Use Your Blackberry to Manage Tasks

Okay, Blackberry addicts, you’re in front of a customer and you just committed to send something, call someone, or be somewhere later today or tomorrow, and you’re without your organizer or planner.

What do you do?

First of all, let’s all agree it needs to be permanently recorded somewhere. We’ve addressed this before here and here.

You can’t write something on the palm of your hand or the first scrap of paper you see. (You didn’t really consider those options, did you?)

You have a few reliable choices here.

Option #1: Send yourself an email. This is the easy one, and I used to do this. I’d quickly type out a todo to myself and see it in my inbox later to act on. Very simple, very easy.

Option #2: Use an online todo list. You had to know we’d throw an online tool at you, right? Remember the Milk is a free, easy-to-setup system that allows you to send emails a la Option #1, to a unique email address that creates a todo.

Later, you can see all those tasks neatly categorized, prioritized, and dated, when you get back to your desk and computer.

Remember the Milk can even send you a start-of-the-day email overview of the things you’ve scheduled for yourself. It’s reminiscent of the reminder system, I Want Sandy, that we glowingly introduced in a previous post.

Option #3: Call and voicemail yourself. You can get real creative here. Call your own voicemail. Or subscribe to a free service such as Jott, where you call and speak, and the system transcribes your spoken word into a text-based reminder, calendar item, or other note.

If you don’t trust the transcription service, use the free Braincast service from Viatalk. You record a memo or todo for yourself and the recording itself is saved at your account page at their site to review later.

(Now, I recommend not choosing option #3 when you’re standing in front of a customer. That’s just weird. But you can do it right after leaving.)

The key here is to have a reliable system for remembering and following up on your assignments, when you can’t use standard pen and paper. Don’t count on your distracted memory. And don’t think you won’t get interrupted before writing it all down. Get more out of your Blackberry or cell phone by using one of these options to manage your todo list.