Dreamer

Oh hello, my dear readers! How are you on this Blue Monday?

This day is supposedly the saddest day of the year. I, for instance, I’m not sad, now. In the morning when my dear students were a lot to handle before my coffee, and in the circumstances of not even reading the course support for the exam, but only seeing it. 

But, now that I’ve passed it with an A, I’m in such a good mood that I can even listen to singles I normally hate.

Now, let’s come back to our main topic of the day.

In my previous Time management article, I spoke about the three pillars of time management: skills, strategies, and tools.

When we talked about tools, I also mentions Time management apps as a tool, and today we’re going to talk about the most basic ones.

These apps, we all have on our phones and we might or might not use them to achieve our goals. Now, let’s see what we have in our pockets, shall we dreamers?

Clock

Well, besides the alarm we all use, the app has at least 3 more functions.

• global time
• timer
• chronometer

While the first can help you choose a perfect time to send emails, to call, to schedule tasks if you travel and you need a time-lapse, the timer and chronometer might seem the same thing.

Well, both of them keep track of time, but a chronometer counts upwards, while a timer counts downwards.

So, when do we use each?

A chronometer we use when we are in a research phase. For example, for better management of time, we need to know how we spend our time. When we start a task, we start the chronometer and stop it when we finish. This way we observe and understand better our patterns.

After we understand them, time to take action toward our goals. The best practice I know is to set a specific amount o time to focus on a task. Our brain is easily losing focus after 15 min, so use the timer to set 15 min for tasks. When time expires, 5 min break and repeat. This is the Pomodoro technique, but we’re not giving details here.

Another preinstalled app you have is Calendar. 

Again, besides the obvious, you can use the calendar to manage Birthdays if Facebook isn’t helpful enough and to set reminders as notifications. 

P.S You can set reminders with the clock as well, just name the alarm as the thing you need to remember.

Ex: Doxiciclin rings at 20:00 when I need to take my doxy pill.

The last preinstalled app you have is Notes.

You can use this for shopping lists, to-do lists, visual boards, easy access to your things in need, or a space where to note or draw important things.

Evernote is the last app we’re talking about tonight.

It’s a web app as much as a phone one, with many free features.

If you want to invest in the paid plans you get even more than these: Take great notes

• Sync up to 2 devices 
• 60 MB monthly uploads
• 25 MB max. note size
• Get organized with Home dashboard and 3 widgets
• Stay on top of it all with in-note tasks
• Find things fast with search and tags
• Clip web pages
• Attach PDFs, receipts, files, photos, images, and documents

Well, here you have some basic free apps for time management.

I hope you’ll use them at their most too.

I think it’s enough for today, see you tomorrow!

#adreamerlife

Crissu