4-Evernote

Evernote is another killer note-taking tool, but when it comes to the incredible things you can do with it, the sky's the limit. We've shared some of our favorite uses for it and our thoughts on why it's so popular, but its power is clear once you start using it. Adding simple notes is a snap, creating notebooks for multiple projects or parts of your life you want to organize is simple, and searching across everything you've entered is easy too. Don't be afraid to create tons of notes and notebooks either—it may sound counterproductive to getting organized, but one of the best things about Evernote is that it can quickly make sense out of a lot of information and present it to you so you see what you need to see. You can even use Evernote to digitize your pen and paper notes, documents, and other files so you can toss them into the relevant project notebook you want to save them in. Evernote has a massive ecosystem of apps that feed into it and support it, not to mention its web clipper and its iOS and Android apps. Evernote is free, but $5/mo or $45/yr will get you Evernote Premium, which offers compelling features like offline access to your notebooks, collaboration tools, more storage space, and improved search. Once you start using it, you'll want to get premium pretty quickly. If you're looking for a tool to organize your life, Evernote is a great one to look at, but it's just as good at organizing your kitchen remodel (imagine a notebook with all of your ideas, receipts, links and clipped pages of fixtures or appliances you want to buy, contact information for contractors, bills, notes, and a project plan, neatly organized) or your family vacation (picture a notebook with clippings of the destinations you're considering, your detailed travel budget, ticket and booking receipts, and more inside), too.