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Let’s dig into seven phone apps you can use to manage your day-to-day life and make it run easier.
Here are some links to some resources I mentioned:
- The book, Time Smart by Ashley Whillans
- AnyList App (I use the free version)
- Dashlane password manager (I’m not a cyber security expert; this is just the one I jumped to after deciding to leave LastPass after their recent breaches)
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Full Transcript
Episode 7. Seven Phone Apps to Consider Using in Your Daily Life
[Upbeat Intro Music]
Kelly Nolan: Welcome to The Bright Method Podcast where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up The Bright Method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all, personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep proud of what you got done today and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in!
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Hey! Welcome back. So today is a pretty fun one. We are just going to dig into the weirdly fun topic of apps to use to manage your life. Now, I’m gonna share what I use, and it’s not to say that everyone should use what I use, but these are the apps that I find most useful for my day-to-day life. I won’t be talking about email apps or social media or the other things that actually help me run my day-to-day life. I think they’re useful to talk about, and even though the focus is on apps, they will obviously tie in a lot to time management and why I use certain apps to manage my life in a more easy, less stressful way. And so, hopefully you get a little nugget out of this.
More importantly, I would also love to hear if you think that I am missing anything that I should check out. Please let me know. I love learning about these apps, and then I also really like to err on the side of simplicity of not taking on too many apps because that in and of itself can get overwhelming, and I just kind of forget to look at them. So I try to strike a balance there, but I love testing out things to see if I’ll use it. That’s the great part of all this digital stuff is you can always delete things if you are not using them.
First App: Digital Calendar – 1:45
Okay, first up (I know I’m not surprising anybody) is a digital calendar. I personally use Google Calendar. I use G-Suite in my business and then Gmail in my personal life. And so, Google Calendar is the app that I choose to view my calendar through, and I can see it all on there together, work and personal. Now, that is gonna be a little bit different for different people. When I was practicing law, I used Apple’s default Calendar app because you can typically bring in Outlook and Google together. So I could see my work calendar and my personal calendar together, but they weren’t talking to each other, which is how I personally came down on it.
How to integrate Outlook with your personal calendar is a whole can of worms. Just know that is something that I work on a lot with clients. You’re not weird if you struggle with trying to figure that out, and the real tricky part with it is every Outlook is different. Every company has different security settings and admin settings with their Outlook that does or does not allow integration with certain platforms and weirdly does with others. Anyway, just know that if you struggle with that, if you feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall when it comes to that, you’re not alone. That is something I work on a lot with clients in my programs, so please know you’re not weird if you struggle with that one.
But going back to what we’re talking about today. Obviously, everything goes into my Google Calendar app. I can see it there on my phone. That is the app that I most frequently rely on on my phone. I don’t think I’m surprising anyone with that, so I won’t go on and on and on about it. But hopefully you have a good calendar app or two (if you need two, if your work and personal life are separate) that you feel like you can access all of the stuff going on in your life easily from your phone.
Now, related to that, though, are the next two.
Second App: Calalarm – 3:34
First is Calalarm. That’s its name. It’s Calalarm. I will warn you that only about maybe 30% to 40% of my clients like this one. So if you don’t, totally fine. I think it’s four or five dollars for a one-time fee ever, so if you want to try it, it’s relatively low cost. What it does is it basically megaphones your calendar alerts. So I found that Google Calendar alerts will go off, and before you can even read it they’re gone and you’re like, “What was that alert for?” If you crave the Outlook desktop calendar alerts I love because you can snooze it for 5 minutes or 30 minutes or 2 hours, that’s what I wanted on my phone, and that’s what Calalarm gives you.
Now, you can play with a ton of the settings. It can be a little bit tricky to set up. It’s not too hard. It’s pretty intuitive if you’re techy, and you can have it give you an alert that also will alert you every minute if you want, and this can be very persistent and naggy, which is probably why the majority of my clients don’t like it. If we’re putting all this effort into building out a calendar with everything in it, I want it tapping me on the shoulder and grabbing my attention. What I also love is not that it’s just so persistent, but that it also lets you snooze for the periods of time — you can say 5 minutes, you can say 45 minutes, you can say 2 hours, which is just nice if you plan on doing something at a certain time and then life happens and you can’t do it at that time anymore, you can move things around.
The one warning I will say here is that they recently changed it so now it’s Calalarm 3. I have not personally enjoyed it. I’ve found it a little bit clunkier than the Calalarm 2 version one was. So the jury’s still out there a little bit. Again, it’s a relatively low cost, so potentially worth trying out, and particularly if that comment about how quickly alerts can disappear resonates with you, you might as well try it out. Just also, once you confirm that the alerts are going off for you through Calalarm if you decide to try it out, just turn off your other calendar alerts so that you’re not getting three or two alerts for every single event that you have from different apps because that will be super overwhelming.
Third App: Reminders App – 5:52
The third app I wanted to bring up of the seven is also related to to-dos. I have an iPhone. I think Android phones have a comparable feature, but the Reminders app. Now, I do not rely on reminders as my go-to place to remind myself to do something. That is all in my calendar. Everything goes in my calendar. But on the go, when you’re driving or you have a kid in your arms or you’re just busy and you’re walking your dog and you just can’t pause whatever you’re doing, get out your calendar app and find the perfect time and type it all perfectly in because that’s just not reality, in those situations where you’re driving and you have the kid in your arms or all those different things, that is when I will grab my phone and be like, “Siri, remind me at 7:00 PM to do XYZ.”
Now, that doesn’t mean that I always am gonna do that thing at 7:00 PM, but that’s usually when my kids are down, and I can then take those reminders and put them in my calendar and find the right time for them. Sometimes I do it at that time. It can be helpful if you’re like, “Remind me in an hour to give my kid Amoxicillin,” or whatever it might be. Then that can be helpful.
At the same time, there are some big shortcomings with the Reminders app, at least in the iPhones, to me. One is that I don’t find the reminders all that great in that they pop up but then they can disappear before you can hit “complete,” so that can be kind of weird. But I can’t tell you the rhyme or reason behind it. It’s not consistent. Sometimes those reminders are there for a full week on my phone if I let them be. But then other times the one I need that’s time specific disappears. So who knows why. Just to add that caveat.
Also, the second caveat is that at least Siri, I find maybe it’s my voice, is really bad at capturing what I’m telling it to do. I think one time I said something like, “Bring new clothes.” The teacher when I picked up my daughter said she needs new clothes, so I think I said something like, “Remind me at this time to bring new clothes for my daughter to school,” and it was something like, “Beat boxing, rap, something, something for my daughter,” and it was totally off. What it recorded was completely off, and really pretty funny. But at least I remembered what it was about, where sometimes my reminders go off, and I have no idea. I have no idea what I was trying to remind myself about if the text is really warped. And so, what I recommend doing is always overexplaining what you want to do. So, if I have to give medicine to a kid, as that example that I just said, I might be like, “Remind me at this time to give my daughter Amoxicillin for the ear infection that’s her medicine,” and I know that sounds silly, but at least a couple of those words will be right, and I’ll be able to piece together what I was supposed to be doing.
So just throwing that out there that if you have a phone that is really bad at understanding your voice and transcribing what you’re trying to say, just over explain it so that you can at least cobble together — because there are more words, you’re more likely to have a couple right words in there that you can piece it together using. So a little bit random but just wanted to throw that out there.
So, from a doing things perspective, Google Calendar or whatever your digital calendar of choice is, Calalarm to megaphone those alerts if you want to. Again, I would say only 30% to 40% of my clients like it, so if you don’t, totally fine. I truly believe that time management is incredibly personal, both in terms of how it fits your preferences and then also how you experience it. And so, I work with clients on that. That’s just an app that I personally like and some clients like as well. Other clients think I’m bonkers for loving it. The third so far is Reminders, really for when you’re on the go, when you’re in the car, when someone’s telling you something and you can’t stop and find the right time in your calendar for something or even jot something down, which I also enjoy doing and then bridging it to my calendar. In those scenarios, that Reminders app is really good. Just make sure you’re over-explaining what you’re gonna do, and then don’t always rely on it to remind you if you need to bridge it then into your calendar to get it into a system that will help you know when to do it and whether it fits with everything else you have to do.
Fourth App: ClickUp – 10:08
All right, moving away a little bit from the to-dos, but still into things that affect our day-to-day life, my next up is ClickUp project management tool. Now, I usually use this on the computer, but I do have the app on my phone to capture little things. I’m not gonna go into this fully. If you are interested in project management tools, I might be able to do a podcast episode on that. So if you are interested in it, definitely let me know.
First of all, I should say, I do not think that everyone should use a project management app. I don’t think it’s necessary, and I also think you have to use it very intentionally or you run the risk of it essentially becoming an electronic to-do list that you forget about, and then you go back in there and it’s like a sea of overdues and you freak yourself out. It’s very normal if that’s what happens to you with a project management tool. So we need to use some strategies to make sure it’s not just becoming an electronic to-do list, that you’re checking in on it at a frequency that makes sense and things like that.
But I do love it, particularly for capturing information. I could go on and on about these, but I will cut myself off. But I really like project management tools from a workflow perspective, especially if you have multiple team members that it’s a way to communicate and train on workflows very easily, and then also as capturing information. So just an example for my life, I know this might not apply to you, but I do a lot of content production for my business, so whether it’s Instagram or a podcast episode or things like that, when I have an idea for any of those things, I will put that idea into the relevant board in ClickUp to capture it. I kind of think of these as content banks.
But you also could have things like that where it’s just a place to capture ideas or you might use a Notes app for that or something like that. But having kind of one place that’s your repository of ideas can be really helpful. So that’s an app that I really enjoy using. Again, just make sure it doesn’t become an electronic to-do list because you know how I feel about to-do lists, and also that you are reminding yourself to go check it out so that you don’t forget about it and then it stresses you out even more. So just throwing that out there. I know it’s a bit random, but I wanted to throw it out there since I do use it very frequently. If you want more on project management tools, let me know.
Fifth App: AnyList – 12:30
The next app is AnyList. It’s an app. I’m sure there are others that are similar, but my family uses AnyList. The reason I love it is that basically we use it for grocery lists or shopping lists. Two reasons why it’s so useful are, one, I share it with my husband. So we both can put stuff on there. No one is the keeper of the list. No one has to be like the secretary of the family that keeps the list for the grocery store. That is really useful because then when someone ends up being by a Target and they go into Target, on their phone they have the list, and it includes things from both people in the family, or if your kids are older, more people in the family.
The other part of this that is so, so very useful is that we hook it up to our Alexa Echo. So we have an Alexa Echo in our kitchen. I know there are pros and cons there in terms of privacy. Candidly, my life is so boring that if someone wanted to listen to my life, have at it. My own personal risk, I am not worried about that component of it. I completely understand why some people are, and please know that when we work together we talk about your own privacy settings, so I don’t assume that everyone is a little bit as maybe cavalier as I am on that front.
It’s kind of funny what bugs you when it comes to privacy. Like the Alexa Echo, don’t care. My passwords online, my password security, how frequently I change my passwords, I am like completely rigid about and very conservative on that front. So it’s just kind of interesting how that balances out, but when it comes to the Alexa Echo, the benefits to my life are so useful that I overlook any privacy concerns, probably because I’m like I just don’t talk about anything all that interesting.
I will say it’s starting to market more and I am very offended by that. If you are marketing to me in my house on certain things, I find that very offensive, so we’ll see where that goes. A bit of an aside. But the reason that I love it is I can literally say, “Alexa, add milk to the shopping list. Alexa, add diapers to the shopping list.” I can be in another room and realize that we need diapers or wipes or something, and before I forget, which I will by the time I leave the room, I literally can shout, “Alexa, add diapers to the shopping list,” and that is so useful because then they end up on the AnyList, then whoever ends up at Target or does a Target Instacart type thing, that stuff is on that list in one spot, and we quickly transfer it over and get those things.
Sixth App: Instacart – 15:09
Which brings me to the next app, which is Instacart. Now, I also think we currently have Shipt because we got a free membership through a credit card we have or something like that, but regardless, whether you use Instacart, whether you use Shipt, whether you use a couple of those things, they are — I mean, I don’t go grocery shopping very much anymore. When I really think about the annual cost, which we’re really talking $100 a year, which is not nothing by any means. I’m not saying that, but when you think about that and you think about the fee that you pay and then the tip, which I think I always tip decently well because I’m so grateful to what they’re doing for me. When I think about those costs, and I buy from stores that price the same on Instacart, then the real only added cost to me is that annual membership, the tip, and then I have a reduced fee because of the annual membership.
When I add all of those things up, and then I compare it to the amount of time I am saving by not having to drive to the grocery store, do the grocery shopping, drive back, often with children in tow, it’s a no brainer for me. It’s just one of those things that I really try and value. I think that this could be a whole other conversation. It’s funny how talking about apps can segue into all these different conversations.
An HBS professor, Ashley Whillans, I think — I’ll put her link in the show notes because I might be totally saying her name wrong. She has a book called Time Smart, where she talks about how in American culture we are pretty money obsessed as a culture, and because of that we very much value money over time. We’ll drive farther to go get cheaper gas and things like that, and she’s talking about how when you break down the value of time versus the value of money, we sometimes are not acting as if we value our time very much, and then she has studies that show that people who do value time over money across economic classes, within the reason of being financially responsible, are happier overall.
And so, to me, Instacart is one of those things where when I feel my kind of inherent penny-pincher side kicking in, when I can really bring myself back to how much time am I saving in not carting the kids to the kids to the grocery store and things like that, to me it’s a no brainer. If you’re similar, great. If you’re not, totally fine. Feel free to ignore this app entirely, but it is something that I am using at least weekly, sometimes multiple times a week, to make my life easier with kids at home and that kind of stuff, and even without kids. You don’t need kids as an excuse to use these things to save you time. As long as you’re tipping people fairly and things like that, I think it is a wonderful service that really can save you a lot of time and stress.
I just shared this recently on Instagram, but I even love it, love it, love it for coming back on vacations. So if I’m coming back, I’ll put together the cart on Instacart as we’re driving to the airport or something, and then I’ll wait usually until we’re about to take off to make sure we actually are going to take off on time, and I’ll put the order in, and we will have groceries for us when we arrive at home or shortly thereafter. I got in the habit of doing this when I had kids drinking milk in a bottle more often. If we didn’t have milk, then it was always an issue of getting them to bed. So I’ve learned that lesson, and I throw it out there as a really wonderful way to have food for you when you get home or order it for the next morning early so that you have breakfast food and that kind of stuff. So just throwing that out there. It is a wonderful app that I really rely on, and I hope that you do too, at least at some frequency, to make your life a little easier and value your time over that little bit of money that it costs to tip someone out in a fair way. I shouldn’t say a little bit of money because it can be good money, but your time is valuable as well as are your stress levels.
Seventh App: Authenticator Apps – 19:18
Okay, the last one I want to touch on, and I know this is a bit random, is Authenticator apps. So I think I use a Google Authenticator app. There are other ones that I also use for certain other apps, but really I just had to throw this out there. I know it’s a bit random, not necessarily time management, but security authenticator apps on your phone to use to factor authentication at least on your email, at least on your bank accounts. For me in my business on anything that has client information in it, I always put two-factor authentication on these things.
There are more physical key things now I think that you can use and stuff like that candidly. I haven’t gotten there yet in my digital security. But I do have two-factor authentication everything, so as I was looking through my apps to be like, “Which of my apps am I using every day or every week?” That is definitely one of them because it’s on all my email, all my banks, all my client stuff, everything like that. I highly encourage it, and just from a time-management perspective, it’s critical. The time you would lose if any of these things were breached, and the headache and the stress that would follow is huge.
Then I’ll throw out there that I am not a cyber security expert, so this is just my personal what I use. Just throwing it out there. I do use Dashlane for all of my passwords just because I think we all have so, so many, and it is obviously a risk to use these apps that hold all of your passwords, but there is also a risk if you are using the same password for every single thing, if one of those accounts get breached, then they can use that login information to access other accounts in a very scary way. So just throwing that out there as a last note.
I know it’s a little bit random, but authenticator apps for two-factor authentication, if you want a password repository, I do use my Dashlane app all the time, and that can be a great compromised solution with all the different security things that we have to balance to just keep track of your passwords in a safe way, and then from a time-management perspective, a very easy way because it’s on my phone. I can sign into — I know I’ve already brought up Target a thousand times. I am from Minnesota, so it’s like my state patriotic duty to do that. But if I’m in Target, and I have to sign into my app, and for some reason it’s signed me out, then I use Dashlane to be able to sign into that and do the two factor and all that kind of stuff. But it’s all there on my phone. I can easily do it all from there with all the passwords and the face IDs and all that kind of stuff.
Apps Recap – 22:02
So, that is kind of the random episode for today! Hopefully you got a nugget here or two, and also, I hope you would like to share with me what you use.
So, to recap, we have Google Calendar App, or you might use a different digital calendar app or two.
- We have Calalarm to amplify those notifications.
- We have Reminders to capture to-dos or ideas on the go and then bridge them into your calendar or whatever makes sense. Remember to over-explain so that you can piece together what you meant later if Siri butchers what you were trying to say.
- We also have ClickUp, a project management tool. You might use a totally different one. There are so many. I also love Asana. Microsoft typically comes with a free one that’s called Planner. It’s usually part of your package if you’re interested in a project management tool.
- Then we have AnyList to capture those shopping-list-type things. It’s great to share across people in your house, and then also it’s just all easily there, and then if you have an Alexa Echo or something comparable, you can hook it up, and then you just shout nicely at it and tell them what to add to the list. It all ends up there, which is so useful.
- Then we have Instacart or Shipt. Any of these grocery-store-type delivery things to save you tons and tons and tons and tons of time. It’s just really nice, so throwing that out there.
- Then the last one was that Authenticator app and then if you use a password repository. These are the random apps that help me run my life on my phone all the time.
Hopefully, you found it useful. Hopefully you got a little nugget, and then please do reach out to me, whether it’s on Instagram or by email at ke***@ke********.com. I would love to hear if you have other apps that you find really useful in making your life easy. If you do, hopefully give a little update here in a later episode and then also share on Instagram!
All right, I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much, and also, before you go, if you do not mind leaving me a review wherever you are, I would be so, so appreciative. It’s just so important for the algorithms and things like that when people are searching for podcasts to listen to. Whatever podcasts have more five-star reviews that show that it’s a legitimate, helpful, useful podcast, then those platforms will show them to people more often. And so, I would really appreciate that so we can get this information into more women’s hands and thank you for being here!
Please reach out. Let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to share other apps, and I will talk to you on the next one. Have a good one!
[Upbeat Outro Music]
