Productivity
Courses on personal systems: planning, note-taking, focus and the tooling around knowledge work.
Verified courses first, then the rest of the category
An MIT course about the tools a computer science degree assumes you will pick up on your own: the shell, the command line environment, editors, debugging and profiling, version control, and packaging. The 2026 run adds sessions on agentic coding and code quality. It is deliberately narrow in a useful way, teaching craft around programming rather than programming itself, and the materials are published free under a Creative Commons licence.
Verification record: TMC-2026-00002Verified Re-check due Direct course review
A rollout path addressed to whoever is introducing Asana across a team, which is an organisational problem as much as a software one. Free with a free account.
Not independently verified
A twenty-five minute course on Asana’s AI Teammates feature, covering how the tool delegates recurring work. Product-specific rather than a general AI course, and free with a free Academy account.
Not independently verified
A short Google specialization on practical AI use at work, sitting below its full AI certificate and intended as an orientation rather than a qualification.
Not independently verified
A badge path on applying AI features to everyday work inside Asana. Free with a free account, and product-focused rather than a general introduction to AI.
Not independently verified
At three hours the longest item on the Asana Academy index, a badge course on AI Studio. Free with a free account, and substantially deeper than its twenty-minute AI courses.
Not independently verified
A certificate path for Asana administrators, covering the configuration and governance an organisation-wide deployment needs. Free with a free account.
Not independently verified
A badge path covering Asana fundamentals, assessed rather than only watched. Free from Asana Academy with a free account.
Not independently verified
Microsoft Power Automate taught as seven modules, from a first flow through approval flows, working across multiple data sources, administration, AI Builder and process advisor. Stated prerequisites are familiarity with SharePoint, OneDrive and Excel. Free on Microsoft Learn.
Not independently verified
A written Bash tutorial covering shell scripting in short lessons with worked examples. Published free by W3Schools, with certification available separately.
Not independently verified
A twenty-minute course on using AI features for personal productivity inside Asana. Short and product-specific, free with a free account.
Not independently verified
Project management as a formal discipline, useful well beyond the people who hold the job title. Free from Saylor with a free certificate.
Not independently verified
Project management raised to portfolio and strategy level, above the introductory course. Free from Saylor, readable as a guest without an account, with a free certificate on completion.
Not independently verified
A badge path on running marketing campaigns inside Asana, which puts it closer to marketing operations than to general project work. Free with a free account.
Not independently verified
A short course series on building workflows in Asana, aimed at people past the basics but not yet automating. Free with a free account.
Not independently verified
Building data visualisations in Excel, aimed at the spreadsheet most analysis is still actually done in. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
Diagramming as a thinking tool for complex situations, at advanced level and unusually rigorous for a short course. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
The second diagramming course, moving from bounding a situation to mapping how its parts relate. Free from The Open University, startable without signing up, with a free statement of participation on completion.
Not independently verified
PwC on business presentations, which is unusual access to how a large professional services firm actually presents. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
A specialization taking Excel from essentials to advanced use for business analysis, in the tool most workplace analysis is still done in.
Not independently verified
The opening course of Macquarie’s widely taken Excel sequence, in the tool most workplace analysis still runs on. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
A written Excel tutorial covering the spreadsheet most business analysis is still done in. Short lessons in the W3Schools format, published free with no account required.
Not independently verified
Penn’s positive psychology specialization, from the department that largely founded the field. Delivered through Coursera; the browse listing publishes no price.
Not independently verified
The opening course of Google’s project management certificate, useful alone as an orientation to what the discipline involves before committing to the full programme.
Not independently verified
About this subject
Courses on getting work done: personal systems and time management, communication and writing at work, project management, collaboration and the tools that hold it together. This is the subject where the gap between knowing and doing is widest, because almost nothing here is intellectually difficult and almost all of it is difficult to sustain.
Guidance
Verification tells you that a course delivers the material it advertises. It cannot tell you whether a system will fit how you work. These are the things worth checking yourself.
A course on a task manager teaches an application. A course on planning, prioritising and finishing teaches a habit that outlives whichever application you use next. Tool courses are quicker to finish and easier to abandon, because a new tool without a method usually becomes a tidier version of the same backlog.
This field mixes genuine research on attention, habit and teams with a great deal of confident personal method. Both can help. What separates them is whether the material says where its claims come from and under what conditions they hold. Be wary of anything presenting a single routine as universally correct.
Personal productivity material assumes you control your own time. Project management, delegation and communication courses assume you are coordinating with others and often that you have some authority. Choosing the wrong one is the usual reason a course feels correct and changes nothing.
Some project management training leads towards a recognised certification, and some simply teaches the practice. These cost very different amounts and take very different time. Where a course is preparation for an exam that is bought separately, the listing says so rather than describing it as the certification itself.
Unlike most subjects in this directory, a good productivity course can be an hour long, because the content is a handful of ideas and the work is applying them. Length is a poor proxy for value in this category. What matters more is whether the course asks you to change something while you are taking it.
Standards
The published standard applies unchanged. These are the checks that tend to matter most in this subject.
A verification says nothing about whether a method will work for you. Personal systems depend on temperament, workload and how much control you have over your own time, none of which we assess.
Questions
Usually not. Many prepare you for an exam that is bought and sat separately. Where that is the case the listing says so rather than describing the course as the credential.
In this subject, often yes. The material is rarely complex and the work is in applying it. We record duration where a provider publishes it so you can judge before starting.
We do not answer that, and we publish no rankings. Different systems suit different amounts of control over your own schedule, which is why the guide above suggests deciding that first.
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