We live in a digital world and it’s about time that our organizational systems reflect that. We’re not saying the transition from paper to screen is always easy, but it is life changing! Here are some of our favorite digital organizing tools.

You’ve heard us mention this before- we LOVE Asana! We use Asana as a running To Do list and to manage our projects. Not only is it easy to use, it’s also FREE! There are different ways this program can be used, which makes it a great tool for so many people.

Some of my favorite features of Asana include the sharing options, the comment sections, and the “check it off” function.

• Asana allows you to share your projects with anyone as long as they have an email account. Once a project or task is shared, you can then assign tasks to those people (and yourself of course). When I was moving back to Boston this Summer I created a project to keep track of the many apartments we looked at. I was able to invite my boyfriend to see all of this information in Asana and even assign him a task or two to follow up with realtors, etc.

• Each task has it’s own comment section which is a great place to have short conversations with others in your project. I always enjoy seeing a comment from a colleague on a recent project I’ve started. It’s also great because it keeps your email inbox clean and you don’t have to go searching through email chains to find those little details that you need. With Asana it’s all in one place.

• The “check it off” function has to be my favorite. There is something so satisfying about checking things off a list. It’s one reason why people enjoy making paper To Do lists. When you’ve completed a task on your list in Asana you simply click the box and it checks it off for you. The information is then removed from your list, but it’s not lost, just archived to keep a cleaner view.

PaperKarma helps you eliminate your paper junk mail. Almost all junk mail that comes to your home can be scanned into this app and they will remove your name from the mailing list. You simply take a photo of the mailing label, which has a barcode on it, and upload it to the app. Once you confirm your name and address, PaperKarma requests your name be removed from their mailing list. You can track the status of each request in the app and see which have been submitted and completed. It’s a lot easier to keep up with your mail if the only pieces coming to you are important.

Unroll.me unsubscribes you from junk e-mail with one click. They are able to identify your subscription emails and list them neatly for you to review. You have the option to unsubscribe from junk and keep the subscriptions you actually want with one click. After unsubscribing from the ones you don’t want anymore, they can combine the ones you want to keep in the Rollup, which appears in your inbox every day at the time you choose. It’s all of your subscriptions together in one email, not 50! It’s a quick and easy tool to limit your junk e-mail, keep your inbox clean and the important subscriptions together.

Digital Calendars
I know a lot of you probably still love your paper calendars and date planners – honestly, so do I! There’s something really comforting about having a calendar in my hand and being able to write events directly on it.

I still have my wall calendar in my office, but I primarily use Google calendar, which I can access anywhere, anytime through my Google account, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. With a digital calendar I’m able to share events with other people, quickly update or add new events from anywhere in the world, and set reminders and alerts for each event. If I need an alarm to go off an hour or two before an event I can easily set that up on my phone or computer. I love my wall calendar, but it’s not going to beep when I have a meeting to get to.

Dropbox is an incredible tool to keep track of your documents and files and easily share them with others. One great feature of Dropbox is their sharing options. If you want to share a file or document, but you don’t want anyone to be able to edit it, you can simply choose to share it in a “view only” mode. If you want them to make edits then you can share the editing rights.

Just like your digital calendar, you can access your Dropbox account from anywhere. You can log into their web version, pull up the application on your smartphone or use the program on your computer. It’s easy to use and it’s FREE!

Evernote is an interface where you can organize your notes and paperwork. For example, you can type in to-do lists (complete with checkboxes), scan in whole documents, insert pictures and videos into your notes and then automatically sync up those notes between your smartphone and your computer, storing everything online.

No matter what digital organizing tools you choose, make sure you are comfortable using them. The most important part of getting and staying organized is making the systems user-friendly. It’s not helpful to have 10 digital organizing apps on your phone if you don’t know to use them or don’t want to use them. Do some research and play around with different tools. We’re here to help you get organized digitally if you need it!