Plots and Plans

I love January!

Over the last few days, I have had lovely long catch up chats with my partners in crime work colleagues and I am now so motivated but desperately looking for the best Productivity App to utilise.

Initially I had a lovely catch up with my counterpart in my new role with Community Circles.  This is such a wonderful project and my counterpart (Up North) has my sense of humour and lives a similar life of chaos so, despite being thrown together by circumstance, I can see us becoming firm friends as time progresses.

Last night involved a long laughter-filled chat with my partner at a brand new project which is launching next month.  We are so excited about this project and not being able to share the full details with everyone is just about killing me!    So when we get the chance to chat, (she too is Up North), it always an evening event, wine is always involved and we spend most of our time laughing and acting like children on Christmas Eve.  However, last night didn’t start well when the poor girl couldn’t find a corkscrew but then thankfully, she realised it was a screw top so we were able to settle in for a long lengthy update and I got so excited at the prospect of the launch of our project that I sat up for another hour after our call finished.

Then today was a hugely productive fun Skype session with my partner at Special Needs Jungle and 40 50 Fabulous.  Being partners in two such different blogs makes these Skype chats very amusing.  Both Tania and I live down South but were born and raised Up North (about 10 miles from each other) so we just get each other.  Anyone else who tried to keep up with the chat would be lost within minutes, we have this amazing ability to jump from subject to subject without losing our place.  For example, today’s Skype involved chats about a new box of samples of beauty products and their suitability, CSS and CMS systems, epilation – with wine or pain relief, SEN reforms and whether glitter nail varnish is appropriate for women of a certain age and could it possibly damage a Mac keyboard.

I love the variety in my life  but if you add to this my most important roles as Mum and wife, a Christmas holiday full of sickness bugs, broken arms and DLA forms, a house/garden resembling a building site and a dog who is scared of the sound of wind and rain, well what can I say?

Trying to keep on top of “which ball needs to stay up” in all of this is a challenge.  I have read so many books on productivity, motivation and have tried so many different systems (GTD, etc).

My latest download is Wunderlist – looking promising but hey!  I have looked at PBWorks (great but wow so much to learn before you can use it), Azendoo (which I have to say is possibly my favourite at the moment), Trello (great but not quite what I need) so I will carry on looking – I know that something perfect has to be out there.

Which productivity apps do you use?  Are you a pen/paper type person (I have to confess that my to do list is in my filofax too)?

Any tips or suggestions always welcome