Jenerally Speaking

I have been finding myself with a ton of energy lately, which is awesome.  The mono infection from the spring is gone and all those symptoms from my anxiety disorder have completely disappeared (again.)  I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt this good.  Since I suddenly feeling so motivated, I seriously want to put that feeling to good use and actually get some things done.  My life was put on hold when I was sick and I am ready get moving again.

In order to fully embrace this newfound desire to be productive I decided it was time to start a daily to-do list.  “My Daily aJENda” if you will.  Even though I am quite the gadget nerd, I do love paper and notebooks and pens anything having to do with stationary, so my lists began on paper.  Sadly, I found myself not really using them that much.  I had lists for each day and then I wanted to make lists for each week and each of my web sites, etc.  I had all these little papers floating around and it just wasn’t very organized.  so what does a person do when they are lost and in need of a little bit of guidance?  They turn to Google, of course.

And yes…Google had the answer.  It has a handy little application called Google Tasks, which has become a daily part of my day.  I have a daily list of all the little things I need to do every single day: write a blog post, check Facebook, track calories at The Daily Plate, etc.  Here’s a quick little screenshot of what one of my task lists looks like:

I have 4 or 5 different little task lists like that one.  That particular one is used every day.  I mark each task off as I complete them and the next day, I just unmark them and start over again.  I have a list for each of my web sites and my long-term goals for them and I also have one that I make each Sunday for the upcoming week.  Here is a picture of all the To-Do Lists I currently have set up for myself.

I’ll put appointments on the “Week of…” and the neat thing is that they are automatically added to my Google Calendar, which is also set up to send me an SMS message to remind me when an appointment is coming up.

Right now I haven’t quite decided if Google Tasks is actually simplifying my life, but if I am actually still doing this in a few months, I will have to assume that this is what works for me.  The only problem I really have is that it requires me to go on my computer at least once a day.  There is an option to print out the lists, so if I sense that I’ll be taking a break from the computer one week *gasp!* I suppose I can just print out the list that week and use it the old fashioned way.  In any case, this is the first time in my life I am actually making checklists and sticking to them.  Kind of neat.  Go Google!  Go me!