New Years Resolutions: Life Hacking


I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. I’m not so much against the January 1st resolutions to do better, it’s the January 2nd failure to follow through that I hate. But this year has to be different. The last year has been one of contestant changes and challenges, adding a new member to the family, new responsibilities at work, at church, at home, and on line. Without a concerted effort to get organized and better manage the little details, 2008 is shaping up to be a real cluster.

To that end, I’ve started to used a number of web services that should help:

  1. Goggle Mail – I’ve been a gmail user for about two years, but just recently, I have begun to use their IMAP and POP3 services to consolidate a number of email accounts I have, including my home account. The search engine makes finding emails a breeze (what do you expect from Google?) and the ever growing list of add-on services and Firefox plugins make integrating gmail into the rest of my life easier and easier.
  2. Google Calendar – another great Google service, makes a good central hub for managing my time and keeping other up to date on what I’m doing.
  3. Remember The Milk – A very cool task list organizer with tons of options for reminders and integration with Google calendar.
  4. Jott – I just stumbled on to this web 2.0 beta – call the “866” number on my cell phone, leave a message, and it get transcribed into text and delivered to myself, a friend or even my Google calendar or RTM task lists.

Integrating these together, I can voice dial Jott, send a task to RTM, get reminders via my jabber account or SMS and view my calendar, a number of shared calendars, and my tasks all together on my Google calendar.
Of course, January 2nd hasn’t come yet, but 2008 is looking a little less chaotic from here…

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