Tips in Technology: Getting Rid of the Clutter on Your Desk(top)

One thing I have learned this far in life is that we are all forgetful. Hectic schedules, meetings, appointments, places to take the kids or pets, doctors appointments…You name it, there’s a never ending list of things to remember to do on a daily basis. To take a step away from the insanity, we’d like to tell you about some very cool, fun, easy, and free organizational tools on the Internet that you can use to help simplify your life.

First, try Google Calendar. If you don’t already have a Google account, get one. It’s free, and it will unlock a whole slew of cool tools for you. You can sign up at google.com/calendar. One of the features we find most useful in Google Calendar is that you can have reminders sent to you via email or text message to ensure that you won’t forget about important meetings or events. iPhone and GMail users will get on-screen pop-up reminders, and you can also configure your iPhone to synchronize with your Google Calendar wirelessly and instantly; any changes you make to appointments on your phone are instantly shown when you view your calendar online, and vice versa. In addition, you can set up to 5 reminders per event and set them at any time you specify: Hours, days, weeks, or months in advance, to give you time to prepare, and to ensure you don’t forget something you have planned.

You can also invite guests to events through Google Calendar, track who has RSVP’d, and send email updates to invitees about the coming event. This is similar to evite.com, but much more streamlined because now your invitations are done through your personal calendar, and not on a separate account on a different website.

Another great feature of Google Calendar is that when you create an event or appointment and enter the address for it in the “Where” box, a Google Map is automatically created for you, saving you the trouble of opening up a separate window and doing it manually.

Finally, you can create multiple calendars. Here’s a concept that took me a long time to wrap my head around at first, but is immensely useful. You can create multiple calendars for work, school, family, personal, etc. I personally have four: Personal, Work, Employees, and Girlfriend. The Personal calendar is self-explanatory; Work is shared with my business partner, so any events either of us add is instantly visible to the other; Employees has our employee schedule on it which they can update and review; and I have a calendar shared with my girlfriend for events, trips, and so on. People can only view whatever calendars you share with them, so for instance, my girlfriend can’t see my Personal, Work, or Employee calendars. In addition, each calendar is color-coded for instant recognition.

In short, shared calendars make it easy to coordinate events for work, family, etc. because you can share calendars with those people to collaborate on, without them being able to view events you don’t want them to view. The fact they are color-coded makes it easy to instantly distinguish whether an event is a family gathering, a work get-together, or something else altogether.

Another tool we’ve also found really useful is ToodleDo (www.ToodleDo.com): A silly name, but a powerful tool nonetheless. ToodleDo is a task manager and to-do list that enables you to sort, categorize, tag, star, organize, slice and dice your tasks in an almost overwhelming number of ways. What’s great about it is that it can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. You can keep it as a basic to-do list, or you can customize folders, start and end-times for tasks…etc. ToodleDo is free, and for only $15 per year you can unlock more features, such as the ability to collaborate on lists: Employers, you could share a “work” task list with your assistant and just add tasks to his or her list, which removes the need to call or email just to check up on a task you’ve assigned. In addition, ToodleDo also developed a great iPhone app that synchronizes seamlessly with their website, so your tasks are synched easily.

And last but not least, is a simple list tool called Zenbe Lists (www.Zenbe.com), which is great for any sort of lists you need to make. You can keep all your lists in one place, like groceries, what to pack for an upcoming trip, books you want to read…etc. You can easily email any of your Zenbe lists to anyone, and it too has an iPhone app. And, as with Google Calendar and ToodleDo, it’s free!

*Note: We don’t actually sponsor any of these products or get paid to promote them, we just really like them!

Our company, Dot Calm, focuses on helping Baby Boomers and Seniors do more with less when it comes to their computers.