You are someone who is passionate and likes to do a lot of things. You have a job, study occasionally, and participate in different activities, from creating a presentation early in the morning to being the superhero who saves the city every night (it is a possibility).
In any case, in the end, we all come to the same problem point: There is so much to do, and we don’t know how to organize it all.
But fear not young padawan!
There are several apps that can help us, and I will recommend you a handful that are useful to me.
In my case, I needed my organization apps to fit into the following criteria:
- They must be available for desktop and mobile because I normally switch between devices, so I can not afford to have this kind of platform obstacle.
- They must solve the problems that normally affect my effectiveness, such as time, teamwork, and personal day-to-day schedule.
- They must be functional, pleasing to the eye, and instantly easy to use
With these criteria in mind, after trying out multiple applications, I’ve fallen for the following three:
1. Fantastical (iOS/Mac)
A calendar tool is essential these days.
One needs to know what and when events are scheduled. The problem with calendars today is that most of them are not very intuitive, so people get tired of them easily. There are several apps that are great, but they always fall short in one way or another.
Then, in the whole lot, comes Fantastical, which has a good design and is very user-friendly!
In addition to all the normal benefits of a calendar, and meeting the above requirements, there is something else that caught my attention of this app: You can use natural language to quickly create events and reminders.
This means that I can be fully honest with it and say: “lunch with John tomorrow at 10 in the morning at Juju’s”.
Pretty amazing!
You can grab Fantastical for iOS for US$4.99 and the Mac version for US$49.99.
- Recommended alternative: Google Calendar.
Do you have a good team, but don’t know how to handle them all at once? Or do you have a rapidly inefficient and piling up email inbox?
Asana is the solution to all of that.
This application magnificently combines the powers of project management with teamwork in one place. It makes working on a large project with several people easier, whether or not they are present face-to-face.
Another great feature is that the app itself has an inbox where all activities performed in the group, whether comments, completed tasks, or anything else, becomes concentrated. This eliminates the need to use e-mail for many trivial things.
Best of all, it’s free. But you can only host a team of fewer than 15 people.
Asana Premium costs $8.33 per month per user.
- Recommended alternative: Trello. BaseCamp, ActiveCollab
So we have a calendar app to manage our time, and we have a project management app to manage our team, but there is only one small problem: I have no way to manage my personal tasks.
A problem that often happens is that we control everything around us, but we forget about our own personal tasks. We forget about simple things like going to the supermarket, or calling our grandmother to organize a family reunion. These are things we should be able to handle, but we either forget or become too busy to address.
Here is where Todoist enters.
This application meets those needs in a simple, minimalist interface.
You can add specific dates with natural language. That is, you can say something like: “Buy flowers for my mother on Monday, August 2 at 7 pm”, and it will automatically put the date and time into the reminder.
They also have something called “Karma”, where you can see your progress with a score that builds up, which better motivates you to be more efficient!
Todoist is free, though some features, such as reminders and labels, are part of the Pro plan, which costs US$30 a year.
Still, the free version is great and can be used on all platforms. Then, if you feel the experience the app’s full potential, you can subscribe to the Pro version (believe me, this app will become part of your daily life).
- Recommended alternative: 2Do (iOS/Mac).
With these three apps, you can master all of your tasks and events smoothly, easily, and conveniently, whether you are on desktop, tablet, or mobile.
So let me know: Are you improving your productivity with these helpful apps? Are you using other task managing apps in your day-to-day life? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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