On average, only 41% of actions on a ‘to-do’ list end up as ‘done’. Here at Fisher Jones Greenwood we’ve been looking the best ways to help make that percentage higher!
So we’ve taken something off your to-do list and researched apps to help you plan. It’s not an exhaustive list but below are the best apps we’ve found for helping to get things ticked off and are all available on both iPhone and Android.
In no particular order, here’s our top five…….
WUNDERLIST
Wunderlist claims to help you keep your life in sync and offer the easiest way to get stuff done. So what does Wunderlist do at a glance? It works across all of your devices. It offers you a notification and reminder service with the ability to add due dates and assign to-do’s…. so in the words of Aerosmith – you won’t miss a thing. It’s also one of the most stylish looking list apps out there so it won’t be an eyesore no matter what device you’re looking at.
With Wunderlist, you can work collaboratively by sharing your lists with colleagues, friends and family. It allows you to group and tag all related lists and you can turn emails into actions by simply forwarding them. Also, you can print your to-dos and lists with just one click! Plus, it’s a Microsoft owned App so it also has the ability to link with Cortana – so you can ask your sassy assistant to add things straight to your to-do list for you!
Wunderlist is freemium: but if you pay £3.99 a month – you’ll get full access to features.
GOOGLE KEEP
Second up its Google Keep, that says it will help your save your thoughts (hopefully not all of them!), wherever you are. Just like Wunderlist it will keep your lists within reach and sync them across all your devices from your phone to your tablet to your PC. Google Keep can help you find what you need, fast, with filtering options and the ability to search for notes. You can share your thoughts with family and friends, for example you can share your shopping list and watch items get checked off in real time – spaghetti hoops (tick), pasta (tick), milk (tick), toothpaste (tick).
Two major upsides of Keep are that it’s completely free (no freemium features in sight here) and that it has an excellent location-based reminder service. Need to remember to pick up some groceries? You can easily set a reminder to pull up your grocery list right when you get to the supermarket! Trust us, it’s a genuinely useful feature!
Why not take a look at this video for a closer look at Google Keep.
TODOIST
With the straightforward claim that you will “accomplish more, every day” Todoist is certainly worth looking at. One of the best-looking apps on our list, it has a really clean, distraction-free design that can manage tasks and projects across 10+ platforms. It can notify and remind you with the ability to prioritise, label and filter your to-dos. It offers intuitive dates using normal language, such as “Monday at 2pm” and recurring dates just by typing “every Friday at 8am”. You can collaborate on shared tasks and again Todoist offers sub-tasks and sub-projects.
One of the key features about Todoist is that it’s one of the apps that can work with the Amazon Echo. So if you’ve got the lovely Alexa sitting in your house, you can just ask her to add whatever you want to your shopping list. Plus, they’ve added in some gamification, with “Karma” points awarded for ticking things off your lists.
It’s free-ish, but for some features such as file uploads, location-based reminders and calendar sync you’ll have to take the plunge and get yourself a premium account which is currently £22 for a year.
Take a look at this video for more on Todoist, which we think has a particularly moody soundtrack!
REMEMBER THE MILK
Ok so we may have been swung by the great name initially, especially as it’s seemingly coded by a monkey – Bob T. Monkey, the Chief Code Monkey to be exact. But it really is a chimp’ening moo’vellous app!
Stating that it’s the “smart to do app for busy people”, we found it super-fast and really easy to use. You can create as many lists (even adding them by voice) as you need and add sub-tasks to those lists. PLUS just like Google Keep you can tag by location (e.g. remind me when I’m at the supermarket to pick up milk!), keyword (e.g. all lists relating to work) and even colour code your lists to make it look just how you like.
You can share your lists with others and searching your lists is easy with the built-in search wizard. It’s also another virtual assistant-friendly app as you can even ask Alexa or Siri to remind you about your tasks!
The only major downside we saw, is that it falls into the freemium range and if you want to get the most out of this app you will need to upgrade to its £29.99-a-year Pro subscription.
ANY.DO
‘Designed for Simplicity’ and with over 15m users, the people behind any.do are clearly doing something right. It has plenty of features in common with the other four apps reviewed – syncing across devices, sharing lists, playing nicely with major calendar apps and location-based alerts can all be found in any.do too!
If typing out lists isn’t your thing, any.do is another to have voice-entry capabilities, so just talk away! We really liked the any.do Moment feature which splits your tasks into time priority, rather than just a basic list, so it can show you all those things that need to be completed today.
Add in themes to make it look as pretty if you want to and you have another great option for your list management. It’s not without downsides though, as once again, several features are only available with a premium upgrade, which will set you back £2.29 a month.
We think these are all great apps, but some will work better for you than others. Whether you’re invested enough to take the plunge for “premium” features might be make or break in a lot of cases.
We loved features such as being able to link an app up to the lovely Alexa or Cortana and being reminded of a shopping list when you got to the supermarket, but what will work for you? We’d love to know if you have any recommendations of to-do apps you already use and that we might have missed and let us know if one of our top five turns out to be a life-saver…. Or just an annoyance that doesn’t work!