Software can have a very high cost-benefit ratio to increase your productivity. Sometimes, you just need to install it (v. low cost) and you get a lot more productive. The recommendations are mainly based on the philosophy of Cal Newport (cf. Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and A World Without Email).

Here's my ITN ranking of software I use (everything is pretty much free- the cost is about setup cost and maintenance):

Software	Benefit	Cost	Neglected	Score
TabWrangler	3	3	3	27
Stretchly	3	3	3	27
Crackbook revival	3	2	3	18
Unroll.me	3	1	3	18
ColdTurkey	3	2	3	18
Blank New Tab Page	1	3	3	9
Simplify Gmail	1	2	3	6
Google Suite (Gmail, Drive)	3	2	1	6
Vimium	2	1	2	4
ProWritingAid	1	1	3	3

1. TabWrangler: Automatically closes inactive tabs and saves them to make it easy to get them back.

1. Importance: You open more tabs than you can process, which creates a lot of cognitive load and feeling of overwhelm. Every tab you open creates an open loop in your mind, and if you cling to the impossible notion of getting around 'processing' them at some point, you'll feel bad. Rather than trying to close all tabs manually or declaring bankruptcy and closing them all at once with the bad nagging feeling of missing an important tab, TabWrangler closes them one by one if they're inactive. Using TabWrangler is a different philosophy of browsing. The idea is to 'let go' and trust yourself that you'll return to the important tabs, and you can also rest assured that TabWrangler keeps a list of recently closed tabs (in practice, I almost never look at this list). I've used TabWrangler for years and it says it has automatically closed 25k tabs or 20% of all opened tabs for me, so it doesn't make sense to say how much time it saved me, rather it has improved all time spent on my computer.
2. Tractability: Free Chrome Extension, works very well. You don't need to do much setup, just add sites that you never want closed to the auto-lock (for me that's ​​google.com so it doesn't ever close Google docs that I'm currently working on). You want to go very liberal at first and let TabWrangler keep open maybe 9 tabs per window, only close them after 9 mins of inactivity, then increase gradually to 5 tabs and 4 mins of inactivity. Over time you'll learn to occasionally pin an important tab and use the keyboard shortcuts to reopen a recently closed tab that TabWrangler has closed. The idea is to never notice it being disruptive (closing tabs too quickly) and have it fade into the background.
3. Neglectedness: Only 50k+ users know about it but I think everybody should use it

2. Stretchly: The break time reminder app 

1. Importance: Stretchly is a cross-platform open source app that reminds you to take (micro)breaks when working on your computer. It blocks your computer in regular intervals and displays surprisingly good and varied suggestions of what to do (mostly stretches etc.). Back problems and RSI are a big problem amongst knowledge workers and I think micromovements are helpful (source), because being very sedentary and staying in the same position for a long time can't be good. Stretchly might save you some time, because my rule for every break is to step back for a moment and ask myself if what I'm working on currently is really important or if I've gone down a rabbit hole. But the crucial benefit might be slightly improved (mental) health, for the small cost of installing free software.
2. Tractability: Easy to install, works very well. The idea is to never notice it much and have it fade into the background. Again, you don't want the software to be too disruptive or annoying to your workflow, but rather not ever notice it much and have it fade into the background. The default settings are too much, so set minibreaks to 10 secs every 15 mins and long breaks for 1min every 1h. During the 10 second breaks, readjust your position, do a little stretch and ask yourself if what you're doing is important. During the 1h breaks, get away from your desk to move around a bit. The software is free, but incidentally the developer used to volunteer in Ukraine, which you can donate to here.
3. Neglectedness: 200k downloads

3. Crackbook revival: Adds a small delay to addictive websites.

1. Importance: Silicon Valley geniuses with physics PhDs and infinite compute are designing addictive products to compete for and hijack your attention to get you to buy stuff. The faster their sites, the more you buy from them: For Amazon, a 100ms latency penalty implies a 1% sales loss; for Google, an additional delay of 400ms in search responses reduces search volume by 0.74%. Undercutting a competitor's latency by as little as 250ms is considered a competitive advantage in the industry [source].

To counteract this, use Crackbook to add a delay to addictive sites (like FB), with the delay increasing on every visit. This is better than straight blocking as you won't just disable the block. Rather you slowly decondition and wean yourself off addictive sites. Crucially, you should not only add traditional time wasting sites like FB to your list but also sites you use for 'work' like Slack, Gmail, or those that are 'important to keep in touch' like 'Messenger, WhatsappWeb or Twitter'- the idea is not to block them but check them less. The same goes for online shopping especially Amazon- look through your previous orders and see how many products you've bought that have truly enriched your life and how much of it was just retail therapy and that you don't use anymore.

On the flipside, consider buying a new computer and generally use low latency periphery for work to make it more fun.

1. It's hard to say how many hours Crackbook saves but perhaps it adds up to 100s or even 1000s of hours less doom-scrolling.

2. Tractability: Free Chrome Extension, works very well. Like above, start slow with a very short delay and work your way up. The default setting will be too much at first, so start with the following settings: 'Delay junk sites for 0.5 seconds. Increase the delay by 0.02 seconds after every block. Reset the delay every day to 0.5 seconds.' The idea is to never notice it much and have it fade into the background, and perhaps increase the delay over time. Never uninstall this extension if you're annoyed by it because 'you really need to send a bunch of emails today'- only decrease the delay. If you think that you can't have a 200ms delay for Gmail you're kidding yourself). It's important that the delay increases but doesn't go to high so that it gets really annoying and you uninstall the Crackbook.
3. Neglectedness: 2k+ users

4. Unroll.me / Gmail native list of subscriptions : list of all your subscription emails and unsubscribe easily from whatever you don't want. Follow this guide to get to inbox zero.

1. Importance: Everyone is trying to get you to subscribe to their mailing list to sell you stuff. Drip marketing refers to sending a slow and steady series of emails based on certain actions. If you're subscribed to the mailing list of a big company you take part of an experiment (A/B testing) that measures how many people open an email, stay to click on things, and eventually buy things. Once subscribed, few people unsubscribe and so they have your attention forever. That's why companies with a lot of mailing list subscribers are very valuable. You should unsubscribe from almost everything- perhaps have very few select newsletters that are very relevant to you and the rest of the time only selectively seek out information if you actually need it. I also created the following filter in Gmail: ‘category:purchases OR category:promotions -> Skip inbox’ and haven’t looked back.
2. Tractability: Unroll.me is free and works very well. Login with your mail provider and it'll automatically list all newsletters you're subscribed to and let you unsubscribe from them. This will take about 30 minutes but then save you lots of attention. Unroll.me's main feature is that it let's you bundle the newsletter subscriptions into one roll up email that comes only once a week, but I don't actually use that feature.
3. Neglectedness: 32.5K Ratings

5. ColdTurkey: The Toughest Website Blocker on the Internet

1. Importance: Wasting time online is bad, see above, and ColdTurkey is very hard to get around. You can't easily uninstall the software, the Chrome Extension or use a different browser. It's really good and better than other software I've tried.
2. Tractability: Again it won't take you long to install and there's a free trial and the full version is not expensive relative to the productivity gains, but it takes some willpower to block a time wasting site like reddit for extended say months or weeks. Experiment with blocking websites that you won't need for work, like Youtube for a whole week or month and see how you feel about it. You might also experiment with blocking email in the morning.
3. Neglectedness: Many people know about blocking apps, but perhaps fewer people know that ColdTurkey is tougher to get around.

6. Blank New Tab Page: free and easy to install, set-and-forget Chrome Extension that prevents the distracting 'Google search' page from showing up when you open a new tab.
7. Simplify Gmail: Browser extension that makes Gmail's design much more minimalist and less distracting. Trial it for free- if you like it it's worth paying $2 a month.
8. Vimium: free Chrome extension for keyboard shortcuts to navigate the web. Many people swear by being a keyboard ninja, and though it's a little overrated, it's still somewhat useful. Admittedly the learning curve is a bit steep, and it takes time to remember and use the keyboard shortcuts. Start by remembering the most useful function: hit 'f' to highlight all links on the current page, which you can then navigate to by typing the corresponding letter, without the need for the mouse. The other shortcut to remember is 'shift+?'-which opens the help menu if you want to remind yourself of the other shortcuts. You also need to exclude some sites from it like Google Docs, or Gmail, when setting it up because it interferes.

Consolidating inboxes

I try to keep the number of inboxes I check as small as possible, to the point of sending myself an email for every todo. I do that with this bookmarklet (chrome://bookmarks, add bookmark name 'New Todo') that sends the current URL to your email:

javascript:window.location='Gmail due by%5D&to=hauke.hillebrandt@gmail.com&body=%27+window.location

I also don't use bookmarks (because that's another inbox, or Google Reminders (another inbox), but rather calendar events).

To disable the power connected sound on a Mac, you can use a Terminal command. Open Terminal and enter: defaults write com.apple.PowerChime ChimeOnNoHardware -bool true;killall PowerChime.