According to a recent study from Hootsuite and We Are Social, we’re spending on average 6 hours and 42 minutes online each day, and Google Chrome has quickly become the web browser of choice for most of us with 3 out of every 5 PCs running Chrome.
With so much of our lives spent online, we want to show you how to get the most out of Chrome by simply installing a few extensions. It’s super easy to do and it will boost your productivity levels no end!
The best thing is that the extensions themselves are completely FREE!
Here are our top five Chrome extensions for improving office productivity.
This is a very powerful tool for keeping you completely focused at work.
It does exactly what it sounds like it does…it forces you to stop wasting time by blocking you from looking at time-wasting websites.
Don’t worry, the settings are highly configurable. So, although you can take the Nuclear Option and block yourself from all distracting sites for the rest of the day, you can also change the settings so that you are allowed at least *some* time on time-draining distractions.
Decent Alternative: WasteNoTime
Focus on getting things done with Todoist. Add tasks, give them due dates and mark them off when completed. You can even collaborate with other people and assign different tasks to different team members.
Decent Alternative: Wunderlist
Wrestle back control of your Gmail inbox with Boomerang. Track responses, snooze non-urgent emails to come back to your inbox at a later date and schedule emails to go out later.
Decent Alternative: Sortd For Gmail
A less-nuclear option than StayFocusd. Instead of blocking yourself from news websites completely, save the articles you want to read for later by placing them in your Pocket.
Items can be synced to your phone or tablet so you can read them leisurely on the commute home from work instead of at the office.
Decent Alternative: WorldBrain’s Memex
Create new Google docs and spreadsheet without needing to visit the Google Drive website itself. A much slicker alternative which will also allow you to search for files and remove them without leaving your current browser tab.
So, those are our favourite Chrome extension for office workers. The list could go on and on – but we’ve tried to limit our top choices to the best productivity for ALL office staff.
If you are in a specialist role then there will be lots of other Chrome extensions which will make your life easier. For example, if you work in SEO then we would definitely recommend the Keywords Everywhere extension. For sales staff, Clearbit Connect could shave hours off your prospecting work week.
Okay, over to you. Go get your new productivity tools all set up from the Chrome Web Store and turn yourself into the most-focused employee in the office!