Mobile apps have come to make our lives easier and more convenient. There is an app for literally everything under the sun, including an app which lets you locate the nearest vendor of your favourite food. This means we have more and more tools to help us become productive in our everyday lives.

How are you leveraging these apps to enhance your own personal development and productivity today?  Here are my top 5 personal development and productivity apps for 2019.

1. Pocket

Pocket helps me save, read and listen to my favourite stories, posts and articles from around the web. To broaden my knowledge, I read over 30 articles and blog posts every day online. Pocket helps me save interesting articles I come across online with just a couple of clicks so that I can get to reading them later.

Pocket also recommends to me the most relevant articles related to things I am interested in and topics I care about so that I have access to the best content without having to go look for it. Pocket is available on Android, iOS and web.

2. Quora

This one is a pretty popular app. Quora is simply a Q&A site where you can ask questions and get answers. Specifically, Quora helps me become smarter by giving me the opportunity to learn from some of the best and most experienced people in various fields by reading their responses to (or opinions about) questions I am interested in.

In many cases, it saves me the time involved in having to discover that knowledge on my own. Reading a few questions and answers from Quora every day is part of my daily routine. Just like Pocket, Quora also recommends to me the most relevant articles related to things I am interested in and topics I care about so that I have access to the best content without having to go look for it.

Quora is available on Android, iOS and web.

3. Medium

Medium is a kind of social journalism platform where you can read important, insightful stories on the topics that matter most to you. You can also publish your own stories if you want.

I like Medium for almost the same reason as I like Quora and Pocket; the opportunity to learn from other more knowledgeable and more experienced people in areas I care about. If you create content or have something to share with the world, Medium is a quick and easy way to get started with a blog.

Just like Quora, Medium also recommends to me the most relevant articles related to things I am interested in and topics I care about so that I have access to the best content without having to go look for it. You can also subscribe to get daily articles in your inbox.

Medium is available on Android, iOS and web.

4. Spendee

Keeping track of your expenses is a good habit to build because it helps you manage your money better, develop healthier spending habits and make smarter financial decisions. Spendee is my go-to app for expense tracking even though there are like a million expense tracking apps out there.

I particularly like Spendee because of its simplicity, beautiful user interface, intuitive design, great user experience and the fact that it works on the web too and I can sync my transactions across multiple devices. The free tier of the app is pretty generous and you can get a lot done without having to pay anything.

Spendee is available on Android, iOS and web.

5. Pomodoro Technique and the Pomodoro Timer

In this digital age, so many distractions are working together to keep us from being productive at work. From social media notifications to phone calls to co-workers shouting your name, distractions are all around us, making it difficult for you to focus.

Some smart dude called Francesco Cirillo develop this time management and productivity technique called Pomodoro Technique which uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks of 5 mins.

So it’s simple. If you have a task to do that you absolutely need to focus on and avoid distractions, like filling an application, doing paperwork, sending emails, coding, doing your homework, etc, you set a timer for 25 mins and get to the task. The timer creates a sense of consciousness of urgency, helping you focus and avoiding distractions.

After the 25mins is up, you take a 5 min break. After four 25-min sessions, you can take a longer break. One advantage of using the Pomodoro Technique is that with time, you are able to better estimate how long it takes you to do routine tasks, helping you plan your time more efficiently.

Fortunately, there are a lot of apps which help you implement the Pomodoro technique. On Android, I use Focus To-Do: Pomodoro Timer. On web, I use, Tomato Timer and on iOS, you can use the iOS version of Focus To-Do.

Check out my blog post explaining the Pomodoro technique more.

Conclusion

I hope you will take advantage of these 5 personal development and productivity tools and supercharge your 2019 from today. What other tools do you use? Let me know in the comments below.