9 Chrome Extensions To Increase Your Productivity via @sejournal, @krisjonescom

If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my long career in digital marketing, it’s that productivity and time management do not come naturally to everyone.

In fact, I’ve noticed that effective time management actually eludes many people, even when there’s a lot on their plates.

I think it suffices to say that anything that can contribute to a professional’s productivity would be most welcome.

That’s why, today, I want to share some insight into nine Google Chrome extensions that can truly help you to get more done in your day.

From note-taking to time tracking to automatic writing suggestions and tab consolidation, this listicle is going to jump around to all kinds of areas.

Ideally, though, by the end, you’ll have a decent collection of new Chrome extensions that will come together to save time and make you much more productive.

1. Grammarly For Chrome

You’ve heard of Grammarly, surely, but did you know about Grammarly for Chrome?

Yes, the famous writing improvement tool is available as a Chrome extension, too, so you don’t have to paste all your text into the website version.

You’ll feel empowered with Grammarly following you around everywhere and jumping in basically anywhere on Chrome where you have a box or field to write something.

You get grammar and typo corrections in real-time as you write, so if those areas have presented trouble for you in the past, you now have a helper there with you every step of the way.

When you upgrade to the premium version of Grammarly, you also get recommendations on tone, clarity, and word choice.

That way, even if everything is grammatically correct but still clunky and confusing, Grammarly will let you know about it, so your writing can be the best of the best when it comes time to send or submit.

2. Clockify

Like Grammarly, the time-tracking app Clockify has website, app, and extension versions. But for maximum productivity, you’ll want to go with the Chrome extension.

Clockify is your all-in-one scheduler and time tracker, perfect for any professional, really, but especially useful for freelancers and anyone doing work outside the typical day-job setting.

The extension lets you generate projects, task tracking, timesheets, schedules, and reports of your activity.

Aside from being useful for tracking your work time in the moment, Clockify’s reports allow you to analyze your day, week, month, or longer to look at trends in your habits.

That way, you can tighten up any inefficiencies that you discover.

3. BlockSite

I mentioned above that time management is an issue for many people, and a lot of that comes from self-inflicted procrastination.

When you’re on your own time, doing freelancing or contract work, with no one really looking over your shoulder, it’s easy to let your mind and your fingers wander to other websites or apps that distract you. From Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, distractions are all around us.

Enter BlockSite, a Chrome extension that lets you block websites and apps on your device so you can work in peace.

Obviously, you’re always in control of the extension and what it’s blocking, but the idea is that by removing the ease with which you can access your distracting sites, you’ll stay focused on your work.

BlockSite sets things up nicely by allowing you to set schedules for the blocking, so you’ll only be unable to access those sites and apps during the hours that you set.

You can also activate site redirects for all your blocked sites.

That means you’ll be redirected back to a “work” site of your choice if you try to go to any of your blocked sites.

Productivity is a combination of the things you do and the things you don’t, and if you can cut down on the things that take away from your work, your productivity should increase.

4. Win The Day

Often, when we talk about productivity, we just have to get down to brass tacks and discuss setting goals and meeting them.

That’s where Win the Day can help.

This Chrome extension is all about determining your objectives daily, weekly, or monthly, and then working up to them gradually.

Win the Day is particularly helpful with medium- to long-term goals since you can set one big, main goal and then add in smaller, daily goals that help you build up slowly to the ultimate one.

You can also use the extension to identify and track your habit forming. So, in case you’re looking to alter a behavior you already have, it can help to see your progress on your screen day after day.

This all makes complete sense since big goals often require a long journey.

Win the Day even lets you set the time during which you’d like to meet your goals or form new habits.

Taken altogether, this Chrome extension is quite useful for getting more done.

5. Scribe

Whether you work in digital marketing, sales, education, or anything else, you could have a use for Scribe.

If you want to talk productivity, this is one Chrome extension you won’t want to be without.

Scribe lets you record your clicks and keystrokes as you go through a process, and then automatically generates screenshots and written steps to create ordered tutorials for training purposes.

Scribe is for all those trainers or managers who spend a ton of time writing up documents or meticulously taking screenshots to train new employees. Now, you don’t have to waste another second doing it manually.

Once Scribe has generated your screenshots, highlighted the click areas, and shown you what to type where, you can edit any part of the tutorial you want, save it forever, and then share it with whomever you want.

That’s called working smarter, not harder.

6. Word Counter Plus

Here’s a quick and easy one: Word Counter Plus, which lets you select text anywhere, right-click it, and instantly see the number of words and characters contained within it.

You can also see the average length of the words in that text.

Word Counter Plus is extremely useful when you’re writing something and trying to adhere to a minimum (or maximum) word count, or performing competitive research to determine content length.

Prior to extensions like this, you would have had to paste the text into a document such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs to get the word count that way.

Now, it can all be done right on the page where you find it.

Definitely check this one out to save yourself some time.

7. OneTab

Productivity is about many things, all in the service of letting you get more done – and OneTab helps with that in its own way.

Whether you’re a prolific multitasker or a researcher who needs to have multiple tabs open at once, OneTab does just what its name suggests and condenses all your tabs into a single one.

When you need one or several of those tabs, just go to the single tab and pull everything down in a vertical-list format. From there, you can bring as many tabs back to your main window as you need.

Not only does this help you visually, but it also reduces the RAM your device has to use to support all those tabs, making your work experience faster and more efficient.

8. Postlight Reader

The Postlight Reader Chrome extension is all about stripping away distractions to allow you to focus.

It’s sort of like AdBlock (which many people know about), except Postlight Reader removes not only ads but also other unnecessary elements – the extension calls it “clutter”– to leave just the words and images on the page.

In other words, you’re left with just the meat of the content.

What’s cool about Postlight Reader, in particular, is that the extension really takes user experience into account, allowing you to choose a light or dark theme and even alter the font and size of the text on the page.

Finally, that experience doesn’t just have to be for you! Postlight Reader also lets you share your optimized versions of web pages with others on social media and through email.

9. ClickUp Chrome Extension

Finally, let’s talk about productivity through the lens of the officially named ClickUp Chrome Extension.

ClickUp on its own is one of the best project management softwares I’ve ever used, so it should come as no surprise that the tool has its own Chrome extension.

You can create tasks from anywhere, track your work time, take screenshots, and integrate Gmail and Outlook emails with your tasks.

You’re limited in some areas, of course, but the most basic functionality of the extension should truly help you to get more done.

Once you know what you’re doing, having all these features together in a convenient Chrome extension can really start to make a difference for you.

Productivity Starts With The Right Tools

So much about getting more done comes down to you and your psyche. You have to lock in and stay focused.

But human endeavors often go only so far, and so to fill in those gaps, we have Chrome extensions.

Which of these was your favorite?

It depends on where you need the most support, but they can all help in their own way.

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Featured Image: alphaspirit.it/Shutterstock

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Author: Kristopher Jones