I have long been looking for the perfect list maker/system, and it continues to elude me. Right now I'm really struggling to figure out what the heck I'm doing, and I could really use some ideas for list making, keeping track of to dos, etc. If anyone has anything to share, I'm all ears!
#1 Website for Digital Scrapbooking and Hybrid Crafting.
I'd also be very interested in anyone's thoughts on this! I have lists, I write them anyway - in about 20 different places, lol.
One of the things I looked for to keep track of things. Traveling, where we went, directions, points of interest, etc.
For keeping track of research. Information found, pictures related to, web addresses, notes.
At first I used Word. Ended up with a lot of documents in a well organized file system, but I had to open files to view what was saved.
Than I tried Excel. Great because I could create a workbook for one item, and create as many pages in the workbook. It was nice to just open a page and not a number of files. It did however take a bit of time formatting information.
Microsoft came out with OneNote. At first I just thought another program to learn until my research files kept growing and it was time consuming looking for files or a piece of information.
So I started to use OneNote. It uses spreadsheets, one could incorporate pictures just like a publishing program, a scalled down word processor, paste from so far everywhere. I have created several notebooks with tabs or chapters in the notebook, plus some have sub notebooks. Within each tab I am able to create as many pages in the section as needed. I can rearrange as needed. Most of all I can find information quickly.
What is nice I can print, save as PDF, or save as jpg. I can also import PDF, Word, plus.
For my Genealogy research, which is now over 15 years and sharing with many different family members, correspondance, to do lists, pictures, census, newspaper articles, etc. I created a notebook for genealogy. Next created sub book for each family last name. Inside each I created a tab for each person with the last name. This kept families together. Inside of each name, which is a tab there are anywhere from one to many pages. each page has a title that showes like tabs on the right. Tabs on top to select each section. And the names of each notebook on the left.
I found this to be a great way of keeping track of just about everything and very easy and quick to access the information.
Anyway this is how I keep track of information and list of information.
Humm... this is a topic I´m intrested in... exactly because I don´t know the solution!
Is there any fantastic android app for lists? I tried one called todoist or something like that and hated it.
For Android I use SNote it is great.
To answer my own question, I use various things:
Evernote: which I think is similar to OneNote that Judy mentioned. It's great for keeping track of more serious notes, blog posts you like, excellent for storing recipes, okay for list making.
ToDoist.com: is the list website I use right now. Trying it out again to see if it will work for me.
WorkFlowy: really loved this when I first started using it, hoping they'll add some more features in the future (mainly bold and color text). It's basically a never ending piece of paper. Great for making outlines.
Google Keep: This is a super basic Android app that I've been using on my phone to make random lists as I go.
All of these do some things well, none of them do everything well. None of them integrate well with a calendar (at least for me).
I'm also curious if anyone has any meal planning apps they'd recommend (I use Android).
I think maybe there are too many creative types who need help in this area too on DigitalScrapbook.com, since not many seem to have advice to give! hehe...
I guess I will keep going forward, and let you all in once I figure something out.
You might want to check out Interactive Calendar by C.SoftLab. I've used their Advanced Diary, off and on for over 7 years. I got it back when it was their freebie.
I enjoy Advanced Diary because it was based on the calendar. You can do a calendar view, or a Document Tree, which I used as a To Do List. I liked being able to switch between the two views, when working with deadlines.
I've used it as a health journal, and To Do Journals. I used it to keep track of which Challenges I wanted to work on, here at DigitalScrapbook.com.
In my version, 1.3...you can add hyper links, tables, & photos. And there's a fairly good word-processing. The new Version allows for Video journaling.
Thanks Laura, I´ll check this out!
Thanks!
I'm not much of a list maker, or at least I didn't used to be. But since I got my iPad a couple of years ago, I decided I needed to make my life more organized. I decided that I needed something that I could sync with my computer, laptop, iPad and Android phone, because I wanted to be able to call up my list no matter what device I was using. I tried Evernote, but think I need to spend more time learning it. I liked OneNote when I first got it on my desktop, but didn't use it much, since I wasn't really needing to keep track of much. But when I found out I could download the app for my iPad and phone for free (up to 500 pages anyway) I got more serious about learning what all I can do with it. I'm still struggling with keeping things organized in OneNote, but at least I now have ONE place to go look when I need to look at my lists. I mostly just use it to keep track of all the craft supplies I buy, so that if i'm out shopping, and see a sale, I don't buy something I already have, but forgot about because I haven't used it in awhile. One of my problems now, is remembering to add things to my list when I buy them, before I put them away, so I don't forget.
I'm not much help in finding a good list app that will work for all the things you want to do...
I LOOOOVE Trello.com just for this. It's like an online bulletin board and you can do all sorts of stuff with it including uploading images, notes or whatever. I have a stationery forum and it's everyone's favorite tool over there for stuff like this.
The thing with Evernote, if you want it to do everything you dream of, is that you have to have faith and let go off all the other apps. You also have to use the folders and tags. Here's an article on how to get the best out of Evernote
Thanks guys!
@Amber: I use pretty much all the things mentioned in that article. I have lots of notebooks, but my main problem is keeping track of lists, and keeping track of things that are time sensitive. The problem is that Evernote is not a super developed list making tool. You can keep tracks of lots of stuff (I mostly use it for clipping things from the web), but once you get complicated to do lists that have lots of hierarchy, need to be reordered prioritized, it just can't handle it.
@Marisa: This is exactly why hubby still teases me for using (or should I say NEVER giving up) my Franklin Covey IRL/physical day planner... I am a major list maker and everything has priorities that are ever changing. I'd love to hear if you learn of anything that works that way. I'd probably finally become a true convert.
I love OneNote for Windows and Curio for Mac. There is an app called Outline+ that will allow you to read and edit ON notebooks on your iPad and functions independently really well.
My favorite for list making though is NoteShelf for my iPad. It's a handwriting app that lets me keep all my handwritten (or typed, it has a text tool) notes in one place. There are some icons, highlighter tools, and the ability to add pictures that makes it really helpful for organizing my life and keeping all that stuff in one place. The area where it really shines though is the ability to add custom pages. Do you need a calendar for September 2013? Create a custom page. Need to organize your day? Add a daily agenda.
I could see this being a powerful tool for organizing a Project Life type thing. You could add pictures and journaling to the page or even find or create a template of all your different page protectors and make a small mock up of your week by resizing your pictures, papers, and cards to fit.
Noteshelf sounds interesting, although I don't have anything Apple to run it on...
People are going to get tired of me singing the praises of my iPad pretty quick if they haven't already, but I have to tell you that before I got mine I thought they were basically just toys. Just a pretty way to play Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies. They are great for consuming, but creating?
Last November during NaNoWriMo a woman brought in her iPad with a word processing app and a Logitech bluetooth keyboard that doubled as a stand and case for her iPad. It just clicked for me at that point. They could be used for creation too. I went out and got one a couple of weeks later and haven't looked back since.
I'm constantly looking for ways to cut out my laptop whenever possible. Anything I can do on my laptop seems to be able to be done on the iPad, albeit sometimes I have to sacrifice speed or feature rich programs to do it. As with doing scrapbook and art journal pages with Procreate vs Photoshop. I have to give up a lot of the tools I take for granted on PS, but with some creativity I find other ways to accomplish my goals and to me it's worth it because it's a lot more like doing things with paint and paper. I've really missed that since I started working digitally.
Now the NoteShelf app is pretty amazing in it's own right. I consider it to be the nerve center of my life right now. Any time I start a new project I brainstorm it in a notebook in NS first. As a designer I imagine it would be a huge asset to you. You could keep lists of theme ideas, sketch new design ideas, create page maps for layouts or quick pages... Pretty much everything you can do in a notebook, but with the added benefits of searchable notes, pasting in pictures, and being able to add text notes if you prefer that to handwriting. You can export your notes to PDF and easily share them with other people.
A recent version upgrade lets you import and annotate PDF files. I'm not sure how important that is to you in your life, but as a writer it's awesome because that's how I edit my manuscripts. I save a ton of trees that way.
I'm not *really* trying to get you to join the cult, but if you've been on the fence about getting an iPad, consider buying one with the keyboard and you'll be amazed at how much it replaces a laptop in your life.