I’ll learn and use anything if it makes me a more efficient person. I’m passionate about things that make me work harder, faster, stronger. Here are my top three things to staying organised and on top of things:
© Tash Jayasinghe
1. Buy a moleskin and carry it everywhere.
Write a to-do list for today and for tomorrow. This way, you’ll feel less overwhelmed than if you wrote down everything you could think of, all for one day. Leo Babatua, author of the Power of Less and Zen Habits suggests having a simple text document on your desktop, but that just didn’t work for me, the infinite writing opportunity plagued me with guilt long after a task was ignored. There is a certain satisfaction in taking a black pen and slashing across a task done well.
You feel more productive when you flick through the book and notice all of your things are done.
Tip: I prefer the soft cover moleskin books, so I can fit them into my back pockets and bend it this way and that.
Remember the Milk.com
2. Remember the Milk
Remember the Milk (RTM) is an online to-do list. It’s great when someone gives you a task when you’re feeling light-headed, you can file it away, set a due date and then forget about it until you get an email an hour before the task is due. You can email Remember the Milk, which is handy when you want to write something but don’t want to get out of bed as you’re dozing off. I use it for tasks I’m going to forget straight away or late night rambles. I also email it when I don’t have my moleskin around.
GCal
3. GCal
I used to lug around a big diary everywhere; it had business cards, birthdays, receipts and jewellery somehow attached itself halfway through the year, without fail. Filofax, I loved it so. But I switched about two years ago and even though I am a luddite, gCal is just so easy.
When my best mate and myself shacked up for six months, she could log into GCal and see when we’d be making the weekly trip between Bathurst and Sydney. When making appointments, I can put it into the calendar and my partner is notified that he has a dentist appoint. next Weds.
Planning a trip? Use TripIt (which I highly recommend) and it can sync to your online calendar of choice. Want it to talk to your mac? I use Spanning Sync.
After reading Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Work Week a year ago, I’ve been obsessed with efficiency. What do you use to stay on top of your world?
I’m alllll about Google Calendar + Tasks. It’s easy to quickly add appointments and events with Calendar, easy to add (and check off) to-do items with Tasks, and both have a very simple and easy to use mobile interface that makes it easy to keep track of things on the go.
Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting