It’s the holidays, and while everything is merry and bright around you — your productivity is starting to suffer.

It started with a little bit of online shopping for gifts… and then your clients sent over some holiday cookies… and now there have been multiple days that you’ve completely lost to a myriad of distractions. You’ve got to get your act together if you want to start the New Year on the right track.

But how?

In this post, we’ll look at a few tools to help you stay productive this holiday season.

Social Media Scheduling Tool

If you need to buckle down on a big project during the holiday season and want to relieve some of the distraction that's coming up with constant social media content, it might be time to lean on social media scheduling tools. Resources like Buffer, Hootsuite, and IFTTT can help you plan out regular content so that your main job is handling engagement rather than posting in real-time.

Price: Many offer free versions with paid upgrades available

StayFocused

You can use StayFocused to test the Pomodoro technique, which helps you work on projects for 25-minute sprints at a time (without distractions.) That means fewer interruptions and more solid, productive workdays in which you crush your to-do list.

Within the app, you can do things like:

Price: Free – $34.99/month, based on features (their PRO account has 14-day free trial)

SaneBox

Lots of people struggle to reach inbox zero — especially during the holidays when businesses turn up the email marketing. Sanebox lets you organize your inbox so that it’s much more easy to sort through, and so you can get right to the messages that really matter. Plus, this tool helps you remember to follow up on messages and to delay message sends, along with many other helpful features.

Price: Packages range from $7-36/month (14-day free trial available)

Unroll.Me

Speaking of email — want to just get rid of email marketing messages that you’re not reading completely? Unroll.Me lets you unsubscribe from lists quickly and efficiently so that your inbox can become manageable again. In a matter of seconds, you can drastically reduce the amount of noise in your inbox (so you can stop sorting through messages and get back to work.)

Price: Free

Zirtual

If you’re tired of being stressed out by daily details — it might be the time for you to consider hiring a virtual assistant. Zirtual lets you find and hire a US-based virtual assistant who can take care of all of the little tasks that eat away at your productivity. This way, you can spend more time with your family during the holidays or only focus on the things that require your unique business brain. Leave the rest to someone else.

Price: Plans begin at $499/month

Asana

Rather than wasting time digging through your inbox and emailing team members back and forth, you can use a tool like Asana to bring projects into a centrally located hub of activity — online. Chat features, calendars, and progress tracking free you from the burden of email and make your team’s communication much simpler so you can be more productive (even during the hectic holiday season.)

Price: Based on size of team. (Teams of less than 15 people are free!)

Use These Tools to Stay Productive

Is it okay for you to take a break and enjoy a fruit basket every now and then? Absolutely! But you can also use these handy tools to relieve yourself of the guilt that comes after a month of less-than-desirable productivity.

Anything else you’d add to this list that could help other business owners stay productive?