Does this sound familiar? You’re standing in the middle of the grocery store, staring into your cart and frantically trying to remember what else you have to buy. You know you should have made a list, but you got distracted by a client and suddenly, as you’re staring into the contents of your cart you gasp. You gasp because you suddenly remember that, even though you finished it way faster than you thought you would, you forgot to send that finished work project off to your boss before you left the office for the day…and you left your work phone in your desk.
There are just too many details. Keeping track of all of them in your head just isn’t going to work anymore.
We all wish that we could be more organized, both professionally and personally. We long to be able to remember exactly what we need at the store and to never miss deadlines or lose important documents. Luckily, there are apps for that. The trick, really, isn’t deciding that you’re ready to use an app to help organize your life. The trick is finding the right app for the job.
Sometimes finding the right app is easy. There are organizational and cloud apps for almost every type of profession out there. Musicians, for example, can use Music Journal to help them track their compositions, practice time and pieces which pieces need the most work. Construction companies have been using cloud-based document management software by companies like Procore to organize documents safely.
Personal life apps, on the other hand, are another story. There are so many out there, figuring out which app will work best for you is really more a matter of taste than it is anything else. Even so, here are some of the most popular apps that you can use to help you track your details.
Remember the Milk
Remember the Milk is often considered the “industry standard†for personal detail organization. It’s great because in addition to being available for all of the different operating systems and devices, it also syncs across all of those devices. The app is fairly basic but if you don’t need a lot of bells and/or whistles, this is a great place to start working on organizing all of your details. If nothing else, it will help you figure out what you do and don’t want in other apps.
Evernote
Evernote has gotten a lot of recognition and attention over the last couple of years or so. It’s a subscription based service (there is a free option for people who don’t need a lot of detail tracking or who simply want to keep some lists in a single place) that serves as a single catch all for everything. It’s basically an organizational app. The great thing about Evernote is that, in addition to keeping track of simple lists, it also helps you track and organize research and notes across a variety of projects and ideas. It also integrates with a variety of other apps if you really want to turbocharge your organization metrics.
Trello
Trello is sort of like a virtual bulletin board. You set up cards for different projects and then organize them according to priority. You can add notes and other stuff to each card. It’s also possible to invite other people to a board or card, which allows you to better organize your group projects. Some people also really like basecamp because it offers a lot of the same functionality.
These are just some of the apps that you can use to help better organize your life. It’s also worth noting that, for some people, apps aren’t really the way to go. You might feel more comfortable using a notebook that you can divide into different sections. Some people use both. Remember: if one method doesn’t work, another will! Good luck!
