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Declutter and prioritise with these awesome productivity apps.
I’ve always been a sucker for productivity hacks, or productivity porn as I like to call it.
As a kid, one of the best parts of summer would be heading to the stationery store before school started to get all of my new pens, highlighters, folders and note pads.
Sad, I know, but you can’t not admit you loved it, too.
And this has continued into adulthood, with my love of organising and planning in full throttle in all areas both personal and professional.
However, I’m also a big believer in quality over quantity.
So, this is for you and everyone out there who loves a plan and getting organised or tracking goals, but uses far too many platforms to do so — which can create fatigue, an ironic disorganisation and confusion.
I’ve distilled my life’s planning and organisation to the use of just two apps:
Let’s Explore Evernote First...
If you’ve not heard of this note-app (huge understatement) then you’re in for a real treat. Evernote allows you to create and save:
Web clippings
Bookmarks/web pages
Screen shots
Images
Documents
Notes, notebooks and stacks to organise your whole life (within these you can use pre-made templates, insert tables and any of the above to reference what you need to)
Tasks and reminders
There’s probably way more than all of this as it’s constantly developing what you can save and how you can interact with what you save.
In Evernote, you can create a “notebook” for any and all aspects of your life. And within each notebook you can write notes that live in it.
You can also create a “stack” which is where a host of notebooks can live.
For example, I have three stacks:
Personal
Work
Archive
Within the ‘Personal’ stack, I have about 30 notebooks, e.g. one is ‘Recipies’ and then within that notebook I’ve got a note for each recipe I either write or bookmark from somewhere on the Internet.
You can share your notes or notebooks with anyone, even if they’ve not got Evernote, which has been great for work and sharing to-do lists and business plans.
Plus, with anything you create, you can choose to assign it by a tag to further indulge your organisational side, or even assign a task to it to make sure you complete something associated with your note.
There’s even email integration now, but I think so far it’s only limited to Gmail.
I’ve had Evernote since 2018 and since then (as of right now) I have 1,295 notes I’ve created. Think of all of those ideas, references and plans that I’d have had to store somewhere else or try to remember!
It’s been revolutionary for me and I also pay for Premium (£44.99 per year) which has been worth it in buckets (you can save more and access across multiple devices to name a couple of the benefits).
As I can have Evernote online, offline, on my phone, on my laptop, my work computer, etc., I never have trouble accessing my to-do lists or if I quickly need to jot an idea before I forget (they also have a handy scratch pad that you can add as a widget to your homepage if you need to do this quickly without finding or creating a note).
Highlights on How I Use Evernote:
Homepage consists of my “personal constitution” which has my values and aspirations on it to reflect on/be reminded by every day.
I have three stacks: Personal, Work and Archive, where I have a number of notebooks pertaining to a topic within each, e.g. Personal has things like ‘Holidays’ and ‘General Planner & Goals’, and work has ‘Daily To-Do List’, ‘Website’ and ‘Management’.
I create shortcuts down the left-hand reference panel to quickly access a note or notebook I commonly use.
I use my ‘Archive’ stack to store notes and notebooks that are redundant but I don’t want to delete.
I have a notebook called ‘Brain Dump’ to store any ideas I may come across and then refer to it later to decide whether it deserves more thought and implementation, or should be deleted. If someone has a bright idea, sometimes it’ll end up being here too to ensure I don’t forget about it and can discuss it later on.
If you’re in management, it’s a really good idea to have a notebook dedicated to each person you manage in your team. You can use it to prepare for one-to-one meetings and appraisals, but also to make note as you go of any successes or challenges you need to note for reference later on.
I have a templated to-do list for work, which I duplicate each day and fill with new tasks or carry across old; but I still have a history of all past to-do lists to track progress and have accountability.
Share notes (and even use the work chat) to have co-contribution for content and plans with other people.
I have a notebook called ‘Articles to Read’ which is where I web-clip news and other content I read on the web to read later. I then have another notebook called ‘Memorable Articles’ which is where I do the same thing but for something I have read and felt really moved or inspired by, and want to save it somewhere I can always refer back to.
Holiday planning! Saving travel documents from boarding passes to travel insurance certificates, and creating checklists for places I want to see, things I want to do and restaurants I want to eat at.
These are just some of the ways I organise my life with Evernote.
There’s many apps out there like this, but Evernote is the one app that just ticks every box I could possibly want to make sense of and shape my life.
Give it a go (even on the free version!) and see how it could work for you!
(And no, this is totally not sponsored — I’m just a super advocate.)
Then next on this list we have the mother of all calendar apps…
Timetree
Now, Evernote does have a calendar functionality (in fact, there’s loads of templates you can use), however Timetree is the best thing I use to manage my schedule — and, get this, I use it to share and see my partner’s schedule at the same time!
Before Timetree, I was someone who always had a written diary. Yes, even with Evernote. I loved writing in my plans and opening my yearly diary to see everything I’d done and everything I was going to do.
The perfectionist in me hated, though, having to scratch things out — which I often ended up tippexing and rewriting, taking time and still looking a little bit naff.
So, you might say, the time and aesthetic pain of having a physical diary was what did this for me. But, no.
When I started seeing my now boyfriend, we were constantly asking each other when we were free and whole conversations would simply be around us talking through our work and social schedule.
And then I decided to look up a digital calendar which meant that we could have one calendar that we can update and amend as we please, and share with each other.
That’s when I came across Timetree.
I use the free version, which completely suits our needs.
This is a calendar app with some really awesome perks, which I’ll go into.
But first, I’ll explain something as lots of people have asked about how I feel about sharing my whole calendar with my other half, and perhaps don’t quite like the sound of it.
For married couples managing a household and perhaps even children, this would be an absolute dream.
Of course, I’m not married and I was really just trying to keep a track of my social life and where I could find room for my new boyfriend!
What I explain to people is, you have have multiple calendars under the one app.
…One for hobbies. …One for social. …One for work. …One for literally anything you like, e.g. birthdays.
You can then share the one(s) you want with other people who also have the app. Don’t feel like sharing — all the fun’s just for you!
I decided having just the one was easy enough because I don’t mind my boyfriend seeing that I have a dentist appointment on Friday morning or I’m seeing a friend for coffee on Saturday. If anything, the transparency has eliminated pressure completely and we’re always aware and respectful of the others’ plans, whilst also knowing in advance what our week’s going to look like — both to look forward to it and be logistical.
That last point is going to resonate with some more than others; for example, my other half looks after his disabled brother so it’s important for him to know what days he is there and what days he’s with me, as well as his brother so he knows the situation, and also for food shopping purposes.
Highlights on How I Use Timetree:
I set recurring events that happen periodically, which I can also set reminders for at an interval of my choosing, e.g. birthdays, car insurance renewals and volunteering.
I have colour codes for different events, e.g. pink is just for me, yellow is for me and my other half, teal is for annual leave, etc., so at a glance I can see what my week and month looks like — not enough pink means I need to schedule in some me-time!
I can add files, locations, links, notes and to-do lists to an event to reference, e.g. adding a booking number for an organised event so if I can’t access my emails I can still provide order confirmation when I turn up.
A brilliant feature is their ‘Memos’ where you can create loads of checklists/to-do lists; we’ve made joint ones, for example, of activities we want to do and restaurants we want to try.
This has many features like Evernote, but is truly designed to be a living digital calendar that can be so much more than that.
Thanks to iOS letting us have a preview widget of an app of our choice on our home screen, Timetree gives me a glimpse of my week without even having to go into the app!
If you found this article insightful or useful, let me know in the comments!
Or let me know what your top two organisational apps are!
Thank you for reading, and happy planning!