Managing time and tasks while being mobile can be extremely difficult. Phone calls come in, emails get exchanged, commitments get made, and tasks have been worked on. As the brain begins to unwind on the way home, reality hits and the heart palpitations begin to go off: I just gave my life away and I have no idea who I gave it to and what I’m supposed to be doing.
How do you track these things while living mobile? It is a problem I’ve been working through for many years. I’m not sure I’ve completely solved it, but I’m making progress.
Here are some tools I use:
- toodledo.com – it is a web-based service that collects to-do’s organized by folder. Tasks can be emailed in, they can be created using a browser-plugin, and they have an iPhone / iPad.
- Pocket Informant – they have an iPhone and iPad app that integrates into the toodledo platform and Google’s calendar for a complete overview of your appointments and tasks.
- Evernote.com – access to all your notes from wherever you are and on whatever mobile device you happen to be working on. They have apps for every platform out there: mac, pc, ipad, iphone, android, blackberry and web
- Google’s Gmail / Google Apps for Domains – access to my email from wherever I am and from whatever device I’m working on
Here are some ways I use the above services:
- email comes that I need to create a task for: I forward it on to my Toodledo email address and it creates a task using a date and folder name I specify in the subject line
- I’m on the phone and need to create a task: I click a Toodledo Create Task button in my browser and I’m done
- I need to record time spent on a task – I set it in the length field for the task in Toodledo
- I’m on my iPad and need to access those same tasks: I open up PocketInformant, it syncs all my tasks, and there they are
- I’m reading an email and I only need a portion of that email for task creation purposes: select the sentence, right click it and choose Toodleo This
- I’m meeting with a client and using my iPad to append some notes to a client folder. I open up Evernote, access the client notebook and begin taking notes. I’m already online, so when I close the app, the note gets synced and is available to me to read my notebook when I get back to the office or from my phone if I find myself stuck in traffic.
- Email comes in that I need to follow-up on later in the day or tomorrow: star it using gmail.
- Email comes with attachments that I need to access later while offline – I forward it to my Evernote email address so I can access it through Evernote on whatever device, while either offline or online
- Before the day gets going, I’ll review all my emails that are starred, follow-up and archive, or forward to my Toodledo email address to create a task.
What do you do, why do you do it, and how do you do it?
