10 Clutch Tools in my Digital Tool Belt

Periodically, I'll switch up which apps, tools and processes I'm using at work and home. A lot of this depends on personal experimentation, workload, life stage and whether or not the app is even relevant anymore. Between to-do lists, calendars, tracking projects and keeping things straight in my mind, here are a few of the apps I'm using right now.

Any.Do

This is still hands down my favorite to-do list app. I took a brief hiatus from it to try out Apple's native Reminders app after I upgraded to iOS 7. After a week, I still found the Reminders app a little clunky for my taste.

Any.Do's app is still the cleanest and most intuitive app on the market IMO. You have the ability to segment your to-do lists into folders. Personally, I keep one long running list that combines both work and personal tasks. There's less switching around and I still have to accomplish work tasks in the same 24 hour period that personal to-do's have to get done too. I also love that it integrates with my contacts list, has friendly

reminders and integrates with my now default calendar app...

Any.Do Cal

Yep, it would make since for Any.Do's task management app to integrate with its Calendar app. I had taken a break from Cal and

tried using Mynd instead. While I still like Mynd, I noticed that a few bugs that bothered me about Cal were no longer available.

Cal's user interface is super clean and very easy to use. Each day has the corresponding task list attached to it from Any.Do so I can see my meetings and my to-dos all in one place. Assuming your meeting invites have addresses attached to them, there is even an option when you open up a meeting reminder to call for an Uber ride from inside the app to get to your meeting on time. Pretty sweet.

I also love that it combines my Google and Outlook meetings all in one spot. I hate using two different calendars and keeping up two different schedules. Having everything in one place - work and personal - has made keeping everything straight super easy. Now if only there was a desktop application for this, I'd be in heaven.

Evernote

Yes, this is on every single productivity-ish blog post ever written. There's a good reason it's on this one too - it's awesome. I love how Evernote is always updating their products. I don't take a ton of notes in the app. However, I do have a premium account because I use the photo and PDF uploading quite a bit.

I organize all of my research, blog posts and individual clients by folder. I'll upload white papers for research, reports we've delivered clients and clip any interesting web article that has to do with a client project or just a subject I'm trying to learn more about (I rarely use tags). I've found that the search bar functionality in Evernote is great for scanning PDFs and even pulling up whiteboarding sessions that I've taken a picture of via the mobile app. I don't see Evernote leaving my tool kit anytime soon.

Feedly and Circa

Yes these are two different apps but I rely heavily on these to keep track of the news. Circa is one of the best mobile news scanning apps out there. It delivers what you need to know in an easy-to-read-and-move-on-with-your-life format via a quick glance at your phone.

Feedly is great for both mobile and desktop reading. I keep all my blogs organized into lists in there and keep track of everything through it. My favorite aspect of Feedly has to be its integration with my next favorite tool - Buffer.

Buffer

I like to read everything all at once but don't want to spam my followers. Buffer is the answer to that. As I'm going through my blog list on Feedly, I'll buffer the ones I want to share to each audience throughout the day. It even works well on mobile too. At the end of the day, I can take a look back and see which shares drove the most clicks or engagement actions and note what type of copy drove the best engagement. The learnings from seeing how people interact with my personal content has had tremendous carry over when drafting copy and calls-to-action for client work at DeMoss.

Also, Buffer has a killer blog and does a tremendous job at transparency and customer service. They're worth using for that alone.

TweetDeck

Honestly, I use TweetDeck for lists alone. I have the key people I follow in lists and will check it a couple of times a day to respond to @ replies, see what different groups are talking about and interact with friends without having to filter through a firehose of information. Right now, I'm only using TweetDeck's Mac desktop application, still sticking to the native iOS app on my phone.

Day One

If you're looking for a good digital journaling app, this is the best one on the market so far. Sure, it costs $9.99 in the app store - but a good moleskin will cost at least that - and not be backed up via Dropbox. The design is amazing, they export entries into beautiful PDF formats (newish feature) and have some really cool bells and whistles for iPhone 5S users. I'm starting to get back into journaling again and this is my #1 weapon of choice.

YouVersion

The main Bible app. Has a great resource of studies and daily plans that are easy to walk through. Also, the notes app has been great to track sermons and house church meetups with.

RunKeeper

When I run, this app tracks me. Back when I was competitive, I hardly ever tracked my runs. I would just go run for time. In the past year or so I've experimented with Nike+ and MapMyRun but keep coming back to RunKeeper, it's that good. It integrates with everything and their new app updates are incredible.

What about you?

Sure, I use a ton of apps, including this new one from a few friends down the road for content snacks. The list could grow longer but these are the ones I use the most consistently.

What about you? What apps or digital tools do you keep at your disposal?