Is Technology Wasting Your Time?
I know that one of the biggest time wasters for people is technology. As much as things are created to help us, technology is a big hindrance for many people and can lead to a great amount of your time being wasted. Using technology in a way that supports you can increase your productivity. The day-to-day things that end up on your list can get out of control, so it’s important to keep it lean. Long story short, items make it to your to-do list as a result of the larger items on your master task list. You want to be sure that you carefully place things on your to-do list. If your time management personality is a fit for a digital tool, there are a few top pick electronic tools that you might want to consider to help you increase your productivity.
It seems that every five minutes or so there’s some new digital tool or app that comes out, so there are plenty of them out there which makes it hard to choose or find one that works for you. Here are a few that seem to get rave reviews:
Wunderlist
- Wunderlist is produced by a Berlin based company and passed over a million downloads in March 2011, and is now available on almost every platform—windows, iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac.
- Separated from the pack with its design, simplicity, and effectiveness. Simple enough to use without trying, quickly enter your tasks and powerful enough to support you. It’s not complicated to use, captures what you need to do right away and keeps important things front and center.
- There’s a balance between its functionality and its features. It gives you the ability to sort tasks into multiple lists, set due dates and “Star” particular tasks
2Do for iPhone & iPad
2Do is a feature rich to-do app that runs on both iPhone and iPad. Great graphical interface, can setup my tasks in a simple yet powerful layout.
- This tool stands out from the crowd with its fancy graphical user interface. Esthetically pleasing so it does a great job presenting a pleasing and useful experience. Other apps have “dayplanner” interfaces, this has been called the most functional, especially true on the iPad in landscape mode.
- 2Do has plenty of features and can be as simple or as complex as you want. You do not have use all the functionality, but it is there for power users.
- Some key features: The “tabs” feature of 2Do is very powerful. You can easily set up multiple lists or categories if you choose. The “Today” and “Starred” tabs let you quickly see a unified list of what is most important. Quick entry mode, ability to “star” tasks quickly and it syncs to multiple devices
Tooledo
- This tool pretty much does what a SmartPhone would already do, but it’s good for sharing information if the usual computer sync isn’t right for your situation. It can be used with BlackBerry, Mac OS, or Android
- Organize Your Tasks. Use folders, tags, contexts, subtasks and more to organize, search and sort through your tasks.
- Improve Your Productivity. Toodledo’s hotlist, customizable alarms, and sortable online to-do list will help you remember to complete tasks on-time.
- Go Anywhere. Get Toodledo on your mobile phone, in your email, on your calendar, integrated directly into your web browser, and more. It also allows you to collaborate to work with others easily. You also have the ability to customize and define how you want to view tasks.
Sanebox
“Restores your email sanity” and “Unfiltered email goes in, prioritized email comes out”, are the things that the creators say about this tool.
- Sanebox works with GMail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, GoDaddy, Rackspace, Mobile Me and many more
- Uses sophisticated algorithms to prioritize the email you receive. The important stuff goes straight to your inbox and everything else gets stored in other folders for later. The calculation of importance is done by the algorithmic engine. Only the engine looks at the headers of your emails and your social network connections, not people. Their engineers work on the algorithmic engine not the email. Your email isn’t viewed/seen by the technology or a human being
- Safe & Secure. The program doesn’t look at your emails and uses encryption to protect your data
- It works within your inbox, so there’s no need for plug-ins or downloads and it allows you to train your inbox, in a sense
Social Media Apps to Manage Posts
I wouldn’t recommend that you automate all of your posts, but take advantage of streamlining your posting with the use of these tools.
Hoot Suite
- Pretty popular and is great to use to post to your Facebook profile or to Twitter. You can post right from Hoot Suite without having to sign into Facebook or Twitter.
- Schedule updates, monitor your mentions, build SM analytic reports, use with BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, use it for team collaboration, manage multiple contributions ad share data access w/o sharing passwords, assign tasks
Post Planner
- Post to FB profiles, Fan Pages, and groups
- Get notifications when your posts publish
- Publish you photo and videos posts, notes
- Installs and uninstalls quickly