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December 28, 2008

28 Dec 2008

How Do You Organize Your Life?

I hope you all have had a great holiday so far. Until I have time to write up a longer article on the many random thoughts I have, I wanted to ask you how you organized your lives.

What do I mean by that? What tools do you use to accomplish the task of making sure you, well, accomplish tasks?

I use a series of tools that are centered around a private Mediawiki, where I place all of my ideas, write out spec sheets, and link to the most important tools I use (finance: mint.com;business management: Basecamp by 37 signals, etc.).

So what do you use? Is it as simple as a checklist, as detailed as my Mediawiki setup, or as unique as employing a virtual assistant?

Comment below, or send me a tweet with your thoughts.

– Ben

8 Comments/in Productivity /by Ben Parr/#permalink

Mark Bao

Ben,

In most cases I use the application Things for Mac that syncs to the accompanying Things iPhone application. It’s excellent for taking down tasks and organising them on the go. And of course, iCal and Calendar on the iPhone are a must-have.

I can also highly recommend TaskPaper which is like the Notepad of task manager apps. It’s also very good. I also use ShoveBox to organise small snippets and items.

Your MediaWiki setup sounds interesting. To take down short articles and lists (such as goals, etc.) I usually use Google Sites, which I use as a completely watered-down wiki.

For the startups, FogBugz is the bug tracker of choice because it’s versatile and really just awesome, and it’s free for startups and students. Files are shared through Dropbox, a great syncing utility, and we use a variety of project management applications.

I used to use a Moleskine for almost a year, which was awesome. Trying to find out a system to use it full force again, since sometimes pen and paper is best! It just doesn’t have the categorisation or due date notifications that digital organizers have.

Cheers.
Ben

Hi Ben,

Chelsea from Quicken Online here. Personally, I use Google Calendar to organize my life outside of work, set up alerts and reminders (i.e. Set up vet appointment, call about weird charge on my bill). You can even create different calendars for different events. When I was in grad school, creating a separate calendar for my thesis really helped me stay on task.

Another way to get a snapshot of your finances in one place on the Web, http://www.quickenonline.com, is the first of its kind to give users a forward look at their finances as they’ll play out over the next couple of paychecks. You can even set up reminders via email or SMS, so you don’t miss a payment or overdraw your accounts. Hope this helps.

– Chelsea, Quicken Online
Maria

Hi Ben!
I use Smartsheet.com to manage and collaborate on work. They recently made it a lot faster, updated the UI and made it compatible with the iPhone and Blackberry.
Maria
Sherra Scott ~Virtual Assistant

As a virtual assistant, I use Outlook for most of my personal organization. I recently upgraded to 2007 and am still getting used to the different interface. I use BackPack with one of my clients, various Google apps with another client, and SmartSheet with another. I’m always on the lookout for innovative ways to keep things organized.
Emily

I just found your blog on the google search engine and saw a few of your other posts that you had done . I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the great work. i will Look forward to reading more from you again.
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