Too much to do and not enough time to get it all done? Silly question. Here's a few sites to help you take back your life, or at least some of your time. They're all free and try to get you a little closer to having your own personal assistant & who wouldn't want one of those ...
· Jott: As the name suggests, Jott lets you easily send reminders to yourself or to friends. Just call Jott and it turns your voice into written email and texts when you speak your messages. Perfect for when you're away from your computer or a pad of paper and need a reminder. If you can't keep up with the Blackberry addict or teen in your life who types a million miles an hour, this might be good work-around. It could also be smart way to avoid texting while driving. Nearly 90% of Americans Support Ban on "DWT"
· Pinger: For times when you just want to leave a voice mail and not get caught up in a lengthy phone conversation there's Pinger. Just call Pinger, leave a voice mail message for a friend and your friend gets a text on their phone alerting them to the new voice mail. We tested this product when it first launched. It's pretty neat if you want to get the same phone message to a lot of people at once. You record it once (just as you would any voicemail), but you can send it to multiple numbers. They also suggest using it when the tone of a text need to be crystal clear. Lord knows a lot of arguements between couples stem from simple misunderstandings about what "OK" really meant and what time "PM" starts & ends.
· Remember The Milk: Remember The Milk lets you set up to-do lists you can update online or via email from a cell phone. Friends or family can add to your list too. RTM even keeps you on top of your lists with email, text message and even IM reminders through
Campbell Brown & I once tested something similar www.ohdon'tforget.com -- LIVE on TODAY SHOW ... You could tell it was LIVE, cause -- well -- it didn't exactly go as planned. We couldn't get the reminders to stop ringing on-air! The producers in the control room thought it was a riot. I was a wreck.
Right now, the yellow "pad" on my iPhone is calling my name. If I had my whole TO DO list it will surely explode. What's your trick? We'll be doing TV & Radio stories on this topic in coming weeks, so let us know by COMMENTING below. Thanks!
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My trick is to find as many things as possible that plug into Apple's iCal. For example, I've got a huge project plan I'm working on now and decided to use OmniPlan (similar to Microsoft Project, but for OS X) to run the project. By default it spits out iCal events for everybody on the team. All you have to do is click, and it adds all the things you're responsible for to your calendar. Great!
I also make heavy use of plugging in everything into iCal during the day.
I've found the key is to find one central organizing piece of software and then use it religiously. While iCal isn't perfect (still haven't figured out a way to add voice notes, for example) it's something that's always there, it's on my iPhone and I can figure out a way to plug in a task or to-do.
Too many options = confusion = you won't prioritize = you drown in tasks.