Remembering to do things can be a nightmare. There are times when no matter what you do, you simply cannot remember something or you realise a few days later that you forgot to do something. This happens to all of us and when you are running a business or just setting up a side hustle, you might find that it happens more than you want it to. This is why you might want to turn to technology to help you.
- Using A Traditional To-Do List
- Google Calendar
- Microsoft Outlook Calendar
- Any.do
- Cozi
- Thunderbird Lightning Calendar
- TimeTree
Using A Traditional To-Do List
I am a child of the digital age, which means that I feel more comfortable using tech than more traditional methods. However, not everyone feels this way and some people like to use a traditional to-do list. This is a paper list that you use to keep track of everything that you need to do for the day or week.
You can often buy little to-do list booklets from office supply stores. These can be very helpful if you have set things that you need to do. The problem with a traditional to-do list is the fact that you cannot set a reminder. If you need to remember to do something in 2 weeks, you have to put it on your list now and wait it out. That makes your list bigger than it needs to be and could add to your stress.
Fortunately, there are a lot of calendar and reminder apps that you can use instead. The cross-platform capability of these apps makes them ideal for the modern world and ensures that you never miss a notification.
Google Calendar
A list of online calendars would not be complete if you didn’t have a Google product on it. Google Calendar is a popular app, but that might be down to it being integrated with all of the other Google services. The app also connects to other apps such as business apps like Trello and your non-Google calendar apps.
The calendar offers colour coding which makes it easier to track all of your events at a glance. There is also a search capability which is ot be expected from the search engine. One of the best things about using Google Calendar is the fact that you can add events to your calendar directly from Gmail.
When it comes to reminders, I feel that Google could work on this a bit more. You can set reminders which will be sent to your Gmail and pop up as a desktop notification. The problem is that you need to have Google Calender open to get the notifications (that or I am doing something very wrong).
The Pricing: Google Calendar is free when you open a Google account.
Microsoft Outlook Calendar
I am not the biggest fan of Microsoft Outlook because it always seems to give me problems like not opening correctly and slowing down my whole system. However, I have to admit that it has one of the best calendar and reminder systems. Outlook offers more than just a calendar that you can glance at to check that you are on track with everything because it combines your email, tasks, notes and contacts.
The calendar is really easy to use and you can drag and drop an email onto the calendar to make it into an event. You can also send meeting requests from the calendar and it offers support for multiple timezones. However, all of this fucntionality is only with the desktop app because the mobile ones are cut down.
The mobile apps will only combine your email and calendar. Dragging emails to the calendar is only available on the Windows apps which might be a bit annoying if you are used to doing this. If you are going to use Outlook.com, there are fewer features than the Outlook software. Additionally, the Mac version is not as robust as the Windows version.
The Pricing: Outlook is included in Office packages starting at $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year, the apps are free and you can use Outlook.com for free.
Any.do
Any.do is available on Android, iOS and has a web-based interface. It is an excellent to-do app and has gone through some changes since it first hit the market. In the past, there was a sepaarte calendar app called Cal that worked with Any.do as the reminder. This has changed with everythng now in one easy to use application.
The calendar section of the app is great on mobile devices. You can also connect it to your stock calendar app to import any events that you already have there which saves a lot of time. The whole calendar interface is very appealing and you can set up colour mapping to make the month view easier to handle.
When it comes to the reminders, you have a lot of choices. You can get notification reminding you to look at what you have on for the day. You can also get location-based reminders which can be very helpful if you are out and about all the time. Something that you might find useful is the ability to add travel time to an event notification.
The Pricing: You can use the app for free, but there are paid plans from $35.88 per year.
Cozi
Cozi is a little different to other calendar and reminder apps on this list. This app was created with families in mind to ensure that everyone knows what is happening. It is a bit like those old wall calendars that families in the movies have to keep track of events. While the calendar was created with families in mind, it works fairly well when you have to collaborate with other people.
Once you have created your central calendar, you can give different people access to it. Each member will also have a colour that is assigned to them. This makes it easy for everyone to see which calendar entries they should know about and what they can ignore.
While the calendar is the feature that you are likely to use the most, there are a lot of others on offer with Cozi. You can make shopping lists, to-do lists, use the journal and there is a messaging feature.
The Pricing: You can use the app for free, Cozi Gold is the paid version which adds multiple reminders, removes adverts, adds calendar searches and birthday tracking.
Thunderbird Lightning Calendar
Thunderbird is one of the best email apps that you can get and it also comes with a very good calendar. Past versions of the email app required you to add Thunderbird Lighting Calendar as an add-on, but this is now included. The app has tabs for your email, tasks and calendar which allows easy navigation between all of these features.
The calendar section of the app offers 4 different views of day, week, multi-week and month. There is also a search facility that you can use on the calendar along with time filters and categories for different events. You can’t drag emails into the calendar, but the interface makes it easy to move around so you shouldn’t have any problems with forgetting what you want to put on the calendar.
The Pricing: Thunderbird is completely free.
TimeTree
TimeTree is another one of the collaborative calendar apps that you can use. What is different with this app is the fact that tries to undersand your intentions in order to guide you to create a useful calendar. This intention-based system offers you the opportunity to create different calendars for your different needs.
When you create a new calendar, you will be asked if it is for personal use, family, work, friends or group use. Each of these options will have more details so you can choose the right one. Each of these calendars will have differnet features such as the friends calendar offering commenting features. When you create multiple calendars, thye will overlay and give you a full picture of your overall schedule.
The Pricing: TimeTree is a free app
If you have any other calendar and reminder apps that you use, let us know in the comments!