Simplification VS Organization

Sometimes the two aren't compatible! In order to organize my life, and compensate for a 40+ year old brain, I've started to use various tools to stay organized and remember things like "take medicine", "get dressed", "bathe and groom...." simple things like that.

The most basic of these efforts is the post-it note. I put them on my PC monitor, in my wallet, on the dash of the car, on my forehead, on my cat and wife. Well, maybe not on the cat. He bites.

Paper calendars are so 20th century, so I finally started using the Task and Calendar features in Outlook at work. That's fine and dandy for work, but for home, more and more I want to access my info online, so I've entrusted much of my life to Google Calendar, email, etc.

Then came the iPhone! To tie all of this together, I synced my Google calendar and email with the iPhone. I've long been a fan of Ta-Da lists. They have a good mobile site that looks nice on the iPhone. I use that for lists that have no deadlines, mostly. But not for stuff - that's what Amazon's Wish List + their Universal Wish List is for.

Then I found the need for saving reminders of things I want to look into further, so I started using Evernote. It too has a native iPhone app. But, it's not really a to-do kind of app, so I signed up for Toodledo. Of course, it has a native iPhone app, and, just as important, a widgit for my iGoogle home page, which is a very nice feature. I had used Remember the Milk, in the past, but found Toodledo to be more to my liking.

That should cover lists, right? Well, sometimes I want a quick item to be in my face for a while, but it doesn't make the cut for Ta-Da or Toodledo - I enabled the Tasks on my Google account, and added the widget for iGoogle.

Somehow, I felt the need to have a seperate shopping list app, so on the iPhone I found a nice app called ReLiSimple that has a nice shopping list. While there's no Google widget, it does sync with the website for access from anywhere.

So, what do most of my tasks, lists, events, etc. relate to? Why, getting better organized of course! You see how effective it is?

I offer this long, rambling account in order for you to take this opportunity to save yourself! Good luck and best wishes in your quest to remain peacefully disorganized.