What’s that sound I hear? Oh – it’s the tick-tock of the clock. The biological clock…the countdown on my never-ending to-do list…the stack of reading material I can’t seem to get to…the projects half-finished. You get the idea. Is yours ticking like mine? I do seem to feel the minutes passing by more quickly these days, and my list of things I want to accomplish getting longer, and sometimes my frustration at not getting it all done feels akin to herding cats, to use an old expression. But in my attempt to keep all the little fellows moving forward together, I’ve come to rely on a few resources that I consider essential to my every day life. So, while this isn’t a style-related post, I do consider it important information to share because it relates to peace of mind which is always flattering.
For news, rather than shuffle through the paper from start to finish, I’ve come to rely on:
The Skimm: a daily, one page quick-summary of the news, sent to my email every morning. Nothing in-depth, although it does have links if you want to follow them, for background. And it’s free!
Flipboard, an app for your phone and iPad that has ‘magazines’ of the latest news stories on a variety of topics. You can quickly flip through and click on the stories that are of more interest to you. You can even create your own magazines of things that interest you and you want to share.
For my favorite sports teams, I use the ESPN app on my phone (yes, really!). I’m definitely not one to read the sports section of the paper, but I do care about what’s going on with my favorite teams. The ESPN app is very easy to use – you can set your favorite teams and then get notifications when anything important is going on with them. It’s also an easy place to find out when they play next, and also to get more stats if you’re into that.
For all my fashion and style updates I rely on a variety of websites that send me regular emails. I’ve become expert at sifting through those sites rather quickly, and often will share the ones that seem most accurate and useful on my Facebook page. I say ‘most accurate’ because many of the articles on these sites are geared to young girls who tend to work the trends very heavily. I’m all for staying up on the trends, but for most of us, we need practical advice on both staying current and working with our bodies as they have changed through the years. I invite you to visit both my Facebook page for updates, as well as my website, where I list a number of fashion blogs I follow that I consider to be some of the best.
Moving on – for my to-do lists – I’ve recently revised my methodology, taking a step back, as it were. I continue to keep my appointments on my calendar on my phone, but I’ve moved my weekly/daily to-do’s back to a paper calendar. Why is this a time-saver? More often than not, I found that keeping to-do’s on my phone calendar resulted in their getting overlooked and not getting done at all. I felt like I was in continual catch-up mode. Since I’ve gone back to a paper calendar, it’s all right in front of me and I can keep track of my progress on various projects more easily. I found the one shown below at Michael’s – cute, yes? You can see that I haven’t transferred everything over yet to next week, with the exception of my exercise plan and one social media post, but at the end of this week the projects will all get moved over. I can feel a real sense of accomplishment in what I did get done, and also feel more organized about what remains to be done. Sigh of relief!
I’ve mentioned Evernote before as one of my favorite apps, but it bears repeating again because it truly does save me lots of time. First of all, it syncs between my computer, phone and iPad, so any notes I save there are instantly available to me wherever I am. ‘Notes’ are individual items that are filed inside ‘Notebooks’ (think files.) It keeps all my exercise videos at hand (great when traveling), favorite recipes I’ve found on-line, books I want to read, client notes, etc. I don’t have to be at home to find what I need in a file drawer or shelf. Whenever I’ve needed to take minutes at a meeting or keep notes during a presentation, I can do it right in Evernote. If I want to share a note with someone, I can email it to them. So easy!
These are some of my favorites. I’d love to hear about any great time-saving resources you can’t live without. Thanks for reading!
Adena
