Making your living on the road can be overwhelming. You often find yourself frantically multi-taking to return calls, and fill out forms and paperwork. It can take laser-like focus and superb time management skills to keep organized.
Fortunately, there are now a variety of useful apps to make things easier for a digital nomad.
1. Trello
Trello is an organizational tool helping you plan and collaborate on projects of all kinds. You can create boards and lists by adding cards for various elements like people, tasks, or materials, and prioritize or structure them as you wish. It provides an easy-to-follow visual representation that’s simple to change or edit as needed at any level of detail. Participants can add comments, file attachments, and other messages for open communication and feedback. Trello will keep changes updated across all iOS devices.
You can sign up for free, and upgrade to the Gold version for additional functionality if needed.
2. Rescue Time
This is a time-management app oriented toward helping you find the ideal work-life balance to keep your sanity under hectic schedules. Rescue Time will run invisibly in the background on your computer, phone, or tablet to track your habits and help you analyze them, such as the time spent with certain applications or websites.
Rescue Time will provide you detailed reports when you’re ready to review your activities and make adjustments. You can set alerts to limit time spent, note accomplishments, or block certain websites altogether. You can also pause or quit Rescue Time whenever you don’t want your activities logged!
3. Time Buddy
For international travelers or even those who cross multiple time zones, Time Buddy was created to help you stay on schedule no matter where you are. It features an easy-to-use world clock and time conversion tool that will reflect time differences in over 20,00 cities and time zones, including support for Daylight Savings Time and four different languages.
It will help you stick to your schedule no matter where you’re headed. It will also allow you to update your personal calendar and share it with or email it to clients or colleagues.
This iOS app offers a free and a paid Pro version with extra features such as creating contact groups for each location.
4. WHA by Work Hard Anywhere
Also called WiFi Cafes and Spaces, WHA is a productivity app for mobile workers that helps you locate work spaces on the go, including Wi-Fi networks. Each spot is rated by the WHA community of international users for its amenities and atmosphere, including the available space and internet speeds.
WHA is free to download and supports online sharing. However, it’s currently available only in English and for iOS devices.
5. One Drive
OneDrive is Microsoft’s online storage app that lets you upload your photos, documents, and other files to cloud storage so you can access them from wherever and whenever you like, or share them with others.
It includes features like tagging files or setting alerts when files change. It runs seamlessly with Microsoft Office 365, the productivity suite which is designed for use over the cloud.
OneDrive works with both Mac and PC computers as well as Android and Windows devices. For you to use it, your business must have a subscription for either SharePoint Online or Office 365. Once an account is created, you can save and manage files online and offline with a few clicks.
6. XE Currency
This is a business app providing a number of financial tools for international trade and currency investment, including money transfers, exchange rate lists, quotes, and calculators, as well as access to international market news, data, and advice. It’s highly secure and there are no additional fees.
For a subscription fee, it’s available in iOS, Windows, Android, and Blackberry versions. How much you pay depends on how much you plan to use the app.
7. iTranslate
This helpful app allows business, tourist, students, and other international travelers converse in over 100 languages. It can provide translations for both speech and text. You can also translate web pages, reference language dictionaries, and even look up verb conjugations.
There’s no training required, as iTranslate is very simple to use and even the speech translation is highly accurate. You can also save files for offline translation.
It’s available for iOS devices and includes features like split-screen views, copy and paste, and auto-detect for immediate recognition of most languages. There is both a free and a subscription PRO version for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows devices.
To conclude, there’s an app for most of your needs. An increasingly mobile workforce can take advantage of productivity, scheduling, and even tools for international trade and travel. Many of them are quite affordable, so you’ll find that life on the go has become much easier.
Joe Peters is a Baltimore-based freelance writer, marketing consultant and an ultimate tech enthusiast. You can find the longest content he’s written here. Reach Joe @bmorepeters.
