4 Essential Tools - Productivity Ecosystem Part 1: The Basics

As much as I love technology, I do have other passions (yoga, dance, running, hiking, playing, inverting and being outside) and strive to make time for them. The easiest way for me to "make time" is to create a system, sorry, an ecosystem that works its' symbiotic magic and makes work (and play) on electronic devices more time effective. That being said, I have had the disease of being a perfectionist and have given up a lot of the negative connotations of said disease. I am now easing into being slightly (or largely) less than perfect and make room for setbacks (even failures) so that I can continue to learn. Oh, and I like to run sentences on. Or is it run-on sentences?

Productivity Ecosystem: Evernote, Google Calendar, Wunderlist

1. Email - I use Mail on the mac as well as the default mail client on my phone and tablet. I have all my accounts synced and keep reaching for the myth that is Inbox Zero! I avidly use shortcuts to minimize my use of the pesky mouse. I receive all email accounts into the same inbox so that I don't have to sift through different browser windows, or perform more clicks than are absolutely necessary. In any of my accounts I generally don't have more than 8 folders. The three most important ones are "Action" (put email in here that take more than 2 minutes to complete), "Waiting" (emails that I'm waiting for someone to get back to me - I'll check it every so often and send a reminder email), "Reference" (For easier searching capabilities).

2. Calendar - I use Google Calendar as well as iCal. Sharing is a key feature that keeps my personal and professional life synced and gives me a sense of what my day/week/month looks like. I put into the calendar events such as "Call Comcast: 6 month promo expiring in 3 days - tell them I'll switch to AT&T unless they give me the same or better deal" (by the way, that works almost every time. If it doesn't, hang up and try again with a different representative, or ask to speak to their manager).

3. Lists - Wunderlist is absolutely wünderful (umlaut added for extra wonder)! Best of all, the sharing and task delegation features are all included in the free version. Some of the lists I have in there include "Shopping" (shared with my wife - helps when we divide and conquer Costco together), "Blog Ideas" (I can jot them down anytime, anywhere), "Virtual Assistant" (share with, who else, but my VA - who, btw, rocks!),"Movies" (again, share with my wife). You can assign a due date to a task and put in comments under the notes field. Really an easy to use and awesome tool!

4. Notes - Evernote is really the place to go for this. I've upgraded to the pro verso because I was needing the ability to share my notebooks. For longer ideas than would be appropriate to put in Wunderlist, I always jot things down here. I've written and used this as a reference tool for most of my meeting notes as well as any personal resources and references that I need. Many of the other applications I'll be mentioning in Parts 2 (and maybe 3), push directly into Evernote so that I can reference them when needed. The search functionality here is really tremendous.

Each of these tools really fills a very specific need in my e-life and really adds value to the fact that I can dump all the loose ends that float around in my brain into this ecosystem that has been created to act as a easily searchable container for that detritus.

Do you need help in organizing your electronic life? Send me a message. Perhaps I can help. If you have advice, please share as well!