The beginning of a new year always gets me in the mood to organize and re-organize everything! We have been working hard to de-clutter the house, rearrange rooms and organize drawers with nifty new organizers. Time management and productivity are also areas that I am trying to get in order. In an effort to utilize our new iPad, I found some helpful apps that will surely come in handy as I strive to make better use of my time.

Want to increase your productivity in 2012? Here are a few of my recent downloads and what I found to be the top productivity apps for both the iPad and iPhone.

 

 

Motivated Moms 2012 is a pre-planned checklist of chores that will allow you to have a clean, organized home and still have time for yourself. No need for huge cleaning days – just do the chores, check them off and you are done for the day! I love that you can personalize the chores to meet the needs of your family and you can assign color coded chores to each family member. Hooray!

Key features:
• All tasks in the average home are planned out for you throughout the year
• Check off chores as they are done and they drop to the bottom of the list out of your way
• No major cleaning days or Spring Cleaning week, do just a little all year around
• Daily items and those that come up less frequently are scheduled for you
• No need to remember when you last changed the a/c filter or dusted the living room – just do the tasks as they come up; the app keeps track for you.

$7.99

 

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Bento for iPad – Organize contacts, track projects, plan events, and manage things – all in one easy to use iPad personal database! Bento for iPad is one of the top iPad apps and the most popular personal database for iPad. Use it standalone or synchronize with Bento 4 for Mac.

Key Features:
• Bento for iPad is based on Bento for iPhone but has been enhanced to make the most of the larger iPad screen.
• Comes with 25 ready-to-use database templates that can be easily customized for whatever you need to organize.
• Details stored in Bento are large and easy to read on iPad.
• In landscape, you get a split screen view showing both your complete records list and a single record’s details simultaneously.
• Rotate iPad to portrait to focus on one record at a time.
• Swipe up or down to see more details for each record.
• Touch the screen to edit information in media fields, choice fields, date fields, ratings fields, and checkboxes.
• Tap to record voice memos, watch videos, view photos, and send emails.
• Browse web links in Safari without leaving Bento.
• Enter numbers with ease using the large, custom on-screen keypad.
• Includes background themes with coordinated fonts to make your data look great on the larger screen.
• Supports full-screen viewing of Adobe® PDFs stored in media fields.

$4.99

 

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Evernote turns the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad into an extension of your brain, helping you remember anything and everything that happens in your life. From notes to ideas to snapshots to recordings, put it all into Evernote and watch as it instantly synchronizes from your iPhone to your Mac or Windows desktop. See why millions of people worldwide use Evernote:

Key Features:
● Create text, photo and audio notes
● Auto-synchronize your notes to your Mac, PC, and Web
● Magically makes text within snapshots searchable
● Mark notes as “Favorite” for quick access
● All notes include geo-location information for mapping and search

Here are some ways to use Evernote for your personal and professional life:
● For research and class notes
● To capture blog ideas and design inspiration
● To stay in-sync with your desktop notes, web clips, and files
● To snap photos of whiteboards and wine labels
● As part of your GTD system to help you stay organized
● To record voice memos

FREE

 

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Daily Notes converts your iPad into a beautiful and elegant journal, cased inside a leather jacket. Whether you want to take notes in meetings, record key points while reading a book or would like to just jot down your passing thoughts – this app is for you.

The app is organized as a set of tabs, each tab having a page for every day. Create tabs for various aspects of your life, play with your favorite color themes/fonts and enjoy the pleasure of notes-taking with Daily Notes.
Key Features:
- Create any number of tabs
- Take notes and manage tasks within each tab
- Select color themes and fonts for each of your tabs
- Simple navigation
- Switch to a tab’s summary view for quick reference
- Dynamic search
- Tag notes for easy lookup
- Filter notes by tags, tabs and/or days
- Email notes with a single touch
- Photo attachments
- DROPBOX Backup
- PDF Export
- Set password
- TextExpander Support
- Built-in User guide

Sample uses:
- Daily journal/diary
- Task management
- Classroom notes taking for students
- Meeting notes and email meeting minutes after
- Project notes with separate tab for each project
- Taking notes as you read a book

$4.99

 

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Intuition: Mom’s Personal Assistant – the first personal assistant designed by moms for moms to help you get things done.

• GET ORGANIZED: Quickly capture and organize your to-dos, tasks and wish lists.
• SIMPLIFY GROCERY LISTS: Easily create, save and re-use grocery lists
• GET HELP: Email your to-do lists, groceries and tips with friends and family
• SAVE MONEY: Find local grocery coupons
• SYNCHRONIZE: Schedule appointments and and sync your calendar with iPhone, iCal and Google calendars via Google.
• LOCATION ASSISTANCE: Receive alerts when you are near stores and locations where you can complete your errands.

Key Features:
• Organize tasks and to-do lists by categories such as family, school or travel. Or by locations, such as home, office, and grocery store
• Customizable grocery lists with hundreds of items to choose from
• Easy viewing of completed tasks so you can see your productivity
• Reusable checklists and shopping lists
• Task due-dates and times
• Task reminders via email and iPhone alerts
• View your schedule by day, month or as a complete list to quickly see what’s due today, tomorrow, or later
• Recurring tasks for events like soccer games, piano lessons or appointments
• Ability to sync with Google Calendar, iCal and iPhone calendar via Google

 FREE

 

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To Do – Organize and prioritize your life with this intelligent task management system. LifeNotes ♡ To Do’s tasks and notes helps you track your everyday tasks and long term goals, prioritize them, and help you bring balance to your life. Share your goals and folders with friends and coworkers! A robust system of Tags allows you to search and organize the items your way!

Key Features:

✓ Universal app for iPad + iPhone + iTouch.
✓ Landscape and Portrait modes on all devices.
✓ Beautiful and easy to use. The power and speed is there when you need it!
✓ Organize your goals with true hierarchical folders.
✓ Subtasks! Our Projects and recurring Checklist features are very intuitive.
✓ A separate Unfilled Items section to store quick lists and notes. Move items to goals when you have the time.
✓ True collaboration. Share your folders and goals with friends and coworkers.
✓ Free and securely sync service allows you to sync your tasks wirelessly to backup and share across your iOS devices. Sync is very fast… usually under 1/2 second.
✓ Local Notifications and alarms.
✓ Recurring events. Repeat based on specific intervals -or- by completion date.
✓ Due by, Due before, Due after for due dates.
✓ Star your tasks and notes to bring them to the top of your To Do list.
✓ Use Priority, assign Work Time, and mark Status with your To Do’s and Notes. Shared items status and priority will sync across devices for detailed information as to what you are working on.
✓ Custom Status and pre-defined status so you can detail how your tasks progress.
✓ Time Estimate allows you to keep track of when you need to start a task. LifeNotes ♡ To Do will automatically increase the importance of your tasks at the beginning of your work time, so you know what you should be working on now.
✓ Smart Tag Lists. You can keep and access your boolean tag and location searches (such as “tag x and y in location z” or “tag x or y”) in easily accessible lists to access your data in new ways.
✓ Defer entire goals or folders or just individual items with “Pause”. Keep your To Do list clean!

$3.99

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Here is a neat app that helps moms find educational apps for the kiddos…

Moms With Apps  is a catalog of great children’s and family-friendly apps. Search by educational categories and age groups to discover new apps and developers.

Key Features:
The Moms with Apps app has the following features:
✏ Over 1000 apps from top educational app developers
✏ Organized educational subjects (e.g. Early Learning, Math, Science, Special Needs)
✏ Recommended ages for every app and book
✏ Create and maintain a wishlist of your favorite apps
✏ Expert curated app lists
✏ Discover and share great apps through social networking

FREE

 

We will NEVER get it all done, we need to be flexible and accept the fact that our “To-Do” lists grow faster then we can check things off. Hopefully, we can utilize the resources these smart developers have created to make daily tasks a tad easier to tackle.

If you have a favorite productivity app, please share it in the comments below!

Resolve to live a happy, productive, peace-filled life in 2012!