Like most people in their thirties, I have a lot of balls in the air. However, while I can do some amateur juggling when necessary, once you throw four or more things at me, things quickly fall apart! That’s why I love lists and reminders that ensure I never forget the important stuff and worry a lot less on a daily basis.
In this post, I’m going to tell you how three apps – a TODO List, a calendar and a clever widget to glue the first two together – will change your life FOREVER.
Too intense? Sorry….
App #1 – Wunderlist 
What is it?
It’s a TODO list app and website. I use it daily to keep on top of everyday things. For example, stuff we need around the house, items I might research before buying, bills to be paid, admin tasks, shopping lists, ideas I can jot down while I’m out so that I don’t forget them and will probably stick into a Google Doc later on.
I can favourite or “star” a couple of tasks to focus on and it works fairly well to stay on top of it all so there’s no moments like this:
Of course, there are other TODO list apps out there. I’ve tried a few of them but I ended up coming back to Wunderlist. It works smoothly and syncs between the web and the app very quickly. Happy days!
Oh, and you can share the lists with others too which is a major bonus. I eventually sold Mrs Plannister on using it too so we now have lists for the groceries, things to do about the house and other random ideas we have.
Here’s a few of the Wunderlist categories I have going on:
- Ideas
- Blogging (new – mostly “Write a post” right now!)
- Finances
- Car
- Music (bands/songs I want to check out on Spotify mostly)
- Our house
- Groceries
- TV/Movies
App #2 – Google Calendar 
Google Calendar has to be the most popular calendar out there. Maybe not. That could be slander.
It is pretty neat though, especially if you’re into the Google ecosystem and not bothered by them recording your every movement and online activity.
I’m suspending my paranoia for the time being until I figure out a privacy based solution that’s based in the Swiss Alps and has 24 hour armed guards.
Please do try it though. Some people don’t want to or need to jot down what they’re doing on any given evening because they can just remember everything and that’s fine.
Me, I find it easier to use Google Calendar to make sure I don’t get double-booked for a night out but there’s plenty of other uses.
By default, there’s just the one main calendar that everything goes into, but you can add more calendars (more like categories really) which can come in handy, especially for sharing with different groups of people.
Check the settings 
and click “Add Calendar”. Here’s some of calendars/categories I use:
- Birthdays – in its own category so they have their own colour
- Married Life – a calendar shared with Mrs. Plannister (for stuff we’re both doing or just to remind each other if we’re away or busy)
- Books – books I’ve finished (I’m curious at the moment to find out how many books I read in a year, sue me. 38 last year as it turns out!)
- A shared calendar related to a co-owned apartment (still in negative equity 🙁 )
- A company calendar used to run my self-employed-ness
But the most important calendar/category to add, and I’ll get to why in a minute, is this one:
- Wunderlist
App #3 – IFTTT 
This is where the magic glue is. That may sound like I’m peddling drugs but I am not, I swear. Unless you want some? No? Sure?
I was just joking anyway.
Where am I going with this? Well, I set myself calendar reminders all the time, they’re regularly going off on my phone. I’m reasonably busy like most people and I flick them away because I don’t want to see them while I’m doing important…stuff.
The trouble is, I always used to forget to come back to them, handsomely defeating the whole purpose of the reminders.
IFTTT is one answer to this problem. The “If This Then That” website allows you to join the dots between completely different apps and services… such as Google Calendar and Wunderlist. If you saw where I was going with that, slightly above average amount of kudos to you my friend!
I am absolutely sure I don’t use IFTTT to its full potential, like hooking your Internet of Things Raspberry Pi up to your real raspberry pie and whatnot.
BUT there’s a fantastic widget that lives there which will send Google Calendar events as they happen to your Wunderlist app. So, if I’ve scheduled a reminder to get the car serviced in Google Calendar under the “Wunderlist” calendar category, IFTTT will detect it when that comes up and send it onto Wunderlist to appear on my TODO list.
Why is this great? Well, now it doesn’t drop off my radar when I swipe away the calendar notification. It hangs about in Wunderlist until I’m ready to deal with it after work or whenever I can get to it.
If I’m still not ready to deal with it, I can always kick the can down the road by changing the Calendar event to go off sometime in the future when I think I’ll want to look at this again and mark it as done for now in Wunderlist.
Here’s a link to the IFTTT widget that handles all this for you, created by a wonderfully named user called “meatballs”:
https://ifttt.com/applets/55089214d-google-calendar-events-to-wunderlist-tasks
Summary
That’s probably a lot to take in, especially if you’re not familiar with all of those apps but I promise it’s worth it.
If anyone has any other solutions to this problem, I’d love to hear some ideas. Maybe I’ll write some update to this article in the future with the Next Best Thing ™.
In the meantime, hope you find this a solid way to improve organising any and all aspects of your life – family life, home management, financial or relationships.
‘Til next time…
