"Getting more organized" is one of the more common new year's goals, and like most resolutions, rarely achieved. While there's a place for "old school" organization methods - index cards, sticky notes, planners, and more- there are many cloud-based tools available to help us organize our lives, including:
Any.do - A calendar app for people who need tools to help them stay organized, such as location-based reminders, a notification that reminds you to preview what's on your agenda at the beginning of each day, and the ability to add in travel time to any notification before an event. You can connect Any.do to your stock calendar app to import existing events, and create one place for your tasks, goals, reminders, and schedule.
Bubbl.us is a visual thinking tool for structuring information, helping you to better understand, remember, and generate new ideas. Quickly and easily capture ideas from brainstorming sessions, making them as productive as possible.
Concur - Allows you to manage anything expense and travel related, wherever you are. You can capture receipts on your phone, add car mileage to an expense report, and generate reports that creates, itemizes and categorizes expense entries.
Expensify - A business system used to manage expenses, transactions, and money matters through real-time data and reporting processes. It offers a simple solution to record expenses by the information provided through photos of purchase receipts.
G-Suite - The group of powerful organizational tools offered by Google. The suite includes Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and sites. G Suite includes 15GB of free cloud storage, so your files are available across a variety of platforms and devices.
Hootsuite - A social media management platform that supports network integration for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. This allows posting across networks from a single platform. Hootsuite also provides a valuable library of information about social media.
OmniFocus - A personal task manager that lets you create projects and tasks, then organize them into to-do lists. The program uses concepts and techniques from the "Getting Things Done" method, and integrates across devices.
Pocket - Captures content from articles, videos, and other media from various online sources into a consolidated news feed with only the topics you care about. access the information and inspiration you need in a single location, without surfing through irrelevant content.
Scannable - Allows you to quickly scan business cards, meeting notes, documents, and more with your smartphone camera, then save or share the scans. The app also connects to LinkedIn for added networking context.
What are your favorite tools for getting, and staying, organized?
Organized People:
- Plan their day the night before.
- Keep a to-do list.
- Spend at least 30 focused minutes addressing their email inbox.
- Are goal-oriented.
- Don't let perfect get in the way of good.
- Have a "do it now" attitude.
- Know when they do their best work and plan accordingly.
- Take time to de-stress.
The views, information, or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Citizens State Bank and its affiliates, and Citizens State Bank is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of any information contained in this article or items hyperlinked within. This is for informational purposes and is no way intended to provide legal advice.