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Staying Organized: What Tools should I Use?

4 min read

Some weeks at work are calm, with just a few meetings and only one or two things to keep track of. Then there are weeks like this week, when the meetings are numerous, the to-dos are flying left and right, and the number of things to keep track of increases exponentially. It’s about at this point that I start to despair that I will ever actually keep track of it all. I’ve had a hodge-podge of tools that I’ve tried to use in the past, with only middling success. I’d love to find the right tool (or toolset) to meet my needs, so I’m throwing it out here to help organize my thoughts, and to open it up for any input my multitude of geeky and resourceful friends might have.

What I Need (or at least really want)

What I’ve tried in the past:

A little analysis

OK, so let’s face it: my desire for something that stays synced up on a regular basis is a limiting factor. Given that syncing with my work network is unlikely impossible, I’m pushing myself toward a personal device w/ some sort of over-the-air network connection.

When I posted my first lament on twitter this morning, Mark Simoneau recommended Cultured Code’s Things. And I’ll admit, it does look pretty sweet. It doesn’t specifically do calendar integration, but it does very nice, slick task management, including tagging, categorizing, grouping into projects, etc. There is an iPhone/iTouch version available, which will sync with the desktop. The only big hangup for me is that it only runs on a Mac. Which makes this Windows-office user a sad panda.

I’m tempted at times to just go to using a paper daily planner. Advantages: it allows me to take notes, add agenda notes to calendar entries, input method is relatively quick. Disadvantages: no syncing, sorting, or searching.

So any thoughts from you all out there? I’d love to just go with a solution like Things on a 3G-enabled iPad, but that’s $700 I can’t afford right now.

Originally published on by Chris Hubbs