3 Tech Tools for Creative Productivity

If you are like me, you have a lot to do every day.  Stay­ing orga­nized and man­ag­ing the “to-do” list of life is a con­stant chal­lenge in this world that just gets busier and busier every day.  While I do not claim to have expert sta­tus when it comes to get­ting things done, I like to peri­od­i­cally share some tips and tricks that seem to work for me.  So in this lit­tle post I want to share 3 iphone appli­ca­tions that are great for both pro­duc­tiv­ity and cre­ativ­ity.  These lit­tle gems have made it eas­ier for me to cap­ture thoughts, gen­er­ate ideas, orga­nize projects, and make head­way in the ongo­ing bat­tle to get things done.

Ever­note — Ever­note is a phe­nom­e­nal web based note tak­ing plat­form with a great com­ple­men­tary iphone appli­ca­tion.  You can use ever­note to store project notes, take pic­tures with notes attached, book­mark impor­tant web sites, record voice notes, and much more.  I have found Ever­note to be par­tic­u­larly use­ful in the time imme­di­ately fol­low­ing a meet­ing.  Why? In the min­utes just fol­low­ing a meet­ing, ideas are fresh, energy is high, and there are a num­ber of impor­tant things that are top of mind.  Instead of wait­ing to get back to the office, I now plop down in the driver’s seat of my car (before start­ing it), fire up ever­note, and read the notes from the meet­ing aloud — with ever­note cap­tur­ing all of my thoughts and ideas while they are still fresh.  Once done, I can save the audio and email it to myself and oth­ers who may be involved.  This is a very quick way to get things mov­ing, cap­ture ideas, and stay on top of projects.  Ever­note has a mil­lion other uses, from scan­ning busi­ness cards to remem­ber­ing where I parked my car.  Best of all, the iphone app syncs with ever­note account, mak­ing my notes acces­si­ble from any com­puter con­nected to the internet.

Dragon Dic­ta­tion — Dragon Dic­ta­tion is another great post meet­ing appli­ca­tion is Dragon Dic­ta­tion.  This is a sim­ple app that does pow­er­ful things.  Just fire the appli­ca­tion up, talk, hit save, and Dragon Dic­ta­tion con­verts your speech to text.  This text can then be sent off an an email, stored as a note, or sent to appli­ca­tions like Twit­ter and Face­book.  Rather than hav­ing to type out quick mes­sages, you can quickly rat­tle off a note by talk­ing.  This is great for send­ing self reminders, quick com­ments to col­leagues, and other text based mes­sages — par­tic­u­larly when you don’t want to type things out on teeny tiny mobile keyboards.

Mindnode — Mindnode is less a pro­duc­tiv­ity appli­ca­tion and more of a cre­ativ­ity appli­ca­tion.  How­ever, when a sig­nif­i­cant part of one’s job revolves around devel­op­ing cre­ative con­cepts and new ideas, find­ing help­ful tools quickly trans­lates into increased pro­duc­tiv­ity.  Mindnode is a mind map appli­ca­tion that makes it easy to explore ideas, orga­nize thoughts, and begin out­lin­ing con­cepts in non-linear fash­ion.  Rather than tra­di­tional out­lin­ing, mind maps allow one to bounce around a lit­tle more — focus­ing on idea gen­er­a­tion and then orga­ni­za­tion.  I love mind maps, and hav­ing the abil­ity to do them on my mobile device is great.  I can save them, send them to my com­puter, and con­tinue work on them later on the desk­top ver­sion of mindnode, which is also fantastic.

So, if you are look­ing for a lit­tle pro­duc­tiv­ity boost and hap­pen to be an iphone user, give these apps a test drive.   What are your favorite pro­duc­tiv­ity tools?