If you know me now, you know I am a little tiny bit of an organizational disaster. If you knew me back in my late twenties, you’d be shocked by hearing that. Back in the day, I color coded my cardigan sweater sets, t-shirts were folded based on sleeve length and cotton consistency, every folder in my life had the appropriate contents and a nice clean label. I think I asked for a P-touch for Christmas one year. Not now. I don’t know if it’s letting go of control, having kids, or just being really happy, but it seems that the better the outlook on life, the messier life has become.
So as part of a New Years plan (which also includes working out, cooking more often, and cleaning way more often), I decided to step up the organization in my life. I became a little addicted to the Stickies that you can use on your Mac. Each area of my work and life has a stickie stuck to my screen, collapsed, but easily found if I have to jot down a to-do or a phone number — pretty much all of the home ones say “Pay parking tickets (Cambridge, Newburyport, Massport, Belmont, Boston).” Anyway, as much as I loved this system, I was frustrated that when working on my laptop in the kitchen I couldn’t see what was on my to-do up in the office. And if I needed a number from upstairs, it was stuck upstairs, not downstairs where I needed it… and not with me on the road. I am synced all the way around using MobileMe, but the missing piece was really my stickies.
Friday afternoon while in Belmont, my dad hands me an article from the WSJ. And again, if you know me… I am usually WAY too cool for school with respect to technology and I like my dad to know that I’ve heard it all. But when he handed me the article about Evernote, it rang a distant bell, but was definitely something I’d never investigated. Lo-and-behold, the answer to my prayers. Syncing stickies! I got in the car, and yes, while driving on I-95 with my children in the back, I downloaded the Evernote App for my iPhone. I brought it right into my next client visit and took notes about an order. I got home, and before my coffee was even ready, the desktop version was installed on my laptop and I was looking at the to-do from the meeting. I raced upstairs, yep, 10 second download and there it was on my desktop!
Even better, you can do voice memos and pics. Evernote syncs to your camera phone or your camera roll of pictures, and pictures easily become notes that sync to all places. Standing at the pool this morning with my new friend Christina (who is really cool by the way), I was able to demonstrate how I snapped a pic of the kids during swimming, turned it into a note, and tagged it to a category called “Kiddos – Christofer” — I was able to add a few notes about the pic and sync it right up! Even cooler, I was able to email the note right to Owen, who is currently riding around a snow field on a 1970 Artic Cat in rural (and I mean RURAL) New Hampshire looking for his Blackberry (lesson learned, really, don’t bring a BB out on a snowmobile during a guy’s weekend away). This emailing has endless possibilities for sending along To-do lists!
Like most things, I lose interest sort of easily. Well, not interest exactly, it’s just that things get messy so quickly and usually by the time I realize it, I am a disaster again. But I am really hoping that now, with just one job, something will work for me… and this might be it!
(Look the boy with the bubble on doing so well with the teacher! Love him!)
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