12 Best Time Management Apps, Tools & Software

Struggling to meet your goals?

Running a business takes a lot of time and effort.

While most hustlers love their job enough to commit 50 to 60 hours a week to their work, it leaves them vulnerable to burnout.

Time management tools are designed to help you track your time, so you can give your full efforts to your business without feeling overwhelmed.

I have put together the 12 best time management apps that will help you cut down on distractions and boost your focus.

With an optimized routine, you’ll ultimately be able to improve your productivity, accomplish your projects, and save some for leisure.

Let’s cover them one by one.

1. Rize

Rize is a smart time tracking app to help you make the most of your time and develop better work habits.

Rize runs seamlessly on macOS and Windows, capturing your computer usage without any need for manual timers.

One of the amazing features of Rize is its ability to provide you with insightful reports. You’ll receive daily and weekly reports via email, breaking down your time usage and giving you a clear picture of your productivity metrics.

But Rize goes beyond just tracking time. 

It allows you to customize categories, so you can gain even deeper insights into how you spend your precious minutes and hours.

If you’re someone who thrives on structure, you can set up a customizable tracking schedule, so it starts and stops tracking automatically based on your predefined schedule.

Rize sends you helpful notifications when it’s time to take a breather. It analyzes your work activity and alerts you when you’ve been going full steam for too long.

Rize also integrates with Google and Outlook Calendar, making it super easy to categorize your meetings.

Core Features

• Smart time tracking on macOS and Windows
• Automatic computer usage capture
• Insightful daily and weekly reports via email
• Customizable categories for deeper insights
• Customizable tracking schedule
• Notifications for taking breaks (overworking)
• Analysis of work activity (daily and weekly mails)

Pricing

Rize offers a free plan with a session timer and retains one day of data. The paid plan starts at $14.99/month (or $9.99/month when billed annually).

2. Taskade

3. Akiflow

Akiflow is a productivity optimization app (for both Windows and macOS) that combines a task manager and calendar to help you stay on top of everything.

With Akiflow, you can capture, process, as well as prioritize tasks quickly and easily. Its Universal Task Inbox feature gives you a complete overview of all your tasks in one place.

The Command Bar feature allows you to quickly and easily modify things. Snooze using the spacebar, plan with the command key, and prioritize using the arrow keys.

If you are someone who wishes to get into the flow, you will love their time-blocking feature which allows you to schedule your day.

Tagging tasks is another way to keep your tasks organized. You can tag by project, client, or anything else that is relevant to you.

Smart alerts give you the info you need when you need it, exactly as you want it. You’ll never be late for a phone call or a meeting again thanks to smart alerts.

Core Features

• Task Manager
• Universal Task Inbox
• Command Bar
• Time Blocking
• Tagging
• Smart Alerts

Pricing

Try Akiflow’s Premium plan risk-free for 7 days and pay only $15 per month.

4. RescueTime

RescueTime is a highly intuitive time-tracking app that combines your average tracker with a smart assistant to help you improve your time management.

It offers an extensive report section to give you a clear picture of the hours you spend on your business activities, leisure, client communication, and learning. With this data, you can identify where your time is being drained, and change your routine to better manage your day.

RescueTime additionally has a productivity feature called “focus time” that blocks distracting websites you typically scroll through, to force you to concentrate on your job. Not only that, you can set goals and milestones to measure your output as well.

With RescueTime, you can clock your online and offline time to get an accurate account of your activities and set achievable goals to use your time productively.

Core Features

• Time tracking.
• Robust report.
• Focus time feature.
• Smart alerts.
• Cross-platform app.

Pricing

Rescue’s basic plan is free. To gain access to all the functions, you can buy a monthly plan for $12 or a yearly subscription for around $80.

5. Calendar

Calendar is a fantastic online calendar and team scheduling software designed to make managing your time and scheduling appointments epic.

One of the key strengths of Calendar lies in its scheduling features. 

You can create customized event and online meeting templates by setting up time slots that suit your availability. These time slots can be easily shared with others through personalized calendar links.

You can grant anyone the ability to schedule a meeting directly on your calendar, ensuring that conflicting meetings are avoided.

Calendar also offers a nifty feature called Calendar Analytics, which enhances productivity by providing insightful data and analytics to help you manage your schedule effectively.

Last but definitely not the least, another awesome feature is “Find a Time,” which streamlines the process of scheduling online meetings.

Core Features

• Customized event and online meeting templates
• Calendar Analytics for data and insights
• Team Scheduling (Round Robin) for efficient scheduling within teams
• Find a Time feature for quickly finding suitable meeting times
• AI and machine learning for personalized scheduling experience
• Integrations with popular calendar software like Google Calendar

Pricing

Calendar provides a Basic plan that comes at no cost and allows you to connect to one calendar. If you want to access their premium features without any limitations, you might want to check out their Standard plan that costs $25/month or the Pro plan that costs $30/month (both when billed monthly).

6. Sunsama

Sunsama is an advanced planner that helps you balance your work and personal goals while keeping track of your activities.

It consists of a task manager and a calendar that views your projects based on the deadline you’ve set and categorizes them. With it, you can create your work, home, and entertainment channels (categories) and build multiple pages to keep them separated.

What’s interesting is that if you miss out on any project, you can defer your task to a future date.

You’ll find tons of similar intuitive options available on it, such as aligning your projects with your objective or automatically setting a daily ritual. You can also integrate your productivity apps and drag their tasks onto your Sunsama timeline.

I suggest taking a free 14-day trial to explore it.

Core Features

• Task manager and calendar.
• Advance project creation options.
• Customizable categories to separate work and life.
• Integration with Google Meeting, Gmail, Outlook, and productivity tools.
• Team invitation.
• Desktop and mobile app.

Pricing

Sunsama charges a $20 monthly subscription.

7. Morgen

Morgen.so is a great online tool for managing your time and tasks. It offers a unified calendar, scheduler, and task manager in one easy-to-use interface.

You can create and manage events, appointments, and tasks, and view them all in one place.

Morgen.so also offers powerful search and filtering features, so you can easily find what you’re looking for.

The interface is intuitive and user-friendly, making Morgen.so a great choice for busy professionals or students who need to stay organized.

In terms of a time management tool, Morgen.so is a great choice. It offers a lot of features and is very user-friendly. The only downside is that it doesn’t offer as in-depth task management features as tools such as Anydo.

More than anything else, the meeting scheduling feature through a calendar is simply awesome as it helps you schedule a meeting with everyone’s availability in mind.

Core Features

• Task management features
• Meeting scheduling
• Countless time zones support
• Integration with Google Calendar
• Search feature

Pricing

Morgen.so has a free and paid version. The Personal plan costs $6/month while the Pro plan costs $14/month while both plans offer a 14-day free trial.

8. Emphasis

Emphasis is an iOS exclusive app that operates on the Pomodoro principle to optimize your day.

If you’re not familiar with the term, Pomodoro is a time management technique that involves breaking your long tasks into intervals to allow breathing space to “recharge” your mind.

It’s a fairly popular trick that works remarkably well if you’ve got the right tool to manage it for you – like Emphasis.

Emphasis allows you to manually and automatically set breaks and create realistic deadlines.

It’s a time tracking tool, but what makes it different from a regular timer is the visual representation.

Rather than showing a countdown, distracting you further, Emphasis presents a clock displaying the portion of time left to complete the task. The lack of figures lets you focus fully on your job instead of repeatedly checking time.

Core Features

• Personalized timer.
• Organizer and checklist.
• Productivity statistics.
• Compatible with iOS system only. 

Pricing

Emphasis is free to use and charges only for premium subscriptions.

9. Forest

Forest uses a brilliant method to help you manage your time effectively.  It provides a visual representation of a tree that grows with your project and dies if you leave your job in the middle.

The idea behind this concept is to give you a fun way to stay focused on your job with little distraction to stray your thoughts.

And that’s not even the best part.

Every time you grow a virtual tree, you earn a coin that Forest donates to an NGO to plant a real-time tree on your behalf.

Yes, real tree.

Forest is in collaboration with a non-profit organization, Tree for The Future, which improves land health through tree plantations. As of now, it has sponsored over 1 million tree sprouts with its user’s coins.

The environmental factor is a brilliant tactic to both offer you a sense of accomplishment and motivate you to meet deadlines.

Core Features

• Task timer.
• Monthly reviews.
• Timeline structure to view progress.
• Accomplishment and reward feature.

Pricing

Forest is free on Android but charges a minimum of $3.99 for the iOS system. It additionally offers in-app products for between $1 to $20.

10. Evernote

Evernote is an excellent app for small business owners looking to have a handy tool to keep track of “all the things to do” in an organized manner.

It provides you with features to unclutter your thought process, create a checklist of your activities, and set reminders to timely meet your deadlines.

Think of it as a digital version of your notebook—only with more features. You can use it to record meeting minutes on the spot, schedule weekly projects, or simply make a list of your weekly meal plans.

Evernote works perfectly on your smartphone, making it easier for you to use it everywhere you go.

Core Features

• User-friendly.
• Ready-to-use templates.
• Text editor.
• Sketching function.
• Sharing notes option.
• Supports mobile devices.

Pricing

As a freemium app, Evernote’s starter plan is free. If you want access to widgets and advanced features, you can buy its premium plan for $10.

11. Any.do

Any.do is a versatile task management and time management app to help you stay organized and productive.

With Any.do, you can easily create lists for all your tasks, projects, errands—you name it. Shopping lists, homework assignments, work projects, even your family chores.

My favorite part is that you can set reminders based on time or location.

So if I need to stop at the grocery store after work, I can set a location reminder that pings me when I’m near the store.

Any.do works great across all your devices too.

You can add tasks on your phone and then see them on your computer at work. Everything stays in sync, which is really helpful.

Core Features

• Easily create to-do lists and organize tasks
• Set time or location-based reminders
• Sync with your calendar to view tasks and schedule
• Chat and work on tasks together with teams
• Create workflows and track project progress
• Use pre-made templates for workflows and planning

Pricing

Any.do’s Personal Plan won’t cost you a cent. When you’re ready to level up, the Premium plan unlocks advanced features for $3 per month. And for teams who want to collaborate, the Any.do Teams plan starts at $5 per member monthly.

12. Workflow (Now Shortcuts)

Workflow is an iOS app that allows you to create shortcuts to your regular activities to gain access to them with a single tap. It is an amazing tool for people who prefer shortcuts so they wouldn’t have to scroll through the list of apps to search for the relevant icon.

You can both choose from ready-to-use templates and build custom shortcuts to tailor them to your requirements.

For instance, if your current project demands constant communication with one of your team members, you can set a shortcut to their profile.

Or, if your job requires frequent travel, you can fix your rides on the app to avoid the hassle of having to login into it to book them every time you plan to go out.

Additionally, you can also automate your tasks to further save time. Such as triggering the do not disturb action during your meetings.

Core Features

• Visually appealing interface.
• 300 in-built commands.
• Conditional Automation.
• Works on iPhone iPad, and Apple Watch.

Pricing

Workflow is free to use.

Conclusion

As an entrepreneur, you work twice as much as an average employee, to make sure your business is running smoothly.

On top of that, you’d have to set aside a part of your time continuously for networking to build connections and discover future opportunities.

Add to that, you have a personal life that I am assuming you would rather not miss out on, but are left with little to spare for it.

Am I right?

With a good time management app, you can effectively balance both your work and personal life.

Explore the options I have listed for you, and start making the most of your time.