My New Favorite Productivity Apps

I love discovering productivity apps that help make life a little easier and more efficient. I’ve found apps that do everything from helping you manage your email to providing music that makes you more productive.

Today I want to introduce you to three of my new favorite productivity apps. They’ll help you save time when you’re traveling, looking for something new to read or dining out.

For Travel: Gate Guru

Travel can be stressful, so it’s great to have an app like Gate Guru to help things go a little more smoothly. When you spend a lot of time in airports, it can be hard to eat healthy. So my favorite way to use this app is to find the best healthy places to eat at airports so I don’t waste time searching all over the terminal. But Gate Guru tracks an array of other information as well — like security wait times, flight delays and gate changes during your trip. You can find Gate Guru in the App Store, the Google Play Store and the Windows Store.

For Reading: Overdrive

If you go through books as fast as I do, you’ll love Overdrive. All you need is a library card, and you can use this app to check out eBooks, audio books and even videos from participating libraries. It’s available for iOS devices, Android, Chromebook, Windows 8 and 10 and Kindle Fire HD. It’s like Kindle Unlimited or Audible, but it’s free and it supports your local library.

Bonus Tip: This is a website, not an app, but check out BookBub. Here you can provide your email address and the types of books you like to read, and you’ll receive an email every day with a half-dozen or so books in your categories that are discounted to rates of free to $2.99 (e-books only). If you’re an avid reader, or even if you just want to have something waiting the next time you decide you want to do some reading, use this service to keep your Kindle/Nook/iBooks topped off.

For Dining Out: Nowait

You aren’t doomed for a long wait at your favorite restaurant if you forgot to make a reservation.

Nowait lets you check out wait times and then get in line at a restaurant before you even leave the house. The app will notify you with a text when your table is ready. Nowait was recently acquired by Yelp, which should lead to even more restaurants becoming part of the app.

Give these apps a try and let me know if they save you time and stress. I’d also love to hear about your favorite productivity apps. Leave a comment and let me know!