Old Ben Franklin had it right when he said “For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.” And if you’ve been yearning to get your life in order, there’s no better time than now to take advantage of the huge range of organization apps available today.
From AI-powered personal assistants to handle your Zoom meetings, to integrated calendar apps that connect your reminders to real world actions, to visual timers that will shake up your work routines (in a good way), your ability to handle life will be forever changed by our list of the 17 best apps to keep you organized.
Otter
Does a constant parade of Zoom meetings have you down? Let Otter’s AI-powered assistance take some of your meeting workload off your plate. It allows you to seamlessly record and review what’s being spoken in a meeting, either in real time or at your own convenience. And while it’s recording the details of your meetings, Otter generates richly connected notes with text, audio, images, speaker IDs, and key phrases. In short: It’s like sending your assistant to a meeting, then having them deliver an outline of key points that need your attention. Try it out and you can get 600 free minutes of transcription per month.
Calendly
If those who fail to plan plan to fail, then Calendly is an easy route to success. It’s one of the most richly connected calendar apps available today, making it easy to set times when you’re available for meetings and then let others book times with you at their own leisure. By eliminating the back and forth of emailing to set up times and then automatically populating your calendar, it frees you up to focus on what’s most important in your work. Try it for free, or upgrade to a $12 per month plan to unlock all of its features.
Dropbox
Dropbox’s streamlined design and interface has made it a favorite of freelancers and professional organizations since its introduction in 2007. Simple commands and sharing tools make it straightforward to collaborate where you need to, and eliminate busywork and “productivity tools” that are more likely to be a distraction. Sign up for a free account to share a little bit, or upgrade to a paid account for $10 to $20 and upgrade your storage capacities.
AnyList
Originally designed to create and share grocery shopping lists, AnyList has since expanded to being an all-in-one recipe saving app, too. It suggests common grocery items while you’re typing, making it simple to know exactly what you need from the store. Then, it organizes all of those ingredients by category—meats, dairy, produce, seafood, etc.—to make your trip to buy food as quick and efficient as possible.
Dashlane Password Manager
In our digitally-connected world, passwords are the equivalent of keys for our homes and businesses. Dashlane is much more than a keyring: It’s like having a bodyguard that carries your keys for you, giving you exactly what you need when you need it, all while protecting your most valuable possessions. And after being in business for 10-plus years, Dashlane hasn’t had a single security breach, so you know your data is safe with them.
24me Smart Personal Assistant
In the physical world, the job of a personal assistant is to keep all your important stuff together, and let you know when and where you need to be. Why not use that same function in an app? 24me’s Smart Personal Assistant combines your calendar, to-do lists, notes, emails, smart alerts, and conference calls all in one place, then syncs to your smart devices to take care of organizing it all for maximum efficiency.
Evernote
Evernote is consistently voted as one of the best note-taking apps in existence. Why? Because it seamlessly integrates so many great note-taking functions (like clipping whole web pages for highlighting and marking up) with your Google calendar. Taken as a whole, this means that Evernote keeps all of your workplace responsibilities in one location, making it an efficient productivity tool and a great way to generate new ideas.
Microsoft To Do
To-do lists are a staple of both personal and professional life for productive people. Microsoft’s To Do app recognizes this, and takes the humble to-do list to new heights. It takes the information in all of your lists, then synthesizes it into suggestions for how to optimize your daily time use. Plus, you can use it to share lists with other people for collaboration.
Time Timer
Time Timer, “the original visual timer,” gives you a firmer control over exactly how you’re using each minute of your workday. By boldy representing each portion of time via a red and white contrasting clock face, it makes it easier to relate to exactly how much time you really have left to work. Amazingly simple, but surprisingly effective as a productivity tool when used with other time management techniques.
Todoist
Todoist is perhaps the most richly fleshed-out productivity tool available for personal and professional use. It packs a huge amount of features into a streamlined user interface, letting you quickly create, organize, and prioritize everything you need to get done. Then, when it’s time to share some of your workload, you can easily delegate tasks to other people. In short, it centralizes all of your work into one high-tech command center.
Cloze Relationship Manager
Care to have all of your contacts’ details in one place, without having to enter any data yourself? That’s exactly what Cloze does, by importing everything you could possibly need from email, phone calls, text messages, meetings, documents, Evernote, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. It’s an all-in-one relationship management system par excellence.
CamScanner
CamScanner does a fantastic job of bridging the gap from the physical to the digital world. It lets you scan, save, organize, and make transcriptions from paper documents, anytime and anywhere. An overall excellent addition to any workplace that still uses printed documents while transitioning to digital sharing.
Google Drive
What else can be said about Google Drive, except that it’s the most-used free app for creating and sharing workplace documents? The big G constantly updates Drive with new features, making it a full-scale solution for all of your personal and professional activities.
Toodledo
Toodledo provides the standards that you’d expect from a to-do list app, but then far exceeds them. Make tasks, notes, and lists to get things started—then organize them into outlines and habit reminders to further increase your efficiency and ease of use. Since it’s able to sync across all of your smart devices, Toodledo can quickly become the center of your professional and personal lives. It’s free to get started with, and memberships with more storage and features are very reasonably priced at under five dollars per month.
TripIt: Travel Planner
You know the last thing I want to do when I’m getting ready for a trip? Meticulously scrawl down every single detail of my flights, accommodations, and activities. TripIt takes the legwork out of travel planning with a simple three step process. First, you forward your confirmation details for flights, hotels, cars, etc. to the app. Then, it auto-populates a master itinerary for you. Download their app as the final step, and you’ll have every detail at your fingertips. Honestly, it’s the smoothest and easiest way to travel, and you won’t want to leave for a vacation without it.
There’s a lot of good writing on the internet—but it’s often mired in a swamp of clickbait and regurgitated “news”, and sometimes covered in pop-ups and advertisements. Taken together, that can discourage even the most curious reader. Pocket is the solution to sorting through the dross. It allows you to save articles from anywhere to read later, then starts to personalize recommendations for you, all within a clean and easy to read interface.
Expensify
Business expenses can quickly add up, and they can just as quickly get lost if your only method of tracking them is keeping a bundle of receipts in your wallet. Expensify simplifies the whole system, offering a one-stop-shop for invoicing, paying bills, scanning receipts, and receiving reimbursements. Best of all? It’s all free to use.