The Proactive Pro

Organizing Your Time and Your Tasks with Free Productivity Tools

You might be a busy bee like me and need to organize your time.  You may also need to be reminded of the tasks you need to do at a specific time.  Well, fortunately, there are free productivity tools on the Internet. Here are two things you can do to organize your tasks and your time using these productivity tools.

The first option is to download Mozilla Sunbird. This is a stand-alone calendar application from Mozilla, the makers of the Firefox browser.  If you already have Thunderbird, Mozilla's free email client, you can download Lightning, the extension that allows you to manage your schedule within the email client.

To add the Lightning extension to your Thunderbird mail client, follow these directions:

1) Go to the Lightning download page. Download the extension and save it to your desktop.

2) In your Thunderbird mail client, go to the Tools tab.  Choose "Add-ons." A little window will appear.  Click on the "Extensions" tab. At the lower left corner of the little window, you will find a link that says "Install."  Click on it.  From there, go to your desktop folder and look for the extension that you downloaded earlier.

You may need to play with the application to be familiar with it and to learn how to use it.

The other option is to go to the Remember the Milk website and create a free account. Remember the Milk is a web-based application that can help you organize your time and remind you of your tasks via SMS, email or instant messaging (Supported IMs: AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Skype and Yahoo!).  It has an intuitive user interface that makes the application easy to use. It even has a task cloud that lets you see what you have to do easily.  You can also share, send and publish your tasks with your contacts.  You can also use the map to see where your tasks need to be done (useful when you are in the U.S.) and therefore be able to come up with the best plan. You can sync Remember the Milk with your mobile device. It's currently available for iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. You can be reminded via your cell phone and access Remember the Milk from there, but you'll need to upgrade to a Pro account. The fee is just a measly $25 a year though. If you have an iPhone, Remember the Milk is available at the iPhone App store.  I just signed up for a free account and I have yet to see how useful RTM is going to be to me.

I just shared two free productivity tools that you can use to organize your time and make sure that your tasks are accomplished.  You don't have to spend a single cent for them (unless you want to upgrade your RTM account) and quite easy to use.  Remember, time is money.  We might as well manage it well.