limitations

One calendar/project: Asana's shared calendar only allows you to set up one calendar per project, so you end up having to manage multiple calendars across all the projects you're working on.
Geared towards work & project management: Asana is primarily designed for work-life and team projects. So, its calendar-sharing features aren't well suited for personal life events.

Asana pricing

Free (includes unlimited projects/calendars)
Paid plans start at $10.99/month (includes unlimited projects/calendars, rules, & timeline)

5. Fantastical --- best for natural language input (Apple users)

Fantastical is one of the most user-friendly calendar-sharing apps on our list. However, the app's key strength is its ability to effortlessly turn plain English phrases into scheduled events. With Fantastical, simply type or speak your event details in plain language, and the app intelligently converts it into a scheduled event with the appropriate date, time, and location.

Beyond its natural language input, Fantastical offers powerful features, such as event and task management, event invitations, and support for multiple time zones.

Pros & key features:

Shared calendars: Share calendars with yourself or across a group to see all the events for each person on one screen.
Natural language event entry: Transform plain language into scheduled events to simplify event creation.
Intuitive user interface: The visually appealing design and multiple calendar views offer a smooth and customizable scheduling experience.
Event invitations: Invite others to events directly from the app.

Limitations

Premium necessary for most features: To access certain features available for free on other apps, a premium subscription is required.
Desktop version is limited: Fantastical only includes a desktop version for MacOS.

Fantastical pricing

Free (includes 1 calendar set)
Paid plans start at $4.75/month (unlimited calendar sets)

6. Taskworld --- best for combining task management and calendar sharing

Taskworld is a calendar-sharing app that combines task management, project tracking, and calendar integration in one platform. With Taskworld, you and your team can easily collaborate, set timelines, share files, gain visual insights, and work on tasks across different departments at the same time. The calendar view gives users a clear and organized overview of their tasks, deadlines, and project milestones and allows users to create events directly from tasks.

However, while Taskworld's shared calendar may make it easy to plan your projects, it doesn't have any automatic rescheduling features. So, if things come up, you'd need to reschedule your team's tasks manually.

Key features

Shared calendars: View the whole team's tasks in single shared calendar*.*
Unified task & calendar management: Combining task management and calendar integration creates a holistic platform for organizing projects and events.
Collaborative workspace: Collaborative features, including task assignments, comments, chat features, and file sharing, are helpful for teams and collaborative work.
Multiple views: Includes various views, such as Calendar, Kanban, and Gnatt timelines, to better sort and understand your progress.
Integrated chat: Easily connect with colleagues, your team, or the entire organization, and share files instantly or create video meetings with a simple click.

Limitations

No automatic rescheduling: Taskworld does not have any smart scheduling or automatic rescheduling features. While it does automatically change the due dates of dependencies, you still need to manually reschedule tasks if need be.
Relatively expensive: While Taskworld offers a free version with basic capabilities, users may need a subscription to access advanced project management features.

Taskworld pricing

Free (unlimited projects/calendars)
Paid plans start at $8/month (unlimited projects/calendars)

7. Outlook --- best for Microsoft users

Microsoft Outlook is a staple in the business world, and its shared calendar makes it a top contender among the best calendar apps. The calendar syncs with your email, contacts, and other Microsoft services, creating a unified platform to manage your time and communication. One of the standout features of Outlook is the ability to create appointments and events directly from emails with a simple click.

But Microsoft Outlook suffers from some serious limitations when it comes to calendar sharing, similar to the other big traditional calendar platforms. Sharing your personal calendar with your work calendar, by default, doesn't allow your coworkers to see when you're busy with a personal event. However, making all events visible (which would show you're busy) will let your coworkers see all private details like doctor's appointments or job interviews.

Key features

Calendar sharing: Add other users to your viewing permissions to share details of your calendar or create specific calendars to share with your team.
Email integration: Calendar integrates smoothly with your email, contacts, and other Microsoft services.
Quick event creation: Turn emails into appointments with a single click.
Multiple calendar views: Users can choose from various calendar views, tailoring the display to their preference and making it easy to manage schedules.
View group schedules: Users can create calendars for groups or specific resources, such as departments or conference rooms.
Automatic calendar updates: Add events such as flight, hotel, and car rental reservations to the calendar automatically.

Limitations

Doesn't actually block your availability: Outlook, by default, doesn't allow your coworkers to see when you're busy with a personal event through their shared calendars.
Privacy issues: However, you can make all shared events between your personal and work calendars visible to your coworkers, but then they'll be able to see the private details of your personal events.
Lack of customization: Outlook lets you customize some elements by syncing with other Microsoft services, but not so much for other third-party apps, and it lacks the overall customization options found in other platforms.

Outlook pricing

Free (unlimited shared calendars)
Paid plans start at $69.99/year (unlimited shared calendars)

8. Apple Calendar --- best for Apple users

Apple Calendar, formerly known as iCal, is the calendar app specifically designed for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS devices. If you're a heavy user of Apple products and need your calendar to sync across each very easily, then Apple Calendar may be the best choice for you.

Still, Apple Calendar suffers from the same limitations as Outlook and Google Calendar. That is, your coworkers can't see when you're busy with a personal event by default, and sharing those personal events will make the private details available for all to see. However, this is less severe of a limitation for Apple Calendar as companies don't use Apple Calendar as a company service. So the issue of colleagues not seeing when you're busy with other events is less of a problem than with other shared calendars like Google Calendar or Outlook.

Key features:

Shared calendars: Collaborate with other iCloud users by sharing specific calendars for group events, team projects, or family gatherings.
Integrates across Apple ecosystem: Apple Calendar syncs effortlessly across all Apple devices.
Event invitations via email: Invite non-iCloud users to your events with email invitations, enhancing inclusivity and accessibility.
Read-only calendars: Share a calendar without allowing viewers to change anything on it.
Create events with Siri: Create and modify events and appointments using Apple's virtual assistant Siri.

Limitations

Limited integration with non-Apple devices: While Apple Calendar excels within the Apple ecosystem, its synchronization with non-Apple devices may require additional steps and third-party apps.
Difficulty showing your availability: Apple Calendar, by default, doesn't allow your coworkers to see when you're busy with a shared personal event.
Privacy issues: When you share events from your personal and work calendars, your coworkers can see all your private event details.

Apple Calendar pricing

Free with iCloud account (unlimited shared calendars
Paid plans starting at $0.99/month (unlimited shared calendars)

9. Google Calendar --- best for view only (not merging) for Google users

Google Calendar, a household name, and one of the best known shared calendar apps, actually ranks pretty low on our list. While Google Calendar allows you to share calendars through its basic feature, it has some pretty big limitations. Sharing a Google Calendar makes it difficult to maintain your privacy between your work and personal calendars.This is because your personal events will be visible to everyone if you share them with your work calendar. That, and you can only share with yourself so coworkers can't see shared calendar events.

Key features

Shared calendars: Share calendars across teams, work, and personal to coordinate your individual scheduling.
Cross-platform syncing: Syncs across various platforms, including desktop, mobile, and tablet, ensuring you stay updated on the go.
Event reminders: Set customizable reminders that can be sent via email or as push notifications so you don't miss an event.
Automatic calendar updates: Add events such as flight, hotel, and car rental reservations to the calendar automatically.
Gmail integration: Add events from Gmail to easily automatically populate your calendar.
Time zone support: Adjusts event timings according to different time zones for frequent travelers or remote teams, reducing scheduling headaches.

Limitations

Privacy issues: When you share events from your personal and professional calendars, all events from your personal calendar will be visible to others on your professional calendar.
Doesn't prevent overbooking: Personal events won't show when using Google's Find a Time feature, so you're still at risk of overscheduling.

Google Calendar pricing

Free (with a Google account)
Paid plans start at $6/month

Take control of your team's unwieldy calendar 📅

Calendar sharing has become indispensable for modern-day scheduling and organization. From coordinating family events to managing work projects and personal commitments, it's not unusual for our calendars to become unwieldy, especially when trying to fit other people into the mix. But with features like collaborative sharing, intelligent event suggestions, and seamless synchronization, these calendar-sharing apps can help us stay organized and prevent anything important from slipping through the cracks.

Did we miss anything? What calendar-sharing apps do you use? Tweet us @reclaimai to let us know!

Context Switching Is Destroying Your Workday: Here's How to Fix It

anthonypelle — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 15:35:52 +0000

As a modern worker, you split your attention across different tasks all day long --- answering emails, checking Slack, reviewing updates, trying to find time to start that task your boss needs done. This moving from disparate task to task is called context switching. And while switching tasks is necessary, the number of times you shift context may be wrecking your productivity.

So since you can't avoid context switching altogether, you can reduce its impact on your productivity by reducing harmful distractions and prioritizing your most important tasks.

What is context switching?

‍Context switching is our tendency to shift from one unrelated task to another. According to the American Psychological Association, switching refers to the change in our "mental control settings" when we move to a new task.

Our ability to switch tasks between multiple processes is remarkable --- this cognitive flexibility is how we can easily adapt our behavior to our environment, an essential function of daily life. Context switching is what allows us to drive 65 mph on a highway before exiting on a local street where we must drive 25.

The term context switching was originally used in computing to describe CPU switching from one state of a process to another. Computers struggled when they switched tasks, incurring a context switch cost. Today, we use multitasking and context switching to speak about human behaviors. And this same switching penalty applies to us -- our context switching cost may be longer completion times, additional errors, or dips in our productivity.

10 ways to combat context switching

So how do we reduce context switching? You've got to be super intentional about planning and protecting productive time for your tasks, while limiting interruptions throughout your workweek.

1. Identify your context switches: What's causing you to switch between tasks and projects throughout the day -- emails, ad-hoc meetings, or Slack messages? Identify both your top passive and active switches so you can start defending yourself from them throughout the workday.

2. Set your priorities: If you're wondering where to get started, and waste time every day sifting through your to-do list, you need to prioritize your tasks. Instead of context switching through multiple 'important' tasks at once, use an approach like the Eisenhower Matrix to help determine which tasks are most important vs. urgent.

3. Block time for your tasks: Once you know which tasks are most important, schedule time to get them done. Time blocking your tasks will help you defend the time you need for work, and protect that time from interruptions from incoming schedulers.

4. Set aside time to check Slack & email: Instead of jumping tabs every 5 minutes to check your email and Slack, set aside short 15-minute blocks every morning, midday, and afternoon to catch up on these communications to limit unnecessary context switching.

5. Set DND in Slack: Prevent interruptions over Slack by automatically syncing your Slack status to your calendar so coworkers can see when you're busy in a meeting, task session, or personal commitment. You can even set do not disturb for certain events to completely block out distractions.

6. Batch similar tasks together: If you have a ton of tasks to do for the same project, try task batching them together to complete in a single working session. This will help you stay focused on the single project, work through task dependencies, and prevent context switching while you work.

7. Try day theming: If you're managing multiple big projects, try day theming to dedicate specific days to specific projects and tasks. This can help stay focused throughout the entire day, and avoid the temptation to task-switch to an unrelated project.

8. Schedule breaks into your workday: Instead of taking ad-hoc breaks throughout the day, schedule yourself brief breaks after task sessions and meetings. This will give you the time you need for a bio break, coffee refill, or personal call, with a deadline you can stick to so these necessary interruptions can all be grouped together in-between work sessions, not during.

9. Integrations: If you're spending a ton of time bouncing between apps to find all the information you need for your task work, you're opening yourself up to hundreds of context switching opportunities. Stay on task and improve your efficiency by integrating your key apps together so you're not constantly moving from one tool to the next.

10. No-meeting days: Hard to get into a task when you're constantly preparing for your next meeting? Create a no-meeting day for your team so you can reduce meeting-related context switching, and defend more focus time on your calendar.

Get your distractions under control

Even though you're juggling numerous tasks at work, context switching isn't the way to dominate your task list. While it's not totally unavoidable, it can negatively affect your productivity by disrupting your focus and increasing your stress. But by prioritizing your most important work, blocking time for tasks, and limiting interruptions, you can significantly cut the costs of context-switching.

Did we miss anything? How do you manage context switching throughout your week? Tweet us @reclaimai to let us know!

What are Self-Managed Teams? Top Benefits vs. Disadvantages

anthonypelle — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 21:37:11 +0000

Want to inspire creativity and innovation across your organization? Many companies are shifting leadership up by experimenting with new styles of management -- with fewer managers in the picture.

And with 70% of employees actively disengaged -- it's time to rethink those traditional structures that are fueling low productivity, high employee turnover, and missed opportunities for growth.

So how are companies empowering and motivating employees to become their best, most-productive selves? They're building self-managed teams that autonomously manage themselves. Imagine a group where each member is a proactive team leader, entrusted to make decisions to support the organization's goals. Freed from micromanagement under a traditional boss, these agile teams become innovative powerhouses where creativity flourishes, and ideas flow freely every day.

Wondering how this could possibly work? Learn everything you need to know about self-managed teams, including what they are, the pros and cons, and how you can start building them in your organization.

What are self-managing teams?

A self-managed team is a team of employees who plan and execute their work together, without a supervising manager. There is no "boss" in charge of these teams; the team collectively and autonomously acts as its own boss. Team members take ownership of their tasks, collaborate, and jointly plan their objectives as a team.

If the traditional management structure is like a four-way intersection with a traffic cop at the helm, self-managing teams would be more like a roundabout --- vehicles navigate based on a set of shared rules, with each driver contributing to the smooth flow of traffic. In a self-managing team, the power to make decisions is distributed among the entire team to keep the 'flow' of work going. They collaborate, share insights, and navigate their tasks collaboratively, leading to a more agile and efficient system.

So are self-managed teams the same thing as "self-governing teams," "self-directed teams," "flat hierarchical teams," and "self-organizing teams"? While sometimes used synonymously, they're not quite the same. The Hackman Authority Matrix below breaks down the differences between these management types.

Hackman Authority Matrix

But despite their name, self-managed teams do not necessarily engage in all management tasks. Upper management is still responsible for setting the overall direction, and designing the team and organizational context. But in self-managed teams, monitoring, managing, and executing work is all handled by the employees themselves.

How do self-managed teams stay on track without a supervisor? Self-management often enables teams to overperform by building intrinsic motivation in every team member. That is, "the incentive we feel to complete a task simply because we find it interesting or enjoyable." So while traditional management is built on extrinsic motivation (employees complete tasks for external rewards) -- intrinsic motivation is actually 3x more impactful on employee engagement.

The concept of self-management might seem bold, or even a bit crazy, to some. But it's not a fleeting trend. These days, around 80% of Fortune 1000 companies use some sort of self-managed teams within the organization. So what do you say? Are you ready to build self-managed teams at your organization?

Benefits of self-managed teams

1. Improve productivity & efficiency

As we mentioned, in traditional hierarchical structures, employees may often find themselves driven more by external rewards or fear of punishment than intrinsic motivation around their work. However, this inherent desire to excel, achieve, and contribute meaningfully can be a much more powerful motivator. In fact, intrinsically motivated employees are 32% more committed to their job*,* have 46% higher job satisfaction, and perform 16% better overall.

Take SEO Travel, for example -- they allow employees across their entire organization to set their own hours, sign off on their own annual leave, and self-manage all of their work. While employees have 'core roles' at SEO Travel, they can create or contribute to other broader business projects called 'Dream Circles' for employees to freely engage where they're passionate.

As Tom McLoughlin, the company's founder, explains: "It leaves no room for unproductive people to hide, allows the best ideas to rise to the top, enables leaders to lead, and, through flexibility, enables people to find a position in the company where they can make the biggest difference."

2. Increase agility & flexibility

Tired of teams getting bogged down by bureaucracy? Since a self-managed work team is untethered, they can quickly adapt to challenges and opportunities way faster than a traditional team often can. Large companies (like Google, for example) are notorious for their painfully slow decision-making process. Of course, Google has a massively complex infrastructure to manage. But speed matters in business, sometimes more than anything.

So what if you could streamline the decision-making process with your self-managed team members executing on decisions at the front lines? Their firsthand knowledge and expertise puts them in the perfect position to make those quick decisions, while eliminating bottlenecks, to drive efficient outcomes.

As Derrick Hathaway, Sales Director at VEM Medical, stated, "Our marketing team, comprising talented professionals with diverse skill sets, has the freedom to experiment with creative campaigns tailored to specific customer segments. This shared responsibility has significantly increased productivity and reduced our average project completion time by 15%, enabling us to swiftly adapt to market demands."

3. Promote creativity & innovation

Want your team members to explore new ideas, take risks, and think outside the box? Successful self-managed teams cultivate an atmosphere where creativity is both nurtured and celebrated. They can experiment and innovate without fearing judgment or reprimand, propelling their organizations forward with fresh and groundbreaking solutions.

That's not to say that traditional teams can't do this too. It's just that a successful self-managed team has no choice -- considering no one else is there to do it for them. As the old proverb goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention."

A self-managed team can also bring out more diversity within the group -- across skills, experiences, and backgrounds -- allowing employees to feel more comfortable sharing perspectives in their team. This rich tapestry of ideas is the perfect setup for teams to tackle challenging problems from multiple angles and find new innovative solutions that may otherwise not have been discovered.

Nathan Clark of Gate2AI shared with us their self-managed teams "promotes a collaborative and inventive culture in which employees are encouraged to take initiative, solve challenges, and drive project success."

4. Create happier & more engaged employees

Having trouble getting employees engaged at work? Unlike a traditional hierarchical structure, self-management nurtures a greater sense of ownership and fulfillment among team members. When individuals have a say in how they work (and contribute to the team's success), both job satisfaction and engagement goes up, which is going to help your organization's long-term success. 74% of employees are more effective at their jobs when they feel heard -- and there's really no better way to feel heard than through self-management.

And with the power to manage their own work plan, self-managing teams experience a much healthier work-life balance. While that's not to say your team will never work late again -- the self-management flexibility allows employees to better balance work commitments with personal needs, reducing burnout and improving their overall well-being. Considering 52.2% of burnout comes from work-life balance issues, self-management could be an antidote to your organizations chronic work-related stress.

Finally, talented employees seek more than just a paycheck -- they yearn for a sense of purpose and fulfillment in their work. In fact, 83% of employees report "finding meaning in day-to-day work" is a top priority. Self-managing teams offer precisely that by allowing team members to actively contribute to the organization's success and see the direct impact of their efforts.

Disadvantages of self-managed teams

1. Managing conflict & decision-making

One of the most significant challenges of a self-directed team is actually the whole self-direction thing. Without a traditional manager to have the final say, some self-managed teams can find themselves bogged down by the decision-making process, especially in cases of conflict or strong opinions.

After all, conflict is a natural part of any team dynamic, but can become more complex as power and decision-making are distributed throughout a self-managed team. As Nikita Sherbina, founder and CEO of Aiscreen.io, said, "While the concept sounds promising, I found [self-managing teams] challenging due to the lack of clear direction and decision-making. Although it fostered creativity, it often led to inefficiencies and confusion."

2. Resistance to change

When introducing self-managing teams to your organization, resistance to change is inevitable -- especially to those accustomed to traditional hierarchical structures.

The fact is that not everyone wants to work in a self-managed team. This dynamic ultimately requires a lot of self-motivation and willingness for self-directed work. Self-management naturally comes with a lot of ambiguity, and some employees may simply want to receive their responsibilities from a manager, do their jobs, and go home. And if your organization has a robust set of middle managers, they may not be happy about potential changes to their roles.

So if you're implementing self-managed teams at an organization for the first time, you may encounter some resistance to the idea. Make sure to get your employees thoughts before implementing, provide training around the transition, or consider creating self-managed teams for new groups you want to form through new hires.

3. Balancing autonomy & accountability

Some employees are cut out for self-managed teams, and some aren't. One of the biggest determining factors is how well they can balance autonomy and accountability around their work. Too much autonomy can lead to disjointed efforts and misaligned goals, too little may stifle creativity and demotivate team members.

Self-managed teams need to balance the independence of each member with the overall accountability of the group. It's all too easy to imagine a "you're not the boss of me" scenario without a supervising manager in place. If team performance is slipping, the entire group is responsible for correcting it. And for some, it may feel much easier to manage others than actually managing themselves -- also known as the Paradox of Self-Leadership.

Some organizations strike this balance with a liaison between the self-managed team and the company's senior leadership team. For example, Dmytro Zaichenko of Coupler.io tells us about his self-managed marketing team. "In the team, we have specialists of different roles: PPC, content, SEO, etc. and a senior marketer who does a lot of hands-on tasks and communicates strategic steps with the product team. Each specialist is responsible for their field, including creating a scope of work and prioritizing tasks based on strategic product and marketing needs. The product team and senior marketer trust each specialist's expertise, and all the suggestions or priorities are discussed, not just delegated from top to bottom."

Let your team take the reins through self-management 🔄

Self-managing teams are more than just a trendy concept -- they're a powerful force reshaping the future of work. We've seen how this team structure can boost decision-making, fuel employee engagement, and adapt to changes with remarkable agility. Embracing this paradigm shift requires a leap of faith from leaders who must let go of some control and trust their team members' expertise to build self-managed teams. Yet, the rewards are immense -- a workforce that feels valued, empowered, and motivated to bring their A-game.

Did we miss anything? How do self-managing teams operate in your organization? Tweet us @reclaimai to let us know!

Best Planner Apps: Top 11 Daily Planning Tools in 2023

anthonypelle — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 15:58:41 +0000

Dwight Eisenhower once said "plans are useless; planning is indispensable." As both a U.S. president and top WWII military commander, Eisenhower had some complicated things to plan.

But for many of us, planning is usually scattered across to-do lists, notepads, email, Slack, and calendars. Spending just 10-12 minutes planning your day can actually save you 2 hours/day in decision paralysis and context switching. In fact, the average employee wastes 1.96 hours/day in unproductive work -- almost 25% of their entire workweek.

So whether you're strategically deploying troops across Europe or trying to get through all your weekly work tasks, planning really boils down to two things:

What do you want to get done?
How much time do you actually have available to do it?

A daily planner app is a digital tool to help you automate the perfect plan for each day. Planner apps help you boost productivity by organizing your tasks, arranging your calendar schedule, and prioritizing your most important work. Here are the 12 best planner apps to help you automate your daily planning in 2023.

11 best planner apps in 2023

Reclaim.ai - for team productivity
Todoist - for list planners
Trello - for visual planners
Google Tasks - for Google user planners
Things 3 - for Apple user planners
ClickUp - for real-time reporting
Habitica - for gamification fans
Notion - for note-takers
Asana - for busy teams
TickTick - for feature-hungry users
TeuxDeux - for minimalists

1. Reclaim.ai - for team productivity

Reclaim is an AI calendar planner app that automatically finds the best time for your tasks, habits, meetings, and breaks in your busy schedule. All you have to do is connect your Google Calendar and sync your task list to automatically block all of your to-do's in your calendar. The best part is that it keeps your schedule flexible for incoming events, conflicts, and priority changes. So if a new high-priority task drops on your plate, Reclaim automatically reschedules your task events around what's most urgent to you.

And that's just the start! Outside of tasks, you can automatically schedule your one-on-one meetings, breaks, habits, and create scheduling links, sync multiple calendars, and analyze your productivity through advanced time tracking every week. It's the perfect solution for anyone with a busy calendar.

Reclaim is an intelligent calendar assistant that creates up to 40% more time in your workweek using smart time blocking. (source)

Pros & key features

Tasks: Auto-schedule your tasks in Google Calendar, by priority, before your due dates (while keeping your schedule flexible for changes).
Habits: Auto-schedule your recurring routines at the best time (within a preferred window) around your existing events. Search from hundreds of popular Habit templates.
Smart 1:1 Meetings: Find the best time for your one-on-one meetings across both attendees' calendars.
Scheduling Links: Share your availability for meetings with high-priority and flexible duration settings.
Buffer Time: Auto-schedule breaks and travel time around your calendar events.
Calendar Sync: Auto-sync multiple calendars and your actual availability to prevent scheduling conflicts.
Slack Status Sync: Auto-sync your Slack status to your calendar to prevent interruptions and context switching.
No-Meeting Days: Defend time for your team to get stuff done every week.
Stats: Analyze how much time you spend in meetings vs. tasks vs. habits vs. free time.
Integrations: ClickUp, Asana, Jira, Todoist, Linear, Google Tasks, Zoom, and Slack

Cons

Currently only supports Google Calendar (Outlook coming soon).

Reclaim.ai pricing: Free → paid plans start at $8/month

‍

2. Todoist - for list planners

Todoist is a task management planner app that organizes all your tasks in one place so you can prioritize, track, and delegate your to-do list. Todoist is great for both leaders and employees managing long to-do lists and multi-faceted projects. Simply creating a plan to accomplish unfinished goals will reduce stress and boost productivity -- let's see how Todoist can help you keep track of that plan.

Todoist is one of the most feature-rich task management apps available. (source)

Pros & key features

Tasks: Create and assign tasks and subtasks across your team with set and recurring deadlines.
Projects: Organize all of your tasks by project to track progress towards shared goals.
Priority levels: Set priority levels for tasks to organize around your most important work.
Reminders: Get alerts on your time-sensitive tasks, comments, and team completions.
Customizable views: Create personalized task views using boards, labels, filters, and themes to fit your unique style.
Calendar feed: Visualize your scheduled tasks inside your calendar.
Comments & files: Collaborate with your team using comments and files across tasks.
Analytics: Visualize your productivity across tasks and track progress toward goals.
Integrations: Integrates with almost 100 different apps, including Zapier, IFTTT, and Reclaim.ai.

Cons

Doesn't block the actual amount of time you need for tasks, only shows full-day events or one-hour blocks on your due date. (However, Todoist integrates with Reclaim.ai so you can auto-schedule flexible time for tasks, by priority, before your due date.).
Some users find it overly complex for simple task management.
Limited integrations.
There's a bit of a learning curve for new users navigating their many features.

Todoist pricing: Free → paid plans start at $4/month

‍

3. Trello - for visual planners

Trello is a collaborative planning app that uses a Kanban format to help you organize, manage, and visualize tasks and progress. Trello is particularly useful when managing projects with lots of moving parts and several stakeholders.

Trello makes to-do list building and tracking a visual exercise. (source)

Pros & key features

Tasks: Create individual cards for tasks, ideas, or any pieces of information you want to track.
Projects: Categorize and organize your tasks by creating different projects or boards.
Kanban boards: Kanban-style boards visually represent your workflow with customizable columns to track progress of your tasks.
Custom workflows: Create custom workflows with columns, labels, and automation to fit your unique team needs.
Views: Offers multiple views, including the classic Kanban board view to track tasks, a calendar view for due dates, and a table view to present structured data.
Templates: Provides a library of ready-to-use templates for many use cases, including onboarding plans, project management, and weekly meetings.
Integrations: Integrates with hundreds of popular apps and services, such as Slack, Google Drive, Jira, Hootsuite, Miro, GitHub, and more.

Cons

Becomes increasingly cumbersome the bigger your project becomes.
Lack of flexibility when it comes to setting user permissions.
Limitations when it comes to reporting features.
The calendar view lacks the ability to flexibly schedule tasks by the amount of time you need.

Trello pricing: Free → paid plans start at $17.50/month

‍

4. Google Tasks - for Google user planners

Google Tasks is a mobile-first, bare-bones planner app for Google Workspace users that's designed to help you create and manage a to-do list on the go. Google Tasks is particularly useful for coordinating to-do lists among heavy email users, as you can manage and create tasks right from Gmail.

Google Tasks doesn't have many extras, but it shines as a basic to-do list manager that integrates with your Google Workspace tools.

Pros & key features

Task creation: Create new tasks quickly, add due dates, and include additional details or notes.
Lists: Create multiple task lists to organize your to-dos based on different projects, priorities, or categories.
Subtasks: Allows you to break down complex tasks into smaller, more manageable subtasks.
Drag and drop: Reorder tasks and subtasks using a simple drag-and-drop interface.
Reminders & due dates: Set reminders and due dates for tasks to stay on top of deadlines and important events.
Notifications: Receive notifications and reminders about upcoming tasks.
Synchronization: Automatically synchronize tasks across all your devices.
Integrations: Integrates across various platforms, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Keep, Google Assistant, and Reclaim.ai.

Cons

Doesn't block time on your schedule when you create a task, only a full-day event reminder the day it's due. (However, you can integrate with Reclaim.ai to automatically block the time you need for Google Tasks on Google Calendar.)
The due date in Google Tasks is simply the day the event is scheduled, which may not be sufficient for planning time-intensive projects.

Google Tasks pricing: Free (with a Google account)

‍

5. Things - for Apple user planners

Things is a planner app built for Apple devices and designed to help wrangle growing task lists with smooth automations and easy-to-use controls. You can use it on your Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch, or iPad. The app is ideal for employee work planning, or as a personal task manager, but not really suited for managers who plan for an entire team.

Things is a recently redesigned planner app that makes to-do list creating and management, dare we say, fun. (source)

Pros & key features

Tasks: Manage tasks and projects by creating to-do lists with categories and tags.
Intuitive interface: Boasts a clean and user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate and use.
Today view: Focus on your daily tasks with the dedicated "Today" view that displays only your daily tasks.
Upcoming view: Get a quick overview of tasks scheduled for the coming days or weeks.
Synchronization: Sync your tasks across all your devices (iOS, macOS, and watchOS).
Recurring tasks: Set up tasks that repeat at specific intervals to handle routine actions effectively.
Today widget: Access your daily to-dos from the iOS Today Widget without opening the app.
Siri integration: Use Siri to create new tasks, reminders, or updates using voice commands.
Magic Plus: Quickly add new to-dos, reminders, or notes without having to switch views or interrupt your workflow.
Slim Mode: Condense the app's user interface, allowing you to see more tasks at once on the screen.

Cons

Primarily designed for individual use with little team support functionality.
Limited functionality for prioritizing tasks or deadlines beyond manually reordering them in a list.
Things 3 doesn't actively manage or adjust your schedule.

Things 3 pricing: $9.99 for iPhone & Watch, $19.99 for iPad, $49.99 for Mac (one-time purchase)

‍

6. ClickUp - for real-time reporting

ClickUp is a versatile and comprehensive daily planner app with many features to help you stay organized and increase productivity. Whether you're an individual user or part of a team, ClickUp has something to offer everyone. With its user-friendly interface and powerful functionality, ClickUp is a top contender in the best daily planner apps ever.

Plan, track, and manage any type of work with project management that flexes to your team's needs (source)

Pros & key features

Tasks: Create and organize tasks with due dates, priorities, assignees, statuses, and workflows.
Collaboration & communication: Collaborate using comments, mentions, and notifications.
Customizable views: Choose from various views, including list, board, calendar, and mind map, and customize your workspace layout.
Project planning: Gantt charts for visual project planning, timeline management, and the ability to set dependencies and milestones.
Time tracking: Track time spent on tasks and projects for accurate productivity insights and generate time reports for analysis.
Goal setting & OKRs: Set and track objectives and key results (OKRs) for team alignment and progress measurement.
Mobile app: Access on-the-go with mobile apps for iOS and Android devices.
Integrations: Integrates with over 1,000 tools, including Slack, GitHub, Hubspot, Google Drive, and Reclaim.ai.

Cons

Can be overwhelming for new users due to the extensive range of features.
Time-consuming to familiarize oneself with all the functionalities and fully customize the app.
Certain advanced features (e.g., time tracking, custom fields reporting) only available in higher-tier plans.
Calendar feature allows you to manually drag-and-drop tasks, but lacks the ability to automatically schedule the amount of time you need before your due date. (However, you can integrate ClickUp with Reclaim.ai to auto-schedule flexible time for your tasks.)

ClickUp Pricing:Free → $29/member/month

‍

7. Habitica - for gamification fans

Habitica, an innovative daily planning app, takes a unique approach to task management by transforming your daily routine into an exciting role-playing game (RPG). Combining the principles of gamification and productivity, Habitica offers a refreshing and engaging way to stay organized, motivated, and on track with your goals. With its intuitive interface and vibrant visuals, this app turns mundane tasks and habits into thrilling quests and challenges.

Habitica is a free habit-building and productivity app that treats your real life and to-do list like a role-playing game (source).

Pros & key features

Tasks: Create and organize tasks, to-do lists, and habits.
Gamification features: Gamify your tasks by turning them into in-game activities; completing tasks earns you rewards.
Avatar customization: Create and customize avatars that level up, gain new abilities, and gear when you complete tasks.
Daily checklists: Create checklists for recurring tasks or habits.
Social accountability: Form or join parties and guilds to collaborate with friends to keep you accountable and motivated.
Rewards & punishments: Earn rewards (like gold and experience points) as you complete tasks and maintain good habits, while neglecting tasks or engaging in bad habits may lead to penalties.
Mobile & desktop: Available on both mobile devices and desktop platforms.
Third-party extensions: The app supports third-party extensions and plugins, enhancing its functionality and user experience.
Developer-friendly: Open API for developers to create custom solutions and further enhance the app's capabilities.

Cons

Game-like elements can motivate some users, but may not appeal to everyone.
Might feel distracting or unnecessary for those who prefer a more straightforward and traditional task management system.
Primarily focuses on habits and daily tasks, so it may not be the best for complex projects or detailed project planning.

Habitica Pricing: Free → $9/month +$3 per member for teams

‍

8. Notion - for note-takers

Notion is a powerful all-in-one productivity app that goes beyond a daily planner app. It combines note-taking, task management, database organization, and collaboration features into a single platform. With its versatility and customizable interface, Notion offers a highly flexible solution for individuals and teams seeking a comprehensive collaboration tool.

Notion is the connected workspace where better, faster work happens (source).

Pros & key features

Flexible workspace: Create and organize various elements, such as notes, to-do lists, databases, and more, in a customizable workspace.
Blocks-based structure: Add different content blocks like text, images, tables, videos, code snippets, etc., and arrange them as needed.
Cross-platform support: Available on multiple platforms, including web browsers, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.
Templates: Wide range of pre-designed templates for tasks like project management, meeting notes, habit tracking, and more.
Nested pages & subpages: Create nested pages and subpages to organize your content hierarchically.
Database & tables: Create databases with customizable properties for storing and managing structured data like CRM, task lists, or inventories.
Tags & filters: Add tags to your content and use filters to quickly find and group related information.
Kanban boards & calendars: Supports Kanban-style boards and calendar views for project tracking and scheduling tasks.
Integrations: Integrates almost 100 apps and tools such as Figma, Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, Zoom, and more.

Cons

Abundance of features and customization options can be overwhelming for new users.
User interface can be complex, especially for users accustomed to simpler task management apps.
Mobile app experience may not be as optimized as the desktop version.
Calendar tool is limited to accurately and flexibly planning out time for tasks.

Notion Pricing: Free → $15/user/month

‍

9. Asana - for busy teams

Asana is a robust and intuitive daily planner app designed to help individuals and teams manage tasks, projects, and workflows effectively. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, Asana is a go-to choice for individuals, small businesses, and large enterprises alike.

View your team's work in one online calendar to help hit all your deadlines (source).

Pros & key features

Tasks: Create and assign tasks to team members, set due dates, prioritize, and track progress in real-time.
Task dependencies: Set task dependencies to establish relationships between tasks.
Project organization: Group tasks into projects to keep related work together and maintain a structured workflow.
Views: Visualize project schedules and dependencies using the timeline view, Kanban-style boards, or calendars.
File sharing and attachments: Upload and share files directly within tasks.
Team collaboration: Facilitate communication by commenting on tasks, mentioning teammates, and having threaded conversations.
Custom fields: Add custom fields to tasks or projects for personalized information tracking and organization.
Workload management: Track team members' workloads for a balanced distribution of tasks and prevent overloading.
Progress tracking & reporting: Generate reports to monitor project progress and team performance and identify potential bottlenecks.
Mobile accessibility: Access on mobile devices to stay connected and manage tasks on the go.
Automation: Set up rules and automation to streamline repetitive tasks and actions.
Integrations: Integrates with 100s of tools and apps such as Slack, Google Drive, Microsoft Office, Reclaim.ai, and more.

Cons

Some users may find the learning curve steep for setting up complex workflows or using advanced features like custom fields or rules.
The free plan provides basic features, but advanced functionalities like custom templates, timeline view, and advanced reporting are available in the paid plans.
The cost of the paid plans may be a consideration for individuals or small teams with budget constraints.
Calendar tool requires a lot of manual work to plan out tasks. (However, Asana integrates with Reclaim.ai so you can automatically block the amount of time you need for tasks before your due date.)

Asana Pricing: Free → $24.99/user/month

‍

10. TickTick - for feature-hungry users

TickTick is a feature-rich and intuitive daily planner app that offers a wide array of tools to help individuals stay organized and boost productivity. With its sleek design and seamless user experience, TickTick stands out from other apps as an adaptable choice for managing tasks and schedules effectively.

Whether there is a work-related task or a personal goal, TickTick is here to help you manage all your to-dos (source).

Pros & key features

Tasks: Create and organize tasks with due dates, priorities, and tags to stay on top of your to-do list .
Reminders: Set task reminders to never miss important deadlines or events.
Lists & projects: Organize tasks into different lists or projects based on categories or themes.
Tags: Categorize tasks with tags for easy filtering and sorting.
Priority levels: Assign priority levels to tasks to focus on what matters most.
Smart date parsing: Enter due dates and reminders to automatically parse information into a reminder.
Cross-platform sync: Access and manage your tasks across devices, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
Integrations: Integrates with nearly a dozen tools and apps, such as Slack, Gmail, Outlook, and Amazon Alexa.

Cons

Some advanced functionalities like calendar integration, custom Smart Lists, and calendar widgets require a subscription.
Limited options for integrating with other third-party apps and services.

TickTick Pricing: Free → $2.79/month

‍

11. TeuxDeux - for minimalists

TeuxDeux is a simple and elegant daily planner app designed to help users organize their tasks and stay on top of their schedules. With its minimalist design and intuitive features, TeuxDeux offers a straightforward and focused approach to task management.

TeuxDeux is a to-do list that's as simple as paper (source).

Pros & key features

Clean & minimalist interface: Offers a clean and straightforward user interface for easy navigation and focus on tasks.
Daily & weekly views: Provides daily and weekly views to plan their daily tasks and organize their entire week.
Drag & drop functionality: Rearrange tasks by dragging and dropping them to prioritize and reschedule as needed.
Recurring tasks: Set tasks to repeat daily, weekly, or monthly for regular or ongoing responsibilities.
"Someday" list: Place tasks you want to do, but not yet schedule, in the "Someday" list to keep the primary task list clutter-free.
Mobile app: Available as a mobile app for both iOS and Android devices.

Cons

Simplicity may be a limitation for users who require more advanced features or project management capabilities.
May not be suitable for complex projects or extensive collaboration.

TeuxDeux Pricing: Free → $4/month

‍

The best planner app = more focus, less chaos 📝

Every week it seems to be the same thing---we pledge to be conscientious and resolve to make like Buffett and Gates. Then before you know it, it's one unexpected meeting/obligation after another, and the workweek spirals out of control.

But it doesn't have to be that way. The best planner apps make it easy to manage your schedule, collaborate with your colleagues, and effectively prioritize your time and energy.