Life Of E's

Someone emailed me this question today:

I’m looking to organize my life better and set some worthy goals with something that I can use on cross platforms like my iphone and computer. I have heard about Life Balance and Evernote. I downloaded Life Balance for 30 days free and have found the learning curve difficult but I like the way it has goals mapped out and how it syncs with other platforms. I don’t know about Evernote but a lot of people seem to like it. I know that you have taught organization classes and am curious to your opinion. What kind of technology have you found helpful with goal tracking and organization.

Here’s my response:

I have heard a great deal about Evernote but haven’t used it.  I am not familiar with Life Balance, but after I read your email, I went to take a look at it. It seems more complex than I would want. I think there are ways of using Outlook in a similar fashion.

I’m still using a paper planner (with ever-morphing features). I’ve recently switched to the Levenger Circa instead of the Franklin Covey planner.  It was just time for a change for me.

I use some of David Allen’s ideas about Project Planning and I do use a mindmapping software for generating ideas but not for tracking…paper still works best for me because I can take it ANYWHERE no matter what.

Each week I go through all my goals and projects and determine what is going to happen for the upcoming week. Then I begin to build that in. I do a lot of sitting and thinking about my goals and trying to figure out what is getting moved along and what isn’t…and why. It’s one of the reasons that I created the Obstacle Illusions class, which  you accessed yesterday….

So, no great technology references for you. If I find something, I’ll let you know, but I know for me, whenever I’ve tried some of the technology things, even though I’m a technology hound on most areas of my life and work…I work with paper for the calendar, goal setting, etc. And then I use a lot of Office 2007’s resources – Excel, etc. to track particular projects.

Don’t know if this was very helpful or not! Wish I had a brilliant answer!

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Tags: Evernote, goal setting, Levenger Circa, MindManager, tracking