5 Tools That Can Help You Streamline Your Workload

Written by Bits Lovers on 31 Mar 2022

5 Tools That Can Help You Streamline Your Workload

Managing workload is one of those things that sounds simple until you’re three hours into a Tuesday and nothing on your list is checked off. I’ve been there. Over the years I’ve tried a handful of tools that actually helped me get out of my own way, and I’m sharing the ones I keep coming back to.

Trello

Trello is a kanban-style project manager. You get boards, lists, and cards. You can drag cards between lists, assign them to team members, add due dates, attachments, and labels. That’s the whole thing.

I like it because nothing is hidden. You see the board, you see what’s in progress, you see what’s done. For small teams or solo projects it’s as effective as anything five times the price. The free tier gives you enough to run a personal workflow or a small team without hitting a paywall right away.

The browser and mobile apps both work. If you’ve used a physical sticky-note board, you’ll feel right at home.

Features

Boards - Each board is a project. You can have as many boards as you want.
Lists - Columns within a board. “To do”, “In progress”, “Done” is the usual setup.
Cards - Individual tasks. Add descriptions, due dates, attachments, labels.
Drag and drop - Move cards between lists. It sounds minor but it makes updating status fast.
Collaboration - Invite people to a board, assign cards, leave comments. Works for remote teams.

Pixlr Editor

Pixlr Editor is a browser-based image editor. It started as a Flash tool back in the day and evolved into something that actually holds up. You get layers, masks, filters, brushes, and the usual crop/resize/rotate controls. It handles things like brightness and contrast adjustments, color balance, and basic retouching with the clone stamp or healing brush.

I don’t think anyone is claiming it replaces Photoshop, but for quick edits, resizing product images, or tweaking something on the fly without opening a desktop app, it works. It also has AI-powered tools now: background removal, generative fill, an image generator. Those came in more recently.

There’s a free tier. You can use it without an account. The premium tier adds more AI credits and removes ads.

Features

Layer-based editing - Photoshop-style layers and masks if you need them.
Filters and effects - Blur, noise reduction, color correction, and a bunch of one-click presets.
Drawing tools - Pen tool for vectors, brushes, text overlays.
AI tools - Background removal, generative fill, image generation. Added in the last couple of years.
Free tier - Basic editing without an account.

Kompresjpg.com

Kompresjpg.com compresses images. You drag a JPG or PNG into the browser, pick your target size or quality level, and download the result. No signup, no ads in the free version, works on any device.

For web developers or anyone publishing image-heavy content, this is a daily-use tool. A 4MB photo becomes 300KB without obvious quality loss at reasonable compression levels. I can’t tell you where the quality threshold is for your use case, but it’s fast enough that you can just try different settings and see what works.

Supports JPG, PNG, JPEG, and JFIF up to 50MB. You can choose compression by percentage or target file size.

Features

Format support - JPG, PNG, JPEG, JFIF.
Size limits - Up to 50MB per file.
Drag and drop - Drop from your desktop or pull from a URL.
Target size options - Pick a percentage or a specific target like 100KB or 500KB.
No signup - Compression works without creating an account.

RescueTime

RescueTime runs in the background on your computer or phone and tracks what you use. It categorizes time as productive, neutral, or distracting and gives you a daily breakdown. Over time you start seeing patterns, like realizing you thought you spent two hours on email but actually spent forty minutes and the rest was tab-switching.

It has goal tracking if you want it. You can set a target like “spend at least four hours in coding applications” and get an alert when you’re falling behind. The premium version adds website blocking and project-based time tracking.

I’ve used it on and off for years. The free tier is useful enough. The paid tier adds the features you’d want if you’re serious about understanding where your day goes.

Features

Automatic tracking - Runs in the background, logs application and website usage.
Productivity scores - Categories are tagged as productive, neutral, or distracting.
Daily reports - See where your time went each day.
Goal setting - Set targets for productive time and get alerts.
FocusTime (premium) - Blocks distracting sites during work sessions.
Project tracking (premium) - Assign time to specific projects.

Hemingway Editor

The Hemingway Editor checks writing for clarity. Paste in some text and it highlights sentences that are too long, too complex, or using passive voice. It gives you a readability grade level. You can then rewrite on the left side and see the improvements on the right.

I use this when I’m writing anything longer than a paragraph and I can’t tell why it feels off. Usually it’s sentences that are long for no reason or a string of passive constructions I didn’t notice while writing. The highlighting makes it obvious.

The free version is the web app. The desktop app (Hemingway Editor Plus) adds a few extras like a dictionary, a built-in export, and a spell checker that actually works. There’s a free two-week trial for Plus.

Features

Readability grade level - Shows what reading level your writing targets.
Highlights hard sentences - Long or complex sentences get flagged yellow or red.
Passive voice detection - Marks passive constructions so you can rewrite them.
Simple word suggestions - Flags unnecessarily complex words and suggests simpler alternatives.
Free online version - Full editor in the browser at no cost.
Plus desktop app - Spell checker, export options, dictionary. Free trial available.

Wrapping Up

These five tools cover different parts of the workday:

Trello for tracking what needs to get done
Pixlr Editor for quick image work without installing software
Kompresjpg.com for squeezing images down to web-friendly sizes
RescueTime for understanding where your hours actually go
Hemingway Editor for writing that doesn’t make people work to read it

I don’t use all of them every day, but each one solves a specific problem I’ve actually had. If any of them sound useful, try the free version first and see if it fits your workflow before paying for anything.