A favorite example:  When I chose paint for my home office, I took an iPhone photo of the paint can label, which included the color, mix, store name, etc.  Then I uploaded it instantly to Evernote, which will OCR scan the label. If I need more paint or want to match another room to my home office, all I have to do is search for the store name or color maybe the word “Office” and this photo pops up with all pertinent information.

My favorite productivity tools keep me organized, on schedule, and–honestly–much more serene and less stressed than ever before.

Here are a few that work for me:

Evernote — I lovethis tool. I added the add-on to Firefox and to my iPhone.

I use it most often (thus far) to send iphone screen shots, web clippings, and …photos/scans of things of documents I need to be able to find easily. Like these stupid training certificates at work. I couldn’t print the things so I took a pic of my work computer’s screen showing the approval because it won’t email or download, just (theoretically) print.

Evernote searches for terms including text in a document. I don’t accept biz cards anymore–just take a pic of the card and sent it to evernote. I used to use Google Notebook but since it’s no longer being expanded, I’m moving my Notebook to Evernote.

Jott— I use this favorite of my productivity tools mostly to send email or text via voice messages using my Jott iPhone app. I usually send to RTM (below), Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Remember the Milk (RTM)— my to-do-list of choice. Get the iPhone app, too.

Dropbox— a great portable filing cabinet and backup system. I can drop important files into the “dropbox” and access it from a computer at work, my laptop at the beach, my iPhone in the dentist’s office, or even at my mom’s house in the middle or nowhere.

Newest of my favorite productivity tools:

Google Calendar Application for iPhone— Getting my GCal to sync up via my iPhone has been my big productivity tool goal for the first three months of 2009, and it’s here at last! This one’s ever improving, but looks good and does everything I need.

Meeting Miser — This is a must-have if you can’t keep your team on schedule for a meeting or people don’t know when to shut up or stay on topic. Just add the salient information to the application right there on your computer screen for everyone to see (positions, hourly wage, etc) and set the timer. That 30 minute meeting that ends up running 3 hours while one of the managers tells wars stories about the old days and another who gushes about his grandchildren? The clock on the screen shows just how much that 30-minute meeting costs and how much it costs for every minute past! A real eye-opener.

More productivity tools and time management tools to come…