Illustration: Gordon McAlpin

Sometimes, you’d like to optimize your work or home life rather than your PC. In other words, you want to fix your productivity. Here’s a list of our favorite free apps that improve life productivity. Don’t like our choices? Got some of your own? Tell us in the comments!

Wunderlist
A task management app that’s the digital equivalent of writing the five most important things to do in a notepad, but better.

RescueTime
Recover work productivity time and become more efficient at your job by blocking distractions and tracking time.

Resoph
A simple, fast note-taking application that syncs easily between multiple PCs and also syncs with Simplenote (see below).

Simplenote
A simple, fast note-taking application that syncs with phones, tablets and other PCs.

Skype
Video chat, text chat and Internet phone call everyone. The standard for all of the above.

Notepad++
A replacement for Windows’s Notepad app, this offers line-by-line editing with no garbage. Wonderful for HTML or plain text editing.

ActiveWords
When you type specific key words into any application and hit the space bar twice, substitute it with something else, launch a program automatically, or do a number of other things.

DropBox
Two gigabytes of space. It acts as a folder on your PC, but also syncs with your other PCs and can be shared with others. Must-have.

CrashPlan
Free, easy to use PC backup to your own machines and offsite to friends and family’s machines, too!

WinSplit Revolution
Snap, tile and resize many windows at the same time. Especially useful with high-resolution, widescreen monitors.