Sunday Helper - To Do Lists

When you look around your work space, what do you see?  For me, it's lots of post-its and note papers with lists on it and notes to myself.  I'm a type-A planner person who thrives and survives with my to-do lists.    Somehow the action of writing things down helps drive me to first remember the task and then to get it done.  Then of course you get to cross it off your list and get that sense of accomplishment.

My tip today is more of an organization tip.  If I can be more organized at home, I can have more time to scrap.  Then of course I need to keep track of all the challenges and scrapping events going on.  I found a great tool to use for centralizing and automating my to-do list.  Last year I started looking for a software tool to help me out.  These were my requirements:

• PC Based.  Since I'm on my computer so much and I feel more comfortable typing on the PC instead of on an iPhone, I wanted an easy to use PC program.
• Categories.  I wanted to have more than 1 list but still see a complete laundry list of everything that's active.
• Simple.  I'm looking for something that replaces my post-its and don't want anything complex to navigate or too hard to enter in my to-dos.
• Sync with iPhone.  I wanted to see the to-do list on my iPhone and check off anything I accomplished.
• Free.  I didn't want to pay for a software program or even an iPhone app.

So I did some online research and narrowed down my selections to 3:  Astrid, Remember The Milk and Wunderlist.  I also looked at List Maker Lite, To Do List Lite and Home And Work Lite but quickly eliminated them.  I chose Astrid because it was so easy to create a list and see all your to-dos.  Choosing a to do list method is very personal, almost like shopping for a purse.  You can be very picky about what works and doesn't work for you.

I have only 2 lists (Home and Scrapbooking) and I can add in a task quickly.  I don't classify them according to due dates (that's too complex and too much extra work).  If there is a critical due date, then I'll put that in the description of the task (for example "SO Template Challenge due 7/20").   I really like the simplicity of having a long laundry list of tasks.  I don't want to spend time looking at a calendar and entering gory details by each date.  Simple works best for me.  This is what the Astrid PC version looks like.

Then you can view the list on your iPhone.  

I'll have to admit that some days I still like my post-it notes, but I do like the flexibility and simplicity of my online to-do list.  So if you're looking to get organized, do some web research and check out all the cool organization tools available.  This one helps me!

Have a great week!