Lubbock Heart Hospital | Photo by brykmantra

Like many of you, I often find myself on overload when trying to remember key phone numbers, websites, passwords, birthdays and more.

There are tons of productivity software out there meant to help us remember them, but it can be a bit confusing just remembering the ins and outs of all these different sites and software packages.

To help you out, here’s what I’ve done to make sure I keep track of all my “vitals.”

Google calendar – this has definitely been my lifesaver when keeping track of birthdays, anniversaries, events and more. Since it’s based in the cloud, I don’t have to worry about losing my information if I move from one computer to another and it automatically syncs with the calendar on my phone as well. As soon as I find out about someone’s birthday or anniversary, I add an annual event to my calendar.

Google contacts – similar to Google calendar, the biggest advantage to using Google contacts is that it’s cloud based and syncs with my e-mail (I use Gmail for all non-9-5 work related e-mail) as well as my phone.

Delicious – my number one go-to source for web bookmarks. I rarely bookmark things within my actual browser, especially since I move from browser to browser throughout the day. Instead, I bookmark sites to delicious and can access them from anywhere and browse/search them under tags that I determine for each post.

My life text file – my ultimate vital keeper. This is the easiest, simplest and least techno-savy tool I use but it’s also one of the most vital. This is nothing more than a text file I started in Windows Notepad. I originally stored it on a password protected flash drive, but decided it may be best to have it readily accessible to My Wife as well, in case of emergency. So I now store a backup copy of the document on Google Docs and she is the only one with access to it besides myself.

I keep passwords, gift ideas, my “to-read” book list and several other random reminders that don’t fit in any of the other tools. I typically tag each item with a simple divider and title:

==
Date ideas:

And then add the information below it. When the information is needed, I run a simple search on the document and it brings the information front and center. It’s been a lifesaver in more ways than one when I’m trying to remember key vitals to various tasks throughout my day.

So what about you? How do you track your vitals?

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