We all have busy lives, and they seem to just be getting busier. Schedules to follow, events to attend, lists to work through.
But there are digital tools to help you get yourself in order, regardless of whether you need help organising your home life, work or education.
For many people, the apps that are already built in to your phone will be enough to keep things running smoothly. But there is software out there that will offer more features and extras – some free, some for a fee – that can keep you on top of things.
At home
Homer
If you are looking for an app that will look after most of your home admin, Homer will fit the bill. Not to be confused with the children’s learning app, Homer will let you store and access all the important information about your home in one app.
That includes the floor plans, appliances in each room, future project plans and to-do lists for the house. You can also store important documents, such as receipts for appliances, service agreements etc.
It will even find the manuals for your appliances and store them in the app, meaning you won’t have to dig around for them if something goes wrong. All you have to do is enter the model number in the app and off it goes, trawling the internet for you.
There is also an AI bot – Homer Helper – that can give you tips and feedback on questions you might have on your home, although that is more useful if you pay up for the premium features.
Clutterfree
Own less, live more – that’s the motto of Clutterfree. The app creates a decluttering plan for your home based on the information you give it, from the number of rooms to how difficult you think each room would be to get in order.
You tell it about your house, and the app will customise a plan for you, giving you step-by-step instructions for each room. It encourages you to take a “before” picture of the room, and gives you a progress bar so you can see exactly how far along you are with each room, keeping you motivated through to the end.
It’s a subscription app, but you get a 14-day free trial, so if you are organised about your decluttering, you can easily get the first sweep done before you have to start paying up.
Cozi
Managing a home and a family is a full-time job in itself. But Cozi could help lighten some of the organisational burden by providing your family with a single app to keep track of school, work and life events.
There is a library of lists, from travel checklists and cleaning to grocery staples and child-specific ones. Each can be assigned to a different member of the family, or can be shared among everyone.
It works with Google Calendar, Apple’s iCal, and Outlook’s web app to integrate everyone’s schedules.
Upgrade to the premium version of the app and you can see a month ahead of time, it removes ads, and you can add multiple reminders for events, along with a list of birthdays coming up.
[ Oh no, not more tech stuff to get in a tizzy about!Opens in new window ]
At work
Capacities.io
There is a bit of a learning curve with Capacities, but once you get the hang of it, it will make your work life much easier. The service is trying to combat information overload, creating a calmer space for you to work on ideas and information that is relevant to you and your professional life.
It’s essentially a note-taking app but, rather than force you into folders and siloed notebooks, you can connect everything with a few well-chosen tags. You can create pages for people and businesses, questions for upcoming events, or summaries of ideas, and network them all through tags that will ensure they are linked. Plus you can create, link, and embed content from within any other content, add images and files, embed tweets and other information into your notes.
Most features are free, but you can access more advanced features, including an AI assistant, by subscribing to the €10 a month Believer membership tier. The core product, however, will remain free.
Asana
There is a lot going on in Asana. From team management to work graphs, the platform is hoping to make your life a little easier by taking some of the pain out of managing teamwork. Tasks can be assigned to different team members, with deadlines, relevant files and priorities for each task. You can see how projects are progressing and get automatic updates. Depending on how big your organisation is, you can split projects into portfolios – one for marketing, another for sales, one for admin – to make them easier to find, but all the updates will be sent to your dashboard, giving you a clear overview of how things are going. It is an organiser’s dream.
OneNote
Part of Microsoft’s 365 suite of productivity tools, OneNote is a handy way to keep track of your work and personal notes, files and other important information. Whether you prefer to type your notes or handwrite them with a stylus, the notebooks are fully searchable (within reason – I have yet to find a system that can decipher shorthand accurately), so you will always be able to find that important information when you need it.
The advantage is that you can have personal and professional notebooks in the same app, and you’ll never run out of paper or ink at an inopportune moment. You might, however, run out of battery, so OneNote’s cross-platform nature is welcome.
In education
Google Drive
To keep your projects and notes organised – and at your fingertips on whatever internet connected device you have – take a look at Google Drive. Google’s suite of productivity tools will cover everything from word processing, spreadsheets and presentations to storing all your files in the cloud so you can access them from anywhere.
It has all the essentials plus the power of Google’s search behind it, so you can unearth that project you thought was lost forever in a matter of seconds.
The best bit? It’s free, as long as you stay within your 15GB of free storage. And if you do need to upgrade – your Gmail and Google Photos storage comes out of the same pot – it is reasonably cheap to do it, costing €2-€3 a month for up to 200GB. Even the most prolific student would find that a challenge to fill.
My Study Life
My Study Life helps keep you on top of all the necessary elements of your education, from tracking your class schedule and homework deadlines to exam timetables when the time comes.
You customise everything, from the time your day starts and the typical length of a class to the subjects you study and when your holidays fall. Classes can be colour-coded to make them easy to track at a glance. As homework is assigned, you can add it to the task list, with a due date so the dashboard can generate a reminder. And you can add revision reminders to keep on top of the studying too.
It is suitable for both college and secondary-school students, and it is available free of charge, both on mobile platforms and through your web browser.
Trello
A bit of an all-rounder, Trello allows you to organise almost anything. A college project? Start a Trello board. An upcoming party planned? Another Trello board. Shared house tasks and responsibilities? You get the idea.
You can have multiple cards with checklists on each board, add documents and photos, files or links, and have due dates set. You can also share the boards with collaborators, so everyone has all the important information at their fingertips – and, most importantly, no one can claim they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.
