Weekly App Practical- Tech for Admin

Background on my history of organization:

I am a fairly organized person. I try to be as efficient as possible in all aspects of my life. As a child, student planners that were given in school were my life line. I would write when assignments were due, I could easily cross things off, and I could add non school things in there as well—afterschool plans, doctors appointments, etc.

Throughout college I still used a student planner. After college, I switched to a pocket calendar, one that showed a month at a glance so I could plan things easier. I did not have homework assignments in there, but I could still write my work schedule, appointments, lunch dates, and reminders in there.

Over time, my needs have changed. I have developed daily and weekly routines that keep me organized so I do not need reminders anymore—every Saturday I wash all the bed sheets in my house. Every July 1 I call to renegotiate my cable contract. Every Thursday I pay off my credit card. I need a system that allows me to keep track of things that are not part of my daily or weekly routine.

Where I am today:

Up until about a year ago, I swore by notes and lists. The draw back to this is, you eventually run out of room, and then you need to get more paper, and if you didn’t finish your list you then had to rewrite and carry over things that have not been completed. If the paper is lost, well, there goes my life. I have switched to my electronic list. I use the stickies app on the mac. I enjoy the simplicity of it. I can delete things as I complete them. When life gets busy, I can create different stickies for different aspects of my life (and color coordinate them, too!). The part I like most about stickies is that it is always open and in my face and it is just there reminding me to call to make an appointment for my daughter or to modify my quizzes for students on IEP’s.

What I am “playing” with:

I have found the app/website todoist (todoist.com). Here is what I think:

Pros of todoist:

• You can create different lists for all aspects of your life—personal, work, errands, movies to watch, etc.
• You can rank things with varying levels of priority.
• You can link accounts with other members of your family and have things show up on their list as well, or just keep it on your list.
• You can assign things to a particular day.
• Filters—you can look at items based on their priority.
• You can type in recurring reminders.
• Collaboration—you can have up to 200 projects going with up to 25 people collaborating on each one.
• You can add tasks from email

Cons of todoist:

• App. or website is big and can get lost (I prefer that constant nagging, reminder)
• I downloaded the free version. There are features that show up, but you click on them, and then, womp, womp, you must pay for that. Example: custom filters.
• Must assign a day for each assignment--can't have a general to do list
• When I added things, todoist kept moving things to the day before...possibly as reminders?

Pictures:

Stickies app (what I currently use)

          todoist icon hangs out up top for easy access

                                   Looking at a glance at my list

Looking at my filtered content by priority

womp. womp. Tried to create my own filter and this comes up.

On the second day, I did wake up to an email reminding me what I should have done and what I need to do, which is cool!

Overall Impression:
todoist has a lot of cool features, no doubt about it. This would be great for work if you need to collaborate on projects. The daily and weekly reminders are great. I really like the feature if you have family members synced, I can conveniently add things to my husbands todo list if needed, HOWEVER, I do not need this level of organization in my life. I just a quick list for my short term things that need to get done. After playing around, and seeing the features, I will still stick with the simplicity of the stickies app.