Organizing apps can help you get organized, but they don’t work for everyone

“By nature, I’m a messy person,” says businessman Mock Van Liel, 27. Her life was like a messy room until she discovered the Asana organizing app. “I record everything I want to remember and it gets automatically added as a task. I used to have papers to doThe menus I lost again, and everything was mixed up. In the app I can add tasks for each project. And if I don’t complete a task, it stays on my to-do list until I deselect it. That way I can’t forget anything.”

Flemish planning director Brigitta Vangel, 43, also gratefully uses organizational applications. She was born, she says, “as a real, messy stress chicken.” Since Corona, she has had many clients suffering from stress and “almost exhausted”, in part due to all kinds of things getting mixed up due to working from home. “That makes planning more important,” she says. “It means getting things out of your head.” She herself uses Trello, an app where you can create separate ‘boards’ (overviews) for all aspects of your life. Vangeel: “I also put my shopping lists in it. Then my husband doesn’t have to call me when he’s at the supermarket, but he can see what he needs to buy in the app.”

Social media specialist Bo (32) has ADHD. For fear of negative reactions, she prefers not to mention her last name. It uses different applications to create order out of the chaos. She says they made her life “a lot easier”. “Before that I was a loose cannon who remembers nothing and loses everything. Now I use Google Calendar for all my appointments and birthdays. I get push notification for everything, so I don’t forget anything. I put tasks I don’t want to do with multiple alarms in my alarm app Things on the web that I want to revisit later, I put them all in Google Keep, so I don’t have to scroll endlessly through my Twitter or TikTok history.” Recently she’s been using smart tags† These are small devices that attach to your smartphone and can help you find things. She has the cards attached to her keys and her handbag. “ADHD medication only works 70 percent. The apps help me with the remaining 30 percent.”

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Copywriter Erika van Zinderen Bakker (44 years old) has had lower quality experiences with regulatory applications. “I really think these kinds of apps are a disaster. Then you have to do it all over again. And that is exactly what you as a member are not waiting for.”

According to her, these types of applications are not good for shaping, because the possibilities are limitless. “You can make endless lists in it. That’s why I prefer a paper agenda, with limited days and times and space. This gives you something to stick to.”

Trello my messy like me

Businesswoman Deborah Villa Ozil, 48, uses a digital tool, but is skeptical about making it more organized. “My Trello is as messy as me. I think if you’re the organized type, Trello will be tidy. If you’re messy, your Trello is messy too.”

They can be identified by coach Vangel’s layout. “You can set up these apps in a variety of ways. They are basically blank lists. It’s more about what you do with it. So many people follow a course to learn how best to set up this app, or they use a self-help book control or Getting things doneUsing methods like the Two-Minute Method: Takes less than two minutes, do it right away. If it takes more time, plan for it. In any case, downloading such an application is not enough. You have to develop a system that works for you.”

According to Vangel, digital tools are not a panacea. For many messy people, a paper planner can offer a solution. „It is not easy to do a task on paper copy and paste the next day. Then you have to write it again. And you can’t cram ten tasks into one line. I always say: Paper doesn’t lie. Many people like to cross out a task with a pen. This gives an extra boost of dopamine in the brain, more than digital beats. ”

And so everyone is trying to create order in the chaos in their own way, while a new trend is on the way: apps that use artificial intelligence (AI) to do the optimal planning of your days, including meditation periods.

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But while AI appears to approximate a productive and stress-free existence, philosopher Marian Donner (48) is concerned about our frantic pursuit of improvement. “I’ve never used an app like this and don’t plan to use it,” says Donner, who is inside self-destruct book (2019) critically sheds light on 21st century trends for self-help and self-improvement. “All those organizational applications remind me of what the philosopher Herbert Marcuse calls ‘technical capitalism’: Technology serves the production system. Capitalism haunts us, we feel constant pressure to become more productive and efficient than we already are. And then we will all install the applications again to achieve that improvement. That way. Technology and capitalism go hand in hand. her motto? “Relax, live as relaxed as possible.”

For Vangel, planning is the best way to lead a stress-free life. “Planning has a bad nickname. Like: A person who plans is not flexible. But planning actually helps me improvise. Because I have an overview, I know exactly that I can set aside an hour to go to lunch spontaneously.”

Vangel admits that planning also takes time. “That’s why you shouldn’t make it too complicated. Once messy people and people with ADHD start planning, I often see that they’re immediately crossing the line. Everything is in folders of different colors etc. People quickly make it up Too hard. My advice for splitting is: Start simple. Choose the method that works best for you. And stop saying you’re a mess. As long as you still think it yourself, you’ll still be a mess.”