How Cloud Drive Devices and a To Do List Template Can Save You Stress
If you were expecting a napkin, dog-eared notepad, or tattered checklist that’s been through the laundry, think again. A real, well-designed to do list template can help you move your organization into the post-paper world by keeping your group’s notes accessible at a click, or else neatly typed and shared. Our to do list template was designed with you in mind. But let’s also talk about some ways you can use the free web apps that are out there to make your group work more efficiently online.
Download our to do list template (.doc)
Our to do list template combines a simple to do list with some features that’ll make your life easier and your projects more manageable, including space for tracking deadlines as well as for delegating each assignment. The final section of the to do list template offers space for your notes and any specifications that the delegatee should be aware of when they’re referring to the to do list template to plan their course of action.
The to do list template is completely functional as a print-out, with plenty of space for filling it in by hand. But say you want to use the to do list template to coordinate action and manage projects across large distances. Or maybe you and your team just want to house the to do list template someplace within easy reach, where you can each access it and update it as a project develops. Then consider putting the to do list template somewhere on the cloud.
Get Off My Cloud!
Today’s college students are probably the most technologically savvy ever to arrive on campus. So why are we bothering to tell you about cloud drives? Because student leaders get so busy that they sometimes fall behind the curve. There are still way too many of you fumbling around with an external hard drive that you need to plug in to use. Others of you are carrying around wealths of information and paperwork that are just way too important to risk misplacing on a thumb drive. This coming school year, make a resolution not only to go paper-less, but drive-less, too.
Google Drive
Well, almost drive-less. Google Drive is the first option out there for housing your student organization’s documents somewhere centrally for the rest of your board members to collaborate on. Drive, which will soon replace the popular and all-powerful Google Docs, retains the ordinary Google Docs functions (e.g., the spreadsheets, form-builder, and word processor), but it also creates a folder on your desktop (or wherever you want it, really) where you can save files and immediately access them from anywhere—on a computer at work, or in your computer lab, through a web browser, or with the downloadable app. Just sign in with a Google account and you’re ready to collaborate. Google Drive comes with 5 GB of free space on the cloud just to get you started—plenty of space to store your to do list template.
Dropbox
But before Drive (let’s call it the B.D. era for kicks), there was Dropbox. Dropbox remains one of the most popular cloud drive services out there. Like Google Drive, it is completely free to get started with Dropbox. Unlike Drive, you don’t need a Google account to sign up (which might make you more comfortable), and for starting with Dropbox they give you 5 GB of space for free (with an additional 250 MB for every person you refer). Seeing as Dropbox was one of the innovators in offering cloud drive services to ordinary people, Google Drive has closely imitated Dropbox, and the two work almost identically: you download the Dropbox app, it creates a folder on your desktop, and then anything you save to the folder, such as your group’s to do list template, is instantly ready for use from anywhere else. In your Dropbox, you can create specific folders to share with your teammates. Now none of the shirkers in your student organization can use the excuse that they didn’t see notes from the meeting—you can have them up immediately for everybody to see as soon as you’ve punctuated your last bullet point.
If you need to make a file available to everybody in your group, say, for instance, on your Facebook page or in an email, you can save it to your Dropbox’s public folder and give your organization members a link to the file. In Dropbox’s web browser interface, it’s as easy as right clicking on the file and copying the URL it gives you, and then sending it or embedding it wherever you need to. If you’re working from your computer’s desktop, you can right click and select “Get Link” from the Dropbox-specific options you’re given.
Wunderlist
Whether you’re working with a to do list template or not, cloud drive services are the way to go for collaborating remotely with your student organization, keeping everybody on the same page, and avoiding the frustration when somebody in your group swears he has that itemized budget somewhere but just can’t seem to find it beneath the pile of junk in his closet. But what about tracking your own list of things to do? If a to do list template isn’t your thing, but the idea of using digital technology to organize your life is still appealing, then look at Wunderlist. Wunderlist is another free app that you can install on as many computers and mobile devices as you want, and it lets you create and sync your to do lists across multiple devices. You can create lists to share with others, and the changes they make will register with yours instantly. The to do lists themselves are easy to use, nothing more than a single-line title for your task with a checkmark resting right next to it. And say that for instance you need to go back and review some of your organization’s past accomplishments, perhaps for a budget hearing or in order to create some promotional materials. Using Wunderlist’s archive feature, built into each list, you can view all of your completed tasks from a given list and re-live the glory days all you want.
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