One of my favorite sayings has always been “work smarter, not harder.” It saves time, headaches, and manpower. And some of my secret little helpers in making this saying always work for me are a few of the Chrome extensions I’ve begun using. They help me focus and productivity, making me a more efficient worker and cutting out my bad habits.

Noisli

Easily one of my favorites, Noisli lets you make the perfect mix of white noise to keep you in the zone. I work in an open office setting and all of the voices, sounds, and movement can be overwhelmingly distracting for me sometimes, but Noisli can help me block it all out.

Stay Focused

If you don’t check your personal social media, personal email, or do a little out of scope internet browsing while you’re on the job, you’re lying to yourself. We all do it. But Stay Focused helps you quit this bad habit cold turkey by allowing you to set up restrictions on how much time, how often or even completely blocking sites for a certain amount of time. Once you click ‘go’ there’s no going back – you absolutely cannot unblock yourself, so be careful!

Streak CRM

Probably the creepiest and most helpful of my Chrome extensions, Streak CRM has features that let you schedule out emails, track them, create customer/client profiles within your email, manage workflow, and much more. I love the fact that I can schedule out emails – as a bit of a night owl, I often schedule out my emails for the next morning around 9 or 10 the night before. Yet the part about this extension that blows my mind all the time (even though I’ve used it for about two years) is that it allows you to track the emails you send. You can see when it was opened, where it was opened, and on what device. So helpful, yet so creepy.

Grammarly

Nobody’s perfect. And Grammarly really makes sure we know it. A Chrome extension that checks your spelling and punctuation as you go, Grammarly has been a life saver for me on the days when I’m running on too little sleep and too much coffee. If you send a lot of emails, write a lot of memos, publish things on behalf of a client, etc., I can not recommend this extension more!!

Win The Day

More of a goal-setting tool than a workflow helper, Win The Day lets you track the progress you’re making on any goal that you might have set for yourself. It shows you a timeline of how far you’ve come with how far you’ve yet to go. You can set subtasks, start a countdown, and even help you create new habits that will help you reach your goal. I love the fact that this can be the first thing you see when you open Chrome, as it reminds you of the goals you’re setting either in or outside of work.