Shop Talk Tuesday: Tools for Optimizing

Last week, we talked about balancing it all, and how simplifying and focusing can help immensely with finding a balance between our professional and personal lives.  Well, even if you’ve done that, let’s face it, you’re still going to be busy.  If you’re like me, you’ve got not only yourself and your business to think about, but kids, husband and family, too, and no matter how much you’ve streamlined things, staying on top of all that takes some effort.

Thank god for technology!  There are some apps that can really help and here are a few that I find indispensable:

TO DO LIST & NOTES: 

Hands down, WorkFlowy is the best application I have ever come across for managing to dos and taking notes.  Install it on your phone and ipad, bookmark it on your computer, and voila, no matter where you are your notes and to dos are always with  you.

What I like about the app:  it is a blank canvas without predefined categories so that you can set up lists in the ways that make the most sense for you, something that is particularly good for when you just need to get thoughts out of your brain.  You type something and then have the choice to leave it as is, or, if you need to add more detail, you click on what you’ve typed to add the detail, all in the same bullet pointed format.  This way, when you look at your list(s) you just see the high level topics rather than all the detail.  I don’t know about you, but I get really annoyed when things get cluttered visually!  When you complete a task, you just click complete, and it gets crossed off (and disappears, if you choose).

Here’s a screen shot of my highest level items.  A gray circle indicates that there’s more detail to that item, and when I click on any of those items with gray circles, I see another bullet pointed list just like this one, some items with gray circles (for again more details), and some without.

Workflowy is simple, clean and always up to date no matter where I am!

GROCERIES:

We all have to eat, right?  The OurGroceries app is the best app I’ve found for managing grocery and shopping lists in general.  Like WorkFlowy, the app can be installed on all your devices and is accessible via the web on your computer, ensuring that your shopping lists are up to date no matter where you are.  The best part is that every member of your family who has a smart phone can have the app on their phone, and can access your master list and add items to the list – even while you are at the store! I have two active teenagers, so we are forever out of something, and with this app, they can add things as we run out via their smart phones.  (Whether or not they do this is another thing entirely, but theoretically they can do it!)  My husband has an android phone and the rest of us have iphones, but the app works well on all platforms.  It’s made shopping so much easier in our house.

CALENDAR:

Ugh.  Calendar management with three kids in school and activities, plus my and my husband’s businesses could be a full time job.  (I am not kidding about this, and let this be fair warning to those of you with really young children – you don’t get less busy as your kids get older!)

With my husband on a PC and the rest of the family on Macs, this issue has been a bear to solve.  After trying many different web based solutions, we’ve finally come back to Google Calendar.  It is the only thing that seems to sync with Outlook Exchange, and therefore will allow me to see my husband’s calendar and vise versa.  It is also really easy to add the calendar feeds from my kids’ schools and their sports teams.  When seen on one page my family’s calendar looks like the schedule for a small nation!  My only issue with Google Calendar is that although each of my kids has their own calendar, I can’t set reminders for their calendars that go to their smart phones instead of just mine, but other than that, Google Calendar is the best way I’ve found for managing multiple calendars.  (If you have a solution for that, I’d love to hear it!)

What apps do you use to stay on top of it all?  Let us know!

XOXO – Jenny