For us urbanites, choice is always in abundance. Whether it’s in relation to restaurants, shops, social events, job opportunities or people to meet, we’re often greeted with lots of exciting options and this can lead to us living a busy — yet appealing — lifestyle. This is certainly the case in Manchester!

Luckily, we’re living in an era when there’s an app for pretty much everything — many of which are designed to help us stay organised, focused and productive. Unfortunately, Candy Crush isn’t on the list...

Read on to discover our top eight productivity apps for 2018, ranging from reminder apps to those designed to help you find your inner zen.

Want to experience living the sought-after city centre lifestyle in Manchester? Explore our range of stylish apartments in Spinningfields, Chinatown, the Northern Quarter and beyond and book online today.

Top 8 Productivity Apps for 2018

1) Pocket

Price: Free

Think of Pocket as your personal treasure chest of the internet’s best content. How does it work? Rather than sending an article link to yourself via email or bookmarking it in your internet browser, the Pocket app lets you save articles, videos or pretty much any content to your account.

As well as letting you save directly from your internet browser, Pocket is also integrated with over 1500+ apps, including Twitter and Flipboard.

By keeping everything in one place, you’ll know exactly where to find a certain link or piece of content, so that you can spend less time searching and more time doing. Goodbye scatterbrain.

2) Forest

Price: £1.99

Here at Manchester Apartments, we’re all about sustainability, so coming across an app that benefits the planet whilst keeping us focused is a real win-win situation.

The idea is as follows — you start by planting a tree when you first wish to focus. If you manage to avoid looking at your phone for the specified time, then the tree will continue to grow and you’ll eventually have yourself a flourishing forest. If you can’t resist temptation, then your tree will start to wither and your pixelated forest will be no more.

The more virtual coins that you spend, the more money that Forest will donate to Trees for the Future. So far, over 280,000 trees have been planted because of Forest.

3) Coach.me

Price: Free (with the option to pay for coaching)

Want to encourage yourself to be more productive but need a little boost? With Coach.me, you can set yourself goals and reminders for a particular habit that you wish to improve upon and view regular reports to track your progress.

The app also has a community section where you can ask questions to other members. The majority of the services available through the app are free, but you can even hire yourself a coach for a small fee.

4) Tide

Price: $1.99 for one month, $4.99 for three months and $15.99 for 12 months

Feeling tired or overloaded from a busy day? Tide is designed to help you relax and focus, with a number of different features geared around bringing out your inner zen.

Choose between calming nature sounds and white noise clips to help you focus or sleep, read daily inspiring quotes or follow your journey on the app with the Tide Diary. You can also set a focus timer based on the Pomodoro technique, which consists of 25 minutes of concentration followed by five minutes of rest. If only it was the other way round...

5) Todoist

Price: Free (or £28 a year for Premium)

We’re all partial to the occasional sticky note, but there’s only so much fluro-yellow you can take until your entire computer screen is covered.

Todoist is one of our favourite reminder and task apps for staying organised and syncs perfectly from your mobile phone to desktop. How you utilise the app is entirely up to you — file tasks under specific projects, set priority levels and filters on tasks and add recurring reminders to prevent you from forgetting the important things ever again.

If you want to get competitive about it, then Todoist also gives you Karma points for completing tasks and allows you to achieve streaks and advance to different levels. Game on.

6) Evernote

Price: Free (or £44.99 a year for Premium)

Brain-dumping is the ultimate way to give your brain the TLC it deserves and Evernote is the perfect tool to do this with. Rather than having a-million-and-one thoughts floating around in your head, pop them straight onto Evernote and you’ve got yourself a second brain.

With Evernote, you can create separate Notebooks and tags for specific focuses, such as work or reminders for your personal life. These notes can be easily synced between your mobile phone or desktop, meaning that you have easy access to them at anytime.

If you want to get serious about it, there’s also the option to add images, tables, checklists and so forth.

7) Calendars by Readdle

Price: Free

If you have an iPhone, then you’ll know how awkward the Apple calendar can be to use. This calendar app by Readdle has a simple drag-and-drop interface and allows you to see everything at a glance for the entire month, so you know that Grandma’s birthday is coming up in three weeks.

As well as the iOS calendar, Readdle’s app also syncs with Google Calendar seamlessly, so that you can easily update your calendar on desktop and see the changes reflected on your mobile phone.

8) Mindly

Price: Free

Are you the visual type? Whether you’ve been struck with an amazing idea or need to prepare for a presentation or meeting at work, Mindly allows you to brainstorm and create mind maps to view on your mobile phone.

Rather than reading chunks of text, you’ll be able to see your thought processes and key points at a glance via an attractive and easy-to-use interface. You can also add notes, images and icons to your mind maps and export them in a variety of different formats to share with others.

That’s a wrap! Do you have any favourite productivity apps that aren’t featured on this list? Get in touch with us on Twitter.

If you’ve been feeling less than productive and putting off your apartment search, then we’re here to help. Get in touch today about our range of stylish apartments in Manchester city centre and we’ll help you find your ideal match.

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