We Tip Heroes have busy lives. On a typical day, there may be so much to do that something slips through the cracks and falls by the wayside. If you’re anything like me, you need to constantly write things down and do some serious planning to be efficient in your day to day life. Easier said than done.
Staying on track and remaining task oriented can definitely be tough. Scribbling errant thoughts on yellow sticky notes or jotting household tasks down on the backs of receipts can just further clutter and confuse life (not to mention that it can be a huge waste of paper). Wouldn’t it be great to have some free resources that could help you through your daily quests for productivity? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have items filed away in one (or just a few) place(s) and always know exactly where lists, notes, etc. are? It turns out there are a lot of websites and software aimed at achieving these goals.
Whether you need help keeping track of a stringent schedule or prioritizing tasks and responsibilities, online help is readily available. I use a few of the following sites every single day, and trust me, my life is much less messy as a result. Take a look at these five free sites that may help you to easily organize your busy life, increase personal productivity and perhaps help you sleep better at night.
Not only does Google offer this free calendar service, but there are many other perks that come along with Google Calendars. Check out all of the cool organizational things that you can do:
- Share your schedules with friends, family and co-workers so that they know when you’re free or busy. Coordinate your schedules using an easy scheduling layout.
- If you are able to get Google Calendars on your phone, you can access your calendar while you’re on the go. Your phone will alert you with customized reminders about appointments and meetings. You can set it up so that you’ll receive email or text message alerts about your appointments, meetings and events.
- Use Google Calendars to send invitations and track RSVPs. Create events on your calendar so that guests can view them and RSVP by email or directly via Google Calendar.
- Set due dates for bills so you never miss a payment. Also, you can set reminders for when insurance policies and such are ending to give yourself time to shop around for new plans to save money.
- Use Calendars to show when certain fruits are in season or to alert you to anything else timely.
- View a read-only version of your calendar even when you’re offline.
This site is my personal favorite and helps me stay on task, both in my personal life and with my responsibilities at Tip Hero. This service eliminates the need for sticky notes and messy to-do lists jotted down on scrap paper. You can use this service to manage tasks in an enjoyable and organized way. Here’s how you can use Remember the Milk to make your day to day life easier.
- Manage Tasks: type in your tasks and set due dates for them. Keyboard shortcuts are available to make the process even quicker and easier. Tasks that are due “today” will appear bold so that you know what the most important tasks for the day are. You can also prioritize your tasks or estimate how long a task should take you to complete.
- Receive Reminders: set Remember the Milk to send you reminders about tasks via email, text, instant messenger, etc.
- Lists and Notes: create lists and notes that relate to certain tasks. For example, a task may be “grocery shopping.” Add a note in that task that lists the groceries that you need to get.
- Locate Your Tasks: use the map to find out where your tasks are located. You can find out which places are closest to your home or on your route for better time management.
- Work Together: share tasks and lists with your contacts. You can set up a way to remind other people, such as family members, to complete tasks or chores.
- Smart Phones: download the free Remember the Milk application and take your tasks anywhere!
Evernote gives you a unique email address to send things to. It’s completely secure and private. You can forward your emails, upload text, photos and voice recordings via a smart phone, drop in audio, images and files, etc. Evernote will take everything you drop into it and automatically organize it. They will process and index all items, making them easily searchable. Check out some of the uses you can put this incredible free service to:
- Take Notes: put your miscellaneous notes into Evernote for easy retrieval later. Don’t worry if you don’t remember the name of your document or if you’re at a different computer.
- Take Pictures: take pictures of anything you need and dump them in Evernote for later perusal or categorization. If you see a bottle of wine you like, take a picture of the label and put it in Evernote to find information on the wine later.
- Take Photos of Business Cards: instead of holding on to tons of business cards in your wallet, take a picture of your cards and send them to Evernote. Evernote will recognize the text of the card so if you’re later searching for a name, the card will come up in the results.
- Track Expenses: take pictures of receipts and send them to Evernote so you don’t lose track of your spending. This is a great way of backing up receipts if you lose those flimsy pieces of paper.
- Store Online Passwords: forward passwords and usernames of new accounts to Evernote so you never forget them.
- Convert Whiteboard Text to Digital Format: if you need to retain information from a white board at work or school, just take a picture of it and send it to Evernote. Evernote will digitally convert the text so that you can save the vital information for later perusal.
Stickies (for Windows Vista and Windows 7)
Are you a big fan of sticky notes? Do you stick them all over your home in the hopes that they will help you remember things? If so, then Stickies is the software for you. Stickies was created as a way to computerize those yellow sticky notes and cut down on the actual paper notes being stuck on the sides of your computer. Here’s what Stickies can do:
- Stickies supports text and images. You can customize each “sticky note” with different fonts, colors, and styles.
- Attach Stickies to websites, documents, folders, etc. so the note shows up when you’re on those particular screens.
- They can act as reminders. You can set notes to hide for a certain period of time and then wake up on specific days or weeks.
- They can stick to each other on a screen to keep them neatly lined up.
This is what Nirvana has to say about itself:
Nirvana is all about getting things out of your head and into a trusted system, then effortlessly drilling down to the thing you should be doing right now.
Check out the ways Nirvana can help you achieve a less stressful and more peaceful life through organization.
- Get all of your to-dos out of your head and into Nirvana. You can review and file them at your discretion. Nirvana will automatically pop to-dos into your Today list when the date approaches.
- Group tasks together into projects lists. Organize and sort tasks within your specific projects.
- Tag tasks with locations, priority, resources, time, etc. so you can figure out what task you should currently be focusing on.
- Quickly search across projects, tasks, notes and tags to find forgotten items. Nirvana will even let you re-file tasks from the search result list.
- Archive your tasks once you’ve finished them so that you can refer to them later.
Hopefully one or more of these will help you stay on track and better organize those busy lives of yours. Do you have another free site or free software that you use to increase productivity in your everyday life? We’d love to hear what works for you!
Photo credit: cogdogblog