Three Ways iDoneThis Helps Me Get Things Done

If you’re looking for a useful app to boost your productivity, I recommend iDoneThis, which I’ve used every day for the past six months. Here are three ways the app helps me get more things done:

1. It enables me to effortlessly keep track of what I’ve done and thus how productive I have (or haven’t) been.

At the end of each day, iDoneThis sends me an email. “Hi there,” it says, “Take 30 seconds to write out what you got done today.” So I do—and that’s that. Keeping track of what I’ve done isn’t something I have to think much about; with iDoneThis it’s just a question in my inbox that I respond to in less than a minute.

2. It motivates me to get the right things done.

I have a handful of things I want to do each day and knowing that I’m going to report what I did sometimes gives me just enough added motivation to take action on the most important things when I otherwise would not.

For example, I normally treasure reading to my son. Sometimes, however, particularly when I’m tired, I waver between going upstairs to read to him and skipping it. Then I remember that I’ll be able to report the activity to iDoneThis by email—and just that much tips me to read. Shortly thereafter, I’ve read two or three short books to my son and strengthened not only an important habit but also a vital relationship—and I’m feeling more energetic to boot.

3. It keeps me honest about what I have actually done.

It can be easy to blame outside factors for not getting things done or not being happy. After all, other people and chance events can influence both of these things. But iDoneThis keeps a clear and definitive record of what I do each day, and when I look back on what I have done I can see the results of my decisions and actions.

For example, I can see that over the past month I read many more books for my own enjoyment than I had planned and, partly because of this, wrote much less. Without iDoneThis, it would be easy to tell myself that I was productive, having read so much, and leave it at that. But with the record that iDoneThis provides, I can see that my indulgence in reading, however productive on one level, precluded me from doing the writing that I wanted to do. This enables me to adjust my plan for the following days, weeks, and months.

There are other ways iDoneThis helps me boost my productivity, and other ways it can help you boost yours too. If you want to give it a try, you can sign up to use the app here. (It’s free.)

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