The term productivity app needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Consider the productivity king of the Microsoft Office suite, Excel. Seldom does an application come along that permits you to do more than this program. Problem is, once you get sucked in to perfecting an Excel spreadsheet, you can spend the better part of an hour or two noodling with formulas, fields, and formatting. Now, is that productive? Many times, no, because sometimes the more variables you have at your disposal, the more tempting it is to change them for fun.

Next, consider solitaire. Not a productivity app per se, but if the guy down the hall who’s always immersed in a hand is the one coming up with the great ideas, maybe he’s on to something.

Sort of splitting the difference between a spreadsheet app and a flat-out game, Internet Anagram Server takes any word or phrase you enter and rearranges the letters to form new words. How is that productive? Say you’re trying to come up with a meaningful name for your new company, and you want it to incorporate the names of your darling children, Lisa and Hector.  Enter those names, and instantly 230 alternatives appear. Scanning the list, you see options like “Its Cholera” and “Roach Tiles.” Probably not viable picks. But then you scan the list further and the choices get better: “Toil Search,” “Oracle Hits,” and “Last Heroic.”Let’s say you pick one of those three. You can decide to let the derivation of the name be your little secret. Or, you can market it for all it’s worth by telling your investors and customers that your company name is an amalgam of your kids’ names. It may not get you all your funding, but it’s a great story that will become part of your brand.

By the way, one possible anagram of with beans = new habits.  We’re just saying.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons