For the past few months I have been working on a whole plethora of home projects. Trying to get them all done before the Seattle rain comes in. Well autumn has arrived with the rain clouds. I missed a few projects, but in whole I have accomplished quite a bit. One day while I was outside removing the black berry growth from this year, I started to thing on what I do everyday. Removing all the clutter of online distractions, I realized that I have save allot of time. So I took a better look at my habits that I have picked up during my life. The list became to big for me to remember, so I started to write down everything I do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. After a week of writing, I started to reflect on this list. I found out I do a large amount of work. A third was pointless unnecessary work (doesn’t add any value to mine or anyone’s life), while another third was spending too much time that could be easily automated or improve the process to take less time to do (i.e. Bills). Only a third of the work was actual fulfilling and/or efficient work that needed to be done. My first though looking at all of this was that I can get a half of my time back to do fun and fulfilling things. So I started to work on my process to get me organized. First thing was to find tools that worked well together, have access on all devices home or away. This took another week to test and see if they would work for me. Thanks to the Internet, there are allot of choices.  It came down to five main areas.

• Notebook – Evernote
• ToDo List – Any.do
• Calendar – Google Calendar
• email – Gmail
• RSS Reader – Feedly

Notebook

Everyone has notes. I use a combination of paper and electronic note taking. Evernote allows me to scan notes in or just simply type them in. Both are searchable and I have access to the notes on all my devices. For research I am able to easily create a note from inside my browser with relative information from the site I am on. Simple, quick and efficient. I am really digging this software.

Todo List

Every morning you should create a todo list. I know it and do it for my professional life, but never for my personal life.  So I changed that and started using Any.Do. It is a simple program that has a few hidden gems in it. I can create recurring tasks with reminders. This save time in the morning when I generate that day’s todo list. There are a few thing you do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis that are constant.  So why re-input them?

Calendar

I have been using Google Calendar ever since I purchased an Android phone. It is simple and can collaborate with other people with little to no effort on my part.

email
Gmail is most likely the most popular online email service out there. I can generate rules and filters to help me organize the vast emails I get on a daily basis. Using it’s built in tools will help me manage this onset of information overload.

RSS Reader

My favorite was Google Reader. Since it is no longer with us, I have been going to website directly. I remember why I used RSS feeds now. It save allot of time to go through the news quickly. So I started to look for a replacement last week. I started to use Feedly and it is pretty nice. Simple and nice looking. It passed all my requirement for a piece of software. It is a good replacement to for Google Reader.

The hardest part is not using these tools, but to get in the habit of using these tools. It is real hard to change what you have been doing for many years. I just need to stick with it and continue improving. The process if not perfect, I am constantly changing, adding and removing parts of it. Hopefully soon I can stop thing critically of the process and just us it effectively.  So far I am spending more time then before, but this will change when I finish automating online bill payments, email filtering and finish clearing out the clutter in my house. I can see the finish line from here. Can’t wait to get there.