Work Smarter: 5 iPhone Apps to Increase Meeting Productivity
Few people enjoy business meetings, and most of us spend more than half our working day in one meeting after another. However, there are iPhone apps that can make those meetings a little more tolerable and a lot more productive. Some could possibly add a bit of clandestine fun. The following five iPhone apps can help fight the general feelings of malaise that a meeting can invoke.
Mental Note
The iPhone’s virtual keyboard is one of the best input methods available on smartphones, but there are times when you’re in a meeting and want a simple pad and pen. Mental Note transforms your iPhone into a digital notepad allowing you to write notes and include drawings. Notes can be transferred from the app in PDF format. It’s a bit pricey at $2.99, but the bright side is the money you’ll save on pens and notebooks.
Toodledo
Many meetings comprise of breaking down projects into manageable tasks that are divided among the team. However, it can be easy to lose track of all the things on your to-do list during the hustle and bustle of the work week. Creating a list is a great way to make sure you stay in top of your work load. Toodledo is a $.99 app that tracks and organizes your to-do list. Users can also create a free account on toodledo.com that can be synced with the so all your tasks can be viewed online.
While Toodledo is a great app for tracking assigned tasks, there are times when there is so much information being disseminated that you can’t type it into your iPhone. Dragon Diction is a great free app to use for recording information and having it transcribed to text. You can then text or email the transcript to yourself so that you can update your task list at your own pace.
Voice Memos
Yes, this is the built-in voice recorder app that comes with your iPhone. I’m surprised that many iPhone users aren’t aware that they have a powerful free tool to record meetings. You can use this app to record entire meetings and then send the audio file via email or MMS.
Stress Fighter
We’ve all been in meetings when someone said or something to us that caused us to see red. Unfortunately, business settings are not the place to go tit for tat. When situations like these arise, it’s important to have a means to blow off steam. Stress Fighter is that stress reliever. This $0.99 app can come in handy when you return to your desk. Users simply upload a picture of the offending person and use the app to punch, kick, and use a variety of tools on your antagonist to reduce your stress level. After going a few rounds with this app, your office antagonist will be perplexed when you walk pass them with a big smile on your face!
There are many tons of apps out there to help alleviate the stress and boredom of the office meeting. If you’ve found other apps to be useful for meetings, please share them in the comments section!
Category: Apps | Tags: apps, dragon dictation, iPhone, meetings, mental note, productivity, Stress Fighter, toodledo, voice memos
About the Author Anjuan Simmons is an emerging technology consultant and freelance technology consultant currently working as a Director at Adverlyze, an online marketing strategy company. Anjuan has previously worked for Accenture and Deloitte. He has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Texas A&M University. He can be found on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/anjuan and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/anjuan.
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Thanks for this list. That's great when apps can be not only for entertainment and fun but for some serious business or educational purposes such as meetings.