Stay organised with these 4 digital tools

If you set your goals at the beginning of the year, that’s great but let’s be honest that’s only half the battle! Now the trick is to stay organised to be on track with your plans and schemes.

My office desk use to be full of sticky notes everywhere, notebooks with endless tasks to do and thick calendars with scribbles I could not even read after a while! One day I realized that it takes me ages to organise the sticky notes, re-write my to-do lists to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything and go through my calendar notes to remember key information.

Simply, it was taking me more time to get organised than completing any of my work tasks.

Now my office desk is my laptop and me….I went digital!

Here are my 4 favourite tools that keep me organised:

PODIO

If you like me are dreaming about a personal assistant but deep down you know that it’s not going to happen soon, you will love this program. It is project management software that is a blank slate waiting for you to design it. You have an internal app store which allows you to choose any function you wish: CRM system, tasks to complete, calendar, finance, PR etc. And it is like your personal assistant because you can set reminders to be “kicked” to complete a tasks or phone a client on the day you promised to do so. You can even easily delegate tasks to other people and automate a range of processes like tasks repeating themselves on a schedule or reporting.

TOGGL

Do you actually know how much time you spend on certain tasks? I would always say that I am working very hard but where exactly my time and focus went – who knew? Not anymore – I started to measure it. Toggl is like your timesheet but automated with an in-built timer tool and reporting that analyses your time usage. Try it for a month – it is so interesting to see where your time goes! It is also very useful for those who do need the time statistics: consultants to keep timesheets for their jobs, business owners who are deciding which tasks to outsource or professionals who simply want to show to their boss that they really cannot take on another responsibility unless they cut out something else from their schedule.

EVERNOTE

I get random ideas in random places all the time. In the past I used to scribble them down and… later loose them. If I found something interesting on web – I would bookmark every page and then end up with 1000 favourite websites and with no chance of finding anything quickly. Evernote allows me to store all my ideas, images and interesting pages in one place and create categories for them. It’s like my brainstorming wall.

TRELLO

If you have several projects going on and you would like to create a visual, digital wall of all of them with certain tasks assigned to each project – Trello is great for that. This is a program that allows you to get as visual as you wish with your tasks being colour coded. It reminds me of playing solitaire – dragging cards (tasks) and arranging them in columns of stacks depending on category, importance or deadline.

The above tools are very useful and free of charge if using the basic components. They are also accessible via your phone so always with you when you are on the go.

Give it a go: embrace technology and stay organised!

Written by K Mitura