The Best Daily Routine Tracking Apps for Busy Professionals: Stay on Track and Improve Your Personal and Professional Time Management with These Tools

Time is your only real asset. It’s the only thing you own, although it might seem like you own very little of it or have very little control over it in certainin stances. Despite massive amounts of automation, new technologies, and the rise of AI, we constantly feel as though we have less time, not more.

That’s particularly true for busy professionals. Whether you’re a contractor, a CEO, a solopreneur, a member of the C suite, a manager, or a traditional business owner, chances are good you feel pressed for time regularly.

The good news is that, while that time crunch is real, it might not be due to what you think it is. Most of us assume it’s because we just have so many demands on our time (and we do). However, our real lack of time often stems from poor daily routines and bad time management skills.

Time management and why you probably don’t do it well

Time management is a critical skill, but too few people take active steps to develop solutions to their time crunches. According to Zippia:

• 82% of people lack any kind of system to manage their time. However, spending just 10 to 12 minutes a day can save up to two hours.

• The average employee spends over half their time each day doing low-value tasks. On top of this, they’re interrupted around 11 times an hour (roughly every six minutes).

• 80% of people feel that their work is out of control daily. Even leaders are not immune, with most spending around 72% of their total work week in meetings rather than on high-value tasks.

As you can see, poor time management isn’t just for employees. Managers, CEOs, and business owners also struggle to tame time-related issues. So, how do you do it? It’s really all about cultivating better habits and breaking bad ones. That’s where a routine tracking app can be invaluable.

What are routine tracking apps, anyway?

Routine tracking apps do pretty much what you think they do. They track your routines throughout the day and then surface patterns and insights. You can use them to:

• Identify good and bad habits in your time usage

• Spot time sinks that can be eliminated

• Change bad time management habits for the better

But how do they track you? Most of the apps in our list require you to enter your activities manually. For instance, you might want to build better habits related to health and wellness by going for a daily run. You’d enter your time and mileage each day and then track your progress over time.

Some apps will reward you for streaks – long periods of consistent activity in your chosen tasks. Others offer gamification and can make creating positive routines more fun. That might be through leaderboards, head-to-head competitions, or something else.

Many of the apps we’ve looked at also let you export your information so that it’s more easily digestible, or they break it down in chart or graph form, showing you trends over time so you can make changes where necessary.

Ultimately, all of these apps are designed to do one thing: help you analyze the time you spend doing various things and then develop positive routines that help ensure you’re spending your time as wisely as possible. The benefits include:

• More free time

• Being more productive at work and home

• Better health and fitness

• Better mental health and alertness

• Improved task management

The top 5 habits of the most successful people

Although there are several different ways that people set themselves up for success, there are habits that have proven, time and again, to be helpful in this vein. Some of the most successful people in the world all had similar routines, or at least some of the same habits in their day-to-day lives and business activities.

So, what are these big habits and why are they so impactful? Here’s what you need to know. Making your bed every morning can help you feel ready and give you the sense that you have a clean slate to work from, helping launch you from the starting point of success.

Waking up early can help your brain prepare for the day. This can also give people the chance to prepare for the day while others are still sleeping, which gives people more freedom and creativity.

Exercise is a routine that everyone should have. Even a simple walk every morning can change the mood of your entire day. Even just a few jumping jacks or a little yoga could go a long way. Taking a cold shower can jumpstart your body, increase blood flow, and help release dopamine. Eating breakfast gets your body’s metabolism moving, wakes up your brain, and can give your body the energy it needs to run the day.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and these may not always work as effectively for everyone. Winston Churchill, for example, was notorious for sleeping until 11 AM every day. Dolly Parton, on the other hand, prefers to getup around 3 AM and spends most of the morning writing songs and doing other creative work before the world is even awake — it works for some, but maybe not for everyone.

The best thing that you can do? Give it a try — if it works, great. If these habits don’t help, then cross them off your list and find the ones that do.

The best daily routine tracking apps for busy professionals

Below, you’ll find our top picks for professionals looking to reclaim lost time and retake control of their lives through better time management. We’ve also included a list of runners-up at the bottom.

StickK

This productivity app gets a nod because it was developed by the behavioral economists at Yale, and it creates plenty of ways to stay inspired starting with being able to bet on yourself. You can also assign friends and family to check on you and see how far your progress has gotten. You will enjoy the user-friendly interface and the easy-to-set goals and habit-tracking tools. It’s all based on the principles of Nudge Theory and other similar research projects.

StickK has communities where you can interact with other users and track your progress, find support, and more. It has a “My Campaigns” feature where you can track your habits and goals, including marking milestones and checking them off when they’re complete. This app has a lot of features that make it useful and help it work, but the fact that your money is on the line is often a great incentive for many.

The StickK app is free to use. The only money you’ll spend is on betting for yourself and then failing to complete your routines or meet your goals.

Habitify 

This tool offers a simple interface with plenty of features that will help you get things back on track in less time. Habitify will present you with a list of daily habits, let you check them off, and make sure that they get done. It will also allow you to create goals and monitor your progress with an impressive selection of charts and graphs.

The overly simplified app is all about forming good habits. The idea is that if it’s easy, you won’t have any reason not to do it. There’s also a Dark Mode, for those who are into that, and it’s free for anyone to use as long as you don’t need the premium features. And, if you do decide to upgrade, it’s less than a good cup of coffee to enjoy Premium access.

Habitify is available for Android, iOS, and Mac, and is free for 15 check-ins per week. For more, it’s $4.99 for premium membership. There’s also an app for Apple Watch and a Home Screen widget for iPhone.

Habitica

We like Habitica because it does one thing that today’s users love: it gamifies habits and habit-tracking. The app works by helping you level the game as you complete your habits and meet your goals. For those who enjoy RPGs, this app is a lot of fun. It's not for the basic user who just wants to track routines, but for those who need something a little different that gets them motivated, this could be a fun way to go.

The best feature? If you fail to complete your habits and tasks, or you miss a goal or deadline, your character will lose some abilities and take on damage. As any gamer will tell you, getting that health back is far harder than keeping it in the first place. There’s even the option to game with others so that you can get inspired and have a community of people to support you.

Plus, Habitica is free for all of the core features, with a premium version that has bonus features for $4.99 per month.

Me+

If you’re an iPhone or Mac user, you might consider Me+ Daily Routine Planner. The app is built on Aristotle’s famous quote about routines, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit!”. The app offers quite a few tools for anyone hoping to create more balance in their work and home life and build better habits while reclaiming their control over their time.

One of the most interesting features here is the daily routine planner. You can decide what habits you want to cultivate, and the app will prompt you to stay engaged with them. There’s also a habit tracker that lets you analyze what you do and where you spend your time. The mood and progress tracker is a nice addition, as it allows you to gauge the effect of various tasks on your mood (and vice versa), as well as your progress toward building better habits.

Me+ lets you focus on a wide range of habits, too. Those include self-care, like exercise or meditation, but also professional habits, like spending too much time in meetings or getting sucked into your inbox when you need to be handling important matters.

Best of all, Me+ is free to use, although the in-app purchases mean that most people will need to pay at least something to get the most out of it.

Our runners-up

There’s a wide world of routine tracking and habit-building apps out there. Some of the other contenders you might consider include the following:

• Habit Tracker

• HabitShare

• Productive

• Steaks

Make delegation a habit when you enlist the help of Smith.ai

The key to success, whether professional or personal, is the cultivation of the right habits. When you ditch time-wasting habits and build new ones, you create routines that help you become more productive and less stressed. That benefits your business, but also your mental and physical health.

While time management might be one of the most overlooked skills today, delegation is equally important to master. It allows you to focus on high-value tasks while delegating equally important but repetitive or non-creative duties to someone else. For instance, answering phone calls, scheduling appointments, and taking payments. Those are essential business functions, but not things busy professionals should be spending their precious time on. That’s where Smith.ai can help.

Our live virtual receptionists can answer calls and other communications 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We can book appointments, vet leads, and even handle outbound calls to improve speed-to-lead, all while providing you with call recordings and critical metadata.

Schedule your Live Chat consultation now to discuss a custom solution to manage your mission-critical solutions. You can also reach us at hello@smith.ai or (650) 709-2975 with questions.