Life management mishaps happen to everyone.
You forget about a task or event, accidentally overschedule your day, or spend too much time trying to draft the perfect email.
There’s no perfect way to balance every part of your life. But there are dozens of tools and apps that can help you juggle work, family, and self-care.
Organization apps include everything from calendars to password managers, and they can keep your most important action items from slipping through the cracks. If you’re looking for an efficient way to prioritize and streamline your day-to-day life, organizing apps can help you go from “To-do” to “Done” with ease.
The importance of organizing your life
Organizing your life gives you more control over how you spend your time. You’ll decide when to complete certain tasks or when it’s time to take a break instead of getting lost in every to-do list. This increased sense of control can boost your self-confidence, reduce stress, and make you more productive both at work and at home.
With reduced stress and greater productivity comes more time for practicing self-care and nurturing the important relationships in your life — two things that are easy to neglect when you’re busy. You might find more time to rest, seek opportunities for continuous self-improvement, and give yourself the strength to adapt to challenges as they come.
What are organization apps for?
When you have lots on your plate, it’s hard to keep track of everything to do. Organization apps offer the structure you need to better your habits and keep track of everything you have to do in a given day, week, or even month.
These organizational tools can have a broad focus, like keeping calendars and to-do lists in one place, or one narrow purpose, like managing your passwords. Regardless, their goal is to help you keep track of important information. They can also help you:
- Execute better project management
- Collaborate with family or coworkers
- Automate mundane tasks
- Create and manage to-do lists
- Track stress or daily habits
- Remind you of upcoming events or tasks
- Organize and store online passwords or other important data
- Prioritize your daily, weekly, or monthly schedule
6 benefits of organization apps
Using apps to organize your life streamlines your work, prioritizes your relationships, and maintains your mental and physical well-being. Here are just a few more benefits:
1. Have a central source of information
Digital organization tools give you one place to store and access everything, including your documents, calendar, and personal notes. This allows you to stop wasting time tracking down information from scattered sources, saving time and energy.
2. Prioritize tasks
Prioritizing tasks helps you focus on the most important things on your to-do list without letting deadlines fall away. Organization apps can help you input all of your tasks, weigh what’s important, and save non-urgent things for later. You can keep upcoming due dates or events at the top of your mind and make overscheduling a thing of the past.
3. Reduce your mental load
Having a place to dump all the information from your brain reduces the number of things to remember at a given time. You can make a note and come back to it rather than scrambling not to forget. When you know your important tasks, activities, and commitments won’t slip through the cracks, it reduces your cognitive load and allows you to relax, even while you get more done.
4. Collaborate with friends and peers
Both work and life require you to collaborate with others. There may be times when you need to show calendars or documents to your family, and at work, you need to share tasks or leave notes for teammates. Organization apps make it easier to collaborate by organizing and updating everything in real time, allowing everyone to access the same platforms and share critical information.
5. Organize on the go
One of the best things about mobile apps is that they go with you wherever your phone goes, and organization tools are no different. When you go virtual with your organization process, you don’t have to worry about whipping out your paper planner or remembering to bring a pen to write things down.
With an app, you’ll have the convenience of being able to organize your life and manage your time no matter where you are or what you’re doing.
6. Change your behavior
Research from The Habit Lab at the University of Southern California shows that 43% of the actions you take daily are the result of your habits. Good habits have the power to maintain your health and keep you on track with tasks, and using an organization app can help you improve even further.
Something as simple as installing a habit tracker on your iPhone can help you remember to meditate or exercise in the morning. Many apps also help you set goals and track your progress toward achieving them, giving you the motivation and structure you need for true self-improvement.
15 best organization apps for life and work
Everyone has their own way of trying to fit the puzzle pieces of their lives together. But regardless of your preferred method of organization, there’s an app out there to match it.
Here are 15 of the best organizer apps that cater to a wide range of lifestyles and preferences:
1. Evernote
Launched in 2008, Evernote was one of the first popular note-taking apps that both iOS and Android users love. Its key features include checklist templates, the ability to add photos and audio to your notes, and a search function that lets you easily find notes by searching for the content within them. With such a robust system, you’ll never forget about a note or lose important information.
Evernote has a free plan, but its premium plan, which comes complete with all features and functions, starts at $7.99 per month. It also has different options for individuals and teams.
2. Trello
Trello is the ultimate visual project management tool that keeps in-depth track of all of your tasks. It uses Kanban-style boards to organize projects, lists to manage each stage of individual projects, and cards for task management during each stage. Its easy drag-and-drop interface lets you move cards between lists and assign team members and due dates for each.
Paid Trello subscriptions start at $5 per user per month, but the free option has dozens of great features for individual users who aren’t doing heavy lifting with the app.
3. Slack
Slack is a messaging app that facilitates real-time communication and engagement for teams collaborating often. Both the desktop and mobile apps allow you to call and chat with teammates and conveniently send and store files. The platform also has integrations with Google Calendar, CRM platforms like Salesforce, and even email apps to help you organize other parts of your work while you communicate.
Slack has a free version that anyone can use, and pro memberships start at $7.25 per user per month.
4. Todoist
While making simple to-do lists can be helpful, research indicates that creating a concrete plan of action helps people commit to completing tasks. Todoist helps users do just that, with features that allow for checklists with subtasks and due dates so you have a clear action plan. You can also set priority levels, delegate tasks, and leave notes for yourself and others.
Pro plans start at $4 per month for one user, but a free plan is available to help you get started.
5. Asana
Asana is an all-in-one project management tool for personal or work projects. It features built-in project templates, the ability to set timelines, and a number of handy integrations with Slack, Microsoft 365 apps, and CRM platforms. It’s ideal for project managers looking for better team alignment because it keeps everything you could possibly need to know in one place.
Asana has a free plan for users to enjoy, while paid plans start at $10.99 per month with an annual billing discount.
6. Notion
Notion started out as a note-taking app but has evolved into a premier project management solution for everyone, from content creators to solo entrepreneurs. The app uses pages to organize information and lets you take notes, create checklists, and manage documents all in one place. There are also thousands of templates, from manifestation journals to sleep trackers, so you never have to worry about formatting.
Like most apps, Notion has a free version that’s perfect for individuals. The full version starts at $8 per month for paid users.
7. LastPass
LastPass is a robust password management platform that stores and auto-fills passwords so you don’t have to remember them. It also monitors your security to prevent data breaches, checking for password reuse and helping you create strong login information. This app only has one purpose, but it’s an important one for safety at work or in life.
You can use LastPass for free on one device or get enhanced features with a paid plan starting at $3 per month.
8. ClickUp
ClickUp is an industry-leading project management and productivity application with a color-coded calendar, a hierarchy to organize subtasks, and whiteboard and docs features.
It combines dozens of tools into one, so it’s a great option if you’re trying to get a lot done in one place. And if you’re interested in AI, ClickUp has automations to save time and eliminate unnecessary steps in your workflow.
A free version is available for casual users and those operating on a budget, while premium plans start at $7 per user per month.
9. Google Keep
Google Keep is precisely what it sounds like: a place to keep notes, photos, and audio files in one place. Part of Google Workspace, this app features speech-to-text capabilities and allows you to set time and location-based reminders so you never forget an important action plan. It’s a simple notes app with everything you need to jot down your thoughts digitally.
Google Keep is free for everyone with a Google account, but storage is limited to 15 GB. You can pay for more storage as you need.
10. Dropbox
Dropbox is an online file storage and sharing solution. It keeps your high-quality files in the cloud, allowing you to access them from any device, create easily accessible folders, and share them with others so you’re never scrambling for documents again. You can customize permissions for enhanced security.
Dropbox has a 2 GB free plan, and paid plans start at $9.99 per month for one user.
11. Calendly
Calendly is primarily a calendar app that makes it possible for anyone to schedule meetings without back-and-forth communication.
You can visualize all of your meetings in one place to stay organized and remove overlap. It integrates with tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and even Google Calendar for easy meetings wherever you are, and you can create pre-meeting questions for invitees to answer and reschedule in just a few clicks.
Calendly offers a free plan, though it has limited functionality. Paid plans start at $8 per user per month.
12. Clockify
Clockify is both a calendar and a time management solution that lets you schedule and visualize your week. You can add events from Google Calendar and Outlook, assign tasks during available hours, and track time while you’re online.
It also shows you when coworkers or friends are busy or available to meet. Whether you’re planning a digital coaching session or a movie night with friends, you can do it in this app.
Clockify is free to use. Advanced features are available on paid plans, which start at $4.99 per user per month.
13. Plan
Plan (formerly GetPlan) is an intelligent time-prioritization app that touts itself as a “work concierge.” The app pulls information from the other apps you use, like Salesforce and Gmail, and creates an agenda for you. The goal is to let you spend less time managing your work and more time actually working.
This platform is free for up to four members, with pricing plans starting at $6.67 per user per month for teams with five or more people.
14. 24Me
24Me is a simple home organization app featuring smart calendars, color-coded to-do lists, and multimedia notes. It describes itself as a personal assistant, helping you manage all parts of your life without skipping a beat. You can even buy gifts for friends’ birthdays and navigate to events all within the app.
24Me is free to use, with premium plans starting at $5.99 per user per month.
15. Wrike
Wrike is a project management platform that focuses on team coordination. It uses dashboards to manage tasks and deliver updates about progress toward goals. And if you already do some planning or organization on other apps like Slack, Zoom, and Dropbox, Wrike lets you integrate them.
Wrike has a free plan with fewer features, and paid plans start at $9.80 per user per month.
Find balance and reduce stress with the right organization app
If you frequently find that your roles and responsibilities overwhelm you, it may be time to consider using organization apps. These tools do everything from organizing passwords to tracking habits to helping you prioritize tasks and better manage your time.
Keep in mind that the best apps for organization are the ones that have the functionality you need. Try a few free trials and see what sticks. It takes time to discover what works for you — but it’s worth it.
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