Need a life-hack fix? Got a couple bucks? Here are three cool iPhone apps that will help you track your journeys, value your time, and meet your goals:

Wonderful DayThe first app is the delightfully named Wonderful Day. The idea is similar to Jerry Seinfeld’s ruthlessly elegant productivity tip. Set up your goal in Wonderful Day (I’ve established two: running at least 3 miles and writing at least 400 words). Wonderful Day will send you a single daily reminder — not a riot of beeps and buzzes — and when you accomplish your task, you mark it as done in the app. After a few days, you’ll see a chain of green dots next to your goal. The longer the chain grows, the more reluctant you’ll be to break it with a dreaded red dot indicating that you haven’t done what you set out to do. A very sensible 99-cent investment.

Replay My DayThe next is Replay My Day, a $1.99 app that captures your Facebook updates, Tweets, photos, notes, just about anything else you want and plots them by location. Its creator calls the result “a magic diary.” The magic part is that you can then replay any of your recorded days like a mini-movie, traveling back in time and space to relive those moments as you recorded them. You could use it, say, to remember a family vacation — but it might also have business applications. How about using Replay My Day to compile research for a book or article? Salespeople could use it to track their customer visits. A farm-to-table entrepreneur could record the travels of a turnip to your dinner plate. Imagine if Leopold Bloom had had this app in his pocket.

MeetingCalcThe last app offers fun and insight — with a bite. Ever wonder what all those meetings are costing your company? With MeetingCalc, you’ll get your answer. Enter the hourly rate of each person in the meeting, and at the end of the meeting the app will tabulate the total cost. Say you’re in a meeting with nine co-workers who average $60 an hour, and 15 minutes are wasted fumbling with the laptop and projector. That just cost your company $150! The beauty of MeetingCalc, which costs just 99 cents, is that you can then share the results — with the whole world via Twitter, if you want. However, some people would consider that a waste of time.

7 Responses to “3 cheap and effective productivity apps”

  1. Ben Knight says:

    “He prods at a tiger with a stick”

  2. Rob says:

    The wonderful day app would be great for anyone.

    • Pat says:

      Yes, I am not an iPhone user, and don’t plan to be. I wish that these apps were available for PC – maybe even Android, though I doubt I’ll even get one of those any time soon…

      If you find any versions of good apps for those of us who are not Luddites, but have not bought into the iPhone / Android Next Big Thing craze, please let us know!

  3. Marilyn says:

    Thanks for the tip about Replay My Day. I plan to check it out. If you’re interested in making your life more productive, I encourage you to also take a look at our app LifeTopix from http://www.lightarrow.com. The goal of LifeTopix is to allow you to manage all your life information in a single app. It does this by leveraging the natural relationship within your life’s data to free you from the burden of having to re-enter the same information multiple times. It comes with out-of-the-box integration to Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, Google Tasks, Toodledo, Evernote and device-to-device sync via iCloud. Let us know what you think. Thanks!

  4. Tony Bird says:

    Really enjoyed your presentation, I agree and believe that the future is not about monetary motivation, and this is being presented by many vocal visionaries.
    However, often it sounds utopian, because we do not consider the people who are not motivated monetarily or otherwise, and just wish to live a life of doing a days work for a reasonable wage to support their family and enjoy a simple life (whatever that is)

    I consider myself someone who is able to look at the big picture for the future, I feel that includes all of the human race, people like you who are visionaries, but also people who are happy not thinking about anything more than the simple pleasures in life.

    I believe the monetary system does not bring fulfilment in life in many cases, and is not the way of the future, however we are talking about an intrinsic change in beliefs, and we are a long way from that.

    I enjoy what you are saying, but we cannot expect every one to be as motivated as we/you are. Good luck and thanks.

  5. Nancy Ruby says:

    After reading about your three cheap and effective productivity apps, I am intersted in using the MeetingCalc. My company spends a lot of time in meetings and/or on teleconferences. It may make us reevaluate who we include in meetings when you see the costs versus the value add.

  6. Paul says:

    I want to share my discover for a great productivity app I found few months ago. it’s Beesy. http://www.beesapps.com/beesy-ipad-to-do/
    for few dollars, this application allows to generate a toDolist and stay efficient in your work. My colleagues and I are using it and we are for the moment very pleased.