When I first started my practice, I tracked everything in my calendar in Gmail. I still calendar everything important in there. After a while I started to want something more detailed so that I could set reminders for a certain date in the future. After trying out multiple different services for this I finally got settled on Any.Do, a free app that is available for Android, IOS, and can be managed on the desktop as well through various browser extensions. I also use Google Keep when I really need to create a to-do checklist. I use it for those times when I have a lot of different things to do in a short period of time and I want to make sure I remember to do each one.

Any.Do and Robust Features for Reminders

In the beginning when using my calendar to mange things the main way you would be able to set reminders is to have them be a set number of days before the event. This is nice and works well sometimes but it tends to come in your e-mail. I wanted something that would notify me elsewhere, this pushed me to Any.Do.

With Any.Do I can easily set reminders for following up with clients who aren’t ready to go forward when they first meet with me. It happens fairly regularly that I meet with someone who is considering divorce but isn’t ready to take the plunge and file. In those cases I set a reminder for a month or two out to check up with this person. Once that day has passed I will set another one and so on. This also works great if you want to have a reminder to follow up with someone you are connected with through networking.

Any.Do also works great for those clients who are taking a little bit longer to get something finished than you initially thought. In that case I set a reminder when I first give them an assignment or when it pops into my mind that I should probably check in with them. Then when those reminders pop up I can choose to snooze them for the next day or click dismiss and set a new reminder later.

I also use Any.DO for various personal reminders that I set up, whether I need to remember to buy something at the store or check in with a good friend. Reminders can be set months if not years in advance if you want to remind yourself to do something at a certain time the following year.

How reminders look when they pop up

I created an example here to show you what it looks like when a reminder pops up on your phone. You are given an option of dismissing it, snoozing it, or marking it as done. If you dismiss it you can easily go to your task list and add another reminder. I do this if the snooze options don’t fit with what I want to do. If you snooze it you get options of 15 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, and tomorrow. Once you click that it is done then it won’t pop up anymore and will show as crossed out in your list.

Google Keep and Task Lists

If you don’t need reminders or you prefer to use an app that lets you create a list of tasks instead, you can use Google Keep. It is easy to create a checklist. You just have to select checklist note when creating a new note and your items automatically have a checkbox on the side once added. It also shows your finished items that you have checked off at the bottom by default, though you can also hide them if you prefer.

If you want to be able to quickly glance at your tasks on your smartphone home screen you can use the widget and it will display your current lists. You can also set reminders in Google Keep if you want. I haven’t used it very much for that feature because I am happy with the options in Any.Do. If you do choose to use Google Keep for reminders, keep in mind that they are automatically integrated with Google Now so if you ask Google to remind you of something that will be through Google Keep.

I hope my explanation of these two apps has proven useful for you. If you use other apps that have similar functionality for your day to day tasks let me know in the comments.