Remembering to-do list just got easier

Last night I had a moment of clarity wash over me.

In retrospect, it seems so easy, and I honestly feel a little dumb for not thinking of it before.

It began with me sitting in my recliner working on a marketing project for a client. As I finished my work for the evening, I tuned the television to “King of the Hill” and a sick feeling closed in around me.

I forgot something I needed to do, and I think it might have been important, I thought to myself.

I hate when this happens, so I spent the next 30 minutes frantically searching the catacombs of my mind to find the piece of information that slipped from the forefront of my thoughts.

I missed all of “King of the Hill” even though I was in front of the screen, and I still couldn’t remember what I was forgetting.

Then an idea struck me.

I’m incredibly attached to my BlackBerry smartphone, even if the phone and I are admittedly having difficulties right now.

The BlackBerry device has a plethora of pre-installed programs that are geared to help keep you organized, such as the calendar and the address book that I use on a daily basis. However, most of the programs just aren’t conducive to my life. I find it to be a cumbersome task to get “MemoPad,” “Tasks” or “Voice Notes Recorder” data from my BlackBerry and onto my computer in a form that I can easily use.

Of course, I could use my “Documents To Go,” but that isn’t geared toward quick organizational tasks. It is more for creating longer forms of communications.

So, as my thought process plodded along, I realized I had two more programs at my disposal that I was overlooking – text messages and e-mails.

Text messages wouldn’t work well, though, because there were length limits. E-mail, however, would work fine, and I have two e-mail addresses coming to BlackBerry.

Of course! I could send myself an e-mail every night with a list of things I needed to do the following day. I could start writing this e-mail each morning and keep adding to it until I went to bed, at which time I would simply click the send button.

The next morning when I fired up my laptop, the e-mail with my to-do list would be waiting for me, and I wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting anything.

So last night I created an e-mail and sent it to myself.

This morning I had my to-do list waiting in my Inbox.

It worked rather well, and to further the organizational ability of the e-mail, I printed it and added items to the bottom of the list with my handy-dandy ink pen.

Now, as I end the end of the workday, I don’t necessarily feel like I got an incredible amount of work done, but I feel more confident that I’m not forgetting something, except for that thing I forgot last night. The darn thing is still eluding me.

I will still continue to use other forms of to-do lists in addition to my new e-mailing scheme. For example, I also have a Google Tasks list going that I can see whenever I am at my computer, which is constantly.

And I will send myself a quick text or even use one of BlackBerry’s pre-installed programs, but I feel using the e-mail list as the common place for all to-do items to meet will serve me the best.

How do you stay organized? Is there another method I could use that would serve me even better?

If so, let me know. Until then, I’m just going to cross my fingers that I don’t loss my phone because if I do my plan would be shot, and I would probably go through withdrawal-like symptoms of not being able to use Twitter from my BlackBerry. It would be an ugly site that no one wants to see. Trust me.

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