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If you’re struggling to stay on task or keep track of your notes, maybe some new tools are what you need.
I’m always looking for better ways to stay organized. When I find a new app that looks promising, I leave what works for me and fight with my tools in game survival.
These are the five services I rely on most these days for note-taking, bookmarking, and task management. Most offer premium subscriptions, but their free tier holds up well for individual users. As we head into the new year, you may be given the kind of new inspiration you need.
Further reading: 18 home tech products that will upgrade your office
Tweek calendar for daily reflection
Jared Newman / The Foundry
Every weekday morning, my desktop computer automatically loads Tweek Calendar, a beautifully simple app and website for managing weekly tasks. You can add new tasks by typing on empty lines, and you can move objects by dragging and dropping them.
The paid subscription adds Google Calendar syncing, recurring tasks, and subtasks, but I don’t need any of these. For me, Tweek isn’t a heavy duty task manager or a full blown Google Calendar replacement, but rather a quick way to reflect on the rest of the week. (This story I wrote for Fast Company explains how to set up an autoloader section.)
Idea for deep notes
Jared Newman / The Foundry
When I’m ready to start a task in earnest, I create a page for it in Notion, which lets you create freeform notes with their own checklists, subpages, tables, and more. Mindfulness can be scary at first, but if you start with simple notes and expand outward, you’ll quickly see how powerful it is.
The hub of all my writing is a page called “Jared’s Scriptboard.” Then, I have links to subpages for my mentor and cord cutter weekly newsletters, along with any freelance articles I work on. Each page can have its own subpages if more organization is needed. (One example: When I interview people for a story, I create a separate page for each source, each with their own transcripts and highlighted quotes.)
When I finish a story, I put it in my “Archives” folder, and clean it off my to-do list. This works better for me than any task management tool, because there is no limit to the types of notes I can create.
Google Keep for temporary items
Jared Newman / The Foundry
The greatest weakness of the mind is its difficulty in simple notes. When I need to jot something down quickly or write it down by voice, I use Google Keep, whose reverse order layout lends itself to passing notes. It’s my go-to app for storing sudden bursts of inspiration, writing group take-out orders, and avoiding Seinfeldian parking garage meltdowns. (Apple Notes might scratch the same itch, but I like that Keep works just as well on Android devices.)
My husband and I use Google Keep for our shared grocery list. With the Google Assistant integration, we can ask any nearby Google Home or Nest speaker to add an item to the list, usually after realizing we’ve run out of something.
Raindrops for bookmarks
Jared Newman / The Foundry
To me, bookmarks that deserve special care are in their own category of notes. I use Raindrop.io to save all the stories I plan to read and write on my newsletters, either from Raindrop’s browser bookmarklet or from the mobile app’s share function. This becomes its own to-do list as I gradually delete items from my story queue as I build each newsletter.
Raindrop goes beyond browser-based bookmarking. You can mark each folder with its own icon, read articles in a distraction-free view, and share collections with others. But I mostly like Raindrop for its clean, straightforward app design and its ability to be used on any computing platform.
Google Assistant (or Siri) for time-based reminders
When I need to get something done at a certain time, I use whatever voice assistant is at hand. That could be Siri if I’m carrying an iPhone, or Google Assistant if I’m using Android. The point is that I can just use voice commands to give myself a reminder and move on, knowing that I’ll get a notification on my phone or smart speaker when it’s time.
Sign up for my mentor newsletter to get more tech tips like this every week. A version of this column originally appeared in The Gazette.
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