Tools for Entrepreneurs: 11 Free Online Resources You Must Know to Accelerate Innovation and Productivity

Entrepreneurship—a term that stirs the heart, from centenarians to elementary school children. Humanity’s inner nature must stem from this impulsive creativity for the current prosperous scene to be possible. But ever since we decided to start our own business, both my team partners and I have run into one problem: “There’s never enough time.” We occasionally miss the good old days of student life, when time seemed endless—we would leisurely ride our bikes around, or on a moonlit beach light a campfire, drink, and talk about our respective future dreams—then return to the lab to continue developing hardware and software.

But as technology advances, since the problem of not having enough time still exists, we should make better use of the benefits technology brings. Through appropriate software tools, we can accelerate our creative efficiency and productivity—this is what fits the new lifestyle of modern people.

Below I will introduce 11 free online resources, covering five major categories of software: creation tools, noise makers, knowledge management, time management, and social media. As long as you make good use of these tools, you can squeeze out the mysteriously vanishing time you never knew you had (mysterious voice: but the extra time will surely be filled up by other things :twisted:).

Creation Tools

FocusWriter: This is an interesting document editing program. Its greatest advantage is simplicity—ultimate simplicity. The full-screen writing environment lets you focus on creating text. In addition, it has useful extra features such as word count, preset target word counts or times, a timer, and interesting themes and typing sound effects. For someone who wants to focus on creating, it is a recommended editor. (Download link)

Noise Makers

Coffitivity: Unlike the software above, which is meant to help you focus on work, this software was designed to create “disturbance.” Research shows that appropriate background white noise can give people better work efficiency and quality. Coffitivity provides several recordings of “coffee shop” background sounds and plays them continuously without interruption, making you feel as if you can focus on work at a table in a café (unfortunately, it lacks the head-turning motion when a pretty girl walks in). (Official website)

Knowledge Management

Google Keep: Although many people already make heavy use of note-taking software such as Evernote, OneNote, Pocket, Workflowy, ToDoList, and Wunderlist, I personally highly recommend Google Keep. This app can be used not only on Android but also as an extension built into the Google Chrome browser, allowing Keep to quickly share information between phone and computer via the cloud. Although it is small, it has everything—quick notes, to-do lists, photos, voice, and URL sharing—and you can even set reminder times. (Google Play Store)

Feedly: Since Google Reader shut down, this website and mobile app may be the most useful news and information RSS aggregation tool. (Whispering: although the decline of RSS seems to be a trend, you can still add my RSS (reference link).)

Time Management

Clear Focus: A time management software based on a countdown timer function. Within the set time, it turns off the phone’s incoming call alerts and network functions, letting users avoid outside distractions and focus on their work. Clear Focus provides rest-time settings, and through simple operations, work and rest time can be effectively quantified.

Do Nothing For 2 Minutes: The only function of this website is to give you a beautiful photo and nature music, and then within 2 minutes, asks you to do nothing but stare blankly (any mouse movement restarts the countdown). This is the time to reorganize your thoughts and relax. A brief rest can broaden your thinking.

IFTTT: “If this, then that” is the main spirit of this website’s proposal. It integrates a large number of social networking sites, platforms, and mobile apps on the market, allowing users to customize any event and the task to be executed once that event is triggered—similar to a conditional distribution system. Simply put, once condition A is triggered, action B is executed. This service requires authorizing a large number of website and platform permissions; its functions are vast, and you can waste a lot of time playing with it.

Lift: This is an app that helps you build “habits”. Through creating events—such as reading every day, exercising, drinking more water, and so on—you are reminded at preset times each day. At the same time, the app’s networking feature lets netizens with the same habit needs work toward their goals together through quantified data. Good habits can be built.

Google Calendar: Need a calendar and schedule management? Google Calendar already provides you with a very useful time management system. You can also create events so your team members can organize schedules together.

Social Media

Hootsuite: Integrates well-known social networking sites such as Facebook and Google+ into Hootsuite. The free version can manage 5 social accounts, saving the time spent switching between various social networking sites (mysterious voice: but if hacked, it’s five at once 8-O).

Unroll Me: A very useful inbox cleanup service. If you have also been wandering the internet for a long time, you have more or less subscribed to some websites’ newsletters. One day you get tired of them and want to unsubscribe, only to find that unsubscribing one by one is quite troublesome. That’s when you should use this service—the website lets you quickly unsubscribe from the website information you no longer want to receive. (Official website) (Mysterious voice: my method is much simpler—just mark all the newsletters you don’t want to receive as spam and send them straight to the trash.)