Distractions. They are a part of everyday life whether you work from home or from the office. And unless you have the right tools and mindset to cope with the environment around you, distractions can really take away from how much you can accomplish week by week and month to month. Luckily, we know just what you need and we’ve compiled this list of productivity tools that experts swear by to help you maintain a healthy life/work balance and stay on top of things.

1. Time Trackers

Not everyone is a fan of tracking the time for every task that comes across the desk—and that’s okay. There are other ways to put time trackers to good use. For example, a time tracker could provide a valuable way to free yourself from specific tasks like answering your email or responding to social media. Set a timer for 3 hours, for example, during which you close your email client completely, and switch your phone to silent and turn upside down. You will be amazed at just how much you can accomplish in that time once your attention is no longer divided.

Of course, you can always use timers in the traditional way if you don’t mind measuring the time needed for various tasks. Either way will help you stay productive as the clock ticks.

We like: RescueTime (2 weeks of free premium access)

2. Take It to the Cloud

Sometimes being away from the office could take away from your productivity—it’s a time when you just can’t do any work…or is it? Today cloud-based document and data storage platforms can allow you to be productive regardless of your physical location (a critical need in today’s always-on business world). Cloud applications like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box are just a few of the options available that offer the chance to sync and work across devices so that you are never truly away from the office. More and more corporations are utilizing these cloud alternatives instead of traditional enterprise data storage systems due to lower costs and ease of use for employees.

3. Expense Management

You can make the nitty-gritties easy with the use of digital tools like Expensify. Expensify allows you to take a quick snap of receipts and classify them by project—something invaluable for those who find they have to juggle projects a lot. Apps like this can help you turn your mental energies towards the projects that matter and push the needle forward, rather than waste said energy on tiny tasks that have a way of piling up really quickly. 

4. Email Productivity

How productive you are is so often tied to how adept you are at keeping your email organized and working properly. After all, professional emails can be cumbersome, trying to send out the right emails at the right time as well opting out of email lists you no longer want to be are easier said than done. Fortunately, you’ve got tools such as Unroll.me which will quickly unsubscribe you from several email lists in a few short seconds, while tools such as Boomerang for Gmail allow the scheduling of messages to be sent at a later date.

You can now use the additional time you gain to accomplish other pressing tasks you have stacked on your plate.