Organize Your Busy Life Fast with Workflowy

It’s no secret I’m a sucker for productivity apps. I’ve tried almost all of them. While each one has features I like, there’s nearly always something missing.

And when it comes right down to it, there is something incredibly satisfying and simple about writing a simple bulleted list and crossing items off. But what happens if you lose that paper? And what do you do when you have page after page of notes?

Thankfully there’s a great app/web tool out there that can solve this dilemma. It’s called Workflowy and it’s hands down my new favorite tool.

Where most productivity apps thrive on bells and whistles, Workflowy keeps things simple. It’s a tool that lets you make bulleted lists. Simply type a list item and press Enter to go to the next bulleted item. But that’s just the beginning!

If you click on any bullet, you can zoom in on it and add sub tasks to that bullet. You can keep adding sub tasks until you drill down as far as you want. This is incredibly useful when you’re organizing an event or project managing. And because you can zoom in and drill down to multiple levels with ease, you can really have all your lists in one place without it feeling busy and cluttered.

You can tell you have a task with sub tasks because the bullet will get a halo around it.

Here’s how I do it: On my “home page” I write bullets for broad categories I’m regularly working on, things like Work, Personal, Blog, etc. Then I click on a bullet to zoom in and add tasks beneath that category.

A really nice feature is the ability to add hashtags to any item. Just like on social media, you can make anything a hashtag and it connects all items with that hashtag together. For instance, you could make a #today hashtag, which would display all items that need to be done today. Or a #call hashtag to help you remember to call people.

When a bulleted task is completed, you can hover over the bullet and click Complete, which will cross off the item, while leaving it there to let you feel good about yourself.

I’ve found myself using Workflowy more and more as my go-to productivity tool because it’s so fast, simple and easy to use. Plus it’s easy to navigate to all my ideas.

I use the web tool version the most, but there’s also an app for iOS and Android, which works just like you’d expect it to.

One limitation with Workflowy is a limit of 250 bulleted items a month. So if you’re a list addict you’ll probably want more. You can spring for the paid version or you can refer a friend. If you sign up using my referral link, you and I will both get an extra 250 bullets a month. Win/Win, right?

So give it a try. It’s a great tool that can truly make your life easier. Now I can mark writing this post off my list…