Many of you know that I’m a huge apostle of digital solutions to anything and everything. I strive for paperless in all I do.
What you may not know, is that long ago…and still today, I’m was/am a HUGE pen ‘n’ paper freak. Maybe it’s from the legacy my grandfather left me. He was a Swiss poster artist of some repute in the early 1900’s in Geneva (Google Jules Courvoisier). As long as I can remember I’ve collected paper and writing instruments. Especially fountain pens.
This creates a huge schism in my day-to-day routine. While I live in the digital world now, I am constantly still jotting down notes and lists on paper. Ya gotta admit, the paper and pencil was one of the best inventions of mankind, and still today is one of the easiest and quickest ways to retain information.
WHY THE TIME IS RIGHT
But….finally….FINALLY this year, I’m making the concerted effort to eschew paper altogether. Oh, I’ll still carry a pen forever…and I’m surrounded by paper…but two things now make the digital alternative worth “the leap”.
1) smartphones
2) the cloud
The standard is: can I put something down digitally as fast as I can write it a piece of paper that’s handy? The smartphone ALMOST makes that possible, but whatever time I lose in jotting down a digital note, compared to a handwritten note…I save time by having it duplicated and available to me in the cloud ANYWHERE.
The benefit to your voice acting business (or any personal or commercial endeavour) is obvious: To set your goals and keep them. To remind yourself of duties/tasks/responsibilities and be able to prioritize them, and schedule them. To more effectively manage your time and your vision for your business.
BENEFIT FROM MY TRIAL AND ERROR
Over the last couple of years, I’ve tried scads of different goal-prioritizing and to-list-organizational software offerings. OMG, there are 10’s of thousands of them, I swear!
Here’s my ideal software solution in this genré:
must be web-accessible
must be smartphone-accessible
must be customizable to deadlines, categories, priorities, and perhaps other parameters
must “talk” to other popular programs (outlook, evernote, etc.)
must be affordable
must shoot me daily reminders by email
must “talk” to social media
must import/export to other calendar and task programs
must allow for embeddable widgets in other programs I use (Gmail, for instance)
MY DECISION
There are many worthy candidates…but I finally winnowed it down to one. TOODLEDO (notice my criteria did NOT mandate a cool name)
ToodleDo has iPhone, iPad, and Android apps. You can access it from any web browser. It is so feature-rich and customizable that I haven’t even explored HALF of what it can do. It interfaces/shares with most other popular programs like Outlook and Evernote. There is a broad offering of 3rd-party software that helps you relate your ToodleDo tasks to other programs. You can use ToodleDo in extensions, plug-ins, and add-ons to virtually all browsers. You can use a free version, but the next step-up with all the bells and whistles is $14.95/year!
I can post tasks updates to ToodleDo from Twitter or email! It talks to FaceBook if I want it to. I can export and import to many many other programs in .csv, .txt and other popular formats. I can embed ToodleDo widgets into Gmail, Google Calendar, and my blog if I want to. I can add tasks to ToodleDo from my Gmail interface.
I keep a ToodleDo window open wherever I’m at so I can jot down (by typing) any task I want at any time. I think I can finally say goodbye to various ragged bits of paper with hastily-drawn memos tucked away where they can be lost or misplaced.
If you’re going to consider ToodleDo, please think about also gettint gSyncIt which lets you translate your ToodleDo tasks to almost any other program on the planet. This is only my experience, and ToodleDo may not be right for you, but I think it’s about as good as you’re gonna find for ToDo-List Software.
Let me know if you’ve found something else that works well for you.
CourVO
