Getting Organised

02.jpgWith a holiday to have, an engagement party to throw, a wedding to plan, a house to find (none of this on my own of course…) I still find a lot of satisfaction in being organised.

Theoretically this could play out in several ways.

As much as I love computers there is nothing quite like good old fashioned paper for making to-do lists. So there is paper. I strongly advocate its use. It is recyclable, cross-offable, portable, not dependant upon technology or an internet connection.

When it does come to technology and being organised I have discovered the following tools.

8apps Orchestrate – An online task list. I think use is by invitation only (let me know if you’re interested)

Google Calendar – You need a gmail account (also by invite – ask), you can set it up to msg (phone) you reminders, or email reminders and you get a fantastic month-by-month or however you choose to customise it overview. Quite ideal for setting ‘reoccuring’ appointments. The other appealing thing is that it can all be categorised by colour.

I spent hours during my final year catergorising things by colour. This is something that seems to work well for my visual memory. It must travel the same lanes as: remembering that a CD is a certain colour but have no idea of the name and so on.

All Consuming – I use this to track the books I’m reading. Thats as far as I take it, the place is much more an online community but I haven’t bothered to delve in and ‘get it’. All Consuming stems off of 43 Things (which I don’t use) but that’s a life-goal setting etc. tool.

Something I came across recently is the PocketMod.  I haven’t used it yet as my printer spat the chips and after I’d gone and bought a new cartridge, I was to busy printing assignments to bother. This little paper thing that has evolved from a technological standpoint is fully customisable (think Google Calendar), retains the to-do list as needed (think 8apps) and can supposedly fit whatever your individualistic requirements require.

I am about to investigate online gift registries and I am familiar with things like amazon wishlists.

What other useful organisation tools do you know of? Online or offline. What’s the best out there?

Now to share my hypocracy – I am sitting at my computer with The Cat Empire playing still in my pajamas, it is nearly lunch time and I haven’t even eaten breakfast.

3 Comments

  1. said:

    I actually didn’t know that Google Calendar did all that.

    I have my phone Bluetooth sync’d with my work laptop, so I just put them near each other and then I get reminded about all sorts of things.

    I’d love to be a bit more portable but still have the sync benefit. I’ll have to get around to looking at that someday.

    One thing I am keen on getting my head around is an online collaboration tool for group discussions. Something that’s a bit of a hybrid of a full-on forum but doesn’t push all the way back to just being an email list would be great for organising volunteer groups like youth ministry or camp stuff. I’m very much liking the look of Google Groups.

    June 4, 2007
    Reply
  2. said:

    if youre diggin google calendar then check out calgoo http://www.calgoo.com my girlfriend made me download it cause one of her friends uses it and it turned out to be pretty useful. i was able to import my outlook calendar, my baseball calendar from an ical feed, etc

    only problem is now my girl can add events into my calendar, i boot the thing up and half the time my weekend is full before i even add anything myself

    mike

    June 5, 2007
    Reply
  3. Axel said:

    If you still have an invite available, I would be happy to be able to try 8apps.

    Kind regards from Belgium,

    Axel

    June 16, 2007
    Reply

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