Productive people don’t just do more—they do more, better. They do this by thinking about what they’re doing. They don’t jump into everything they can, running about willy-nilly. Instead, they’re purposeful in what they pour their energy to, and in what they give their time to.
But if you’re not sure what all you have to do, how can you think about any of it? And if your tasks are all scattered across several different apps—calendar, work, grocery lists—then how can you make sure you’re thinking about everything? That’s where apps like Any.Do come in. By combining all your tasks, to-do lists, and notes into one place, Any.Do aims to make your life cohesive. We all know, a cohesive life is one that you can put thought into—and a life that you can put thought into is one that you can make truly productive.
So, is this the app you’ve been waiting for? Let’s take a closer look, before you make your decision, with this Any.Do review!
What Is Any.Do?
Any.Do was founded in 2011, and is based out of San Francisco. It is a “productivity platform designed to help people stay organized and get more done.” What Any.Do does well is that it syncs across all your devices—so you can really keep everything in one place. It also allows you to easily share on their free version, and uses natural language learning to schedule your tasks as you type. It’s a solid tool, that allows you to get more done.
How Does Any.Do Work?
Signing up for Any.Do is easy, and free. You can create a profile with you email, or your Facebook, Google, or Apply account. Any.Do is simple to use, but it’ll hold your hand as you get started—their onboarding process walks you through creating your first task, specific lists, and asks how many tasks you want to accomplish each week. It will encourage you to sign up for the Premium versions, but you don’t have to. Any.Do is still perfectly function in its free version.
Once you’re in, you’re greeted by your dashboard. Here, you can see your tasks for today, this week, or even all of them together. You can also easily jump to any of your lists, whether that’s lists for work, school, or personal life.
But you’re not here just to look at a dashboard—you have things to do! So to create a new task, simply hit the blue button with the apt name “create new task” in the top left corner. Once there, you can start typing in your task, including when it’s due.
Because of Any.Do’s “natural language” detector, you can type in something as vague as “next Tuesday” and it will know the exact calendar date, and schedule the task for then. You can schedule tasks for any date on the calendar, or for today, tomorrow, or next week. Premium members can also make reoccurring tasks, that way you never forget that assignment or doctor’s appointment.
Under each task, you can add much more. You can add subtasks, for large projects, or notes, or even attachments. Once you’re finished, you don’t have to do the task yourself—you can always delegate. Any.Do’s sharing feature allows you to share tasks with any of your Google contacts, or anyone whose email you have, so that you can easily assign tasks, and see activity on those tasks.
As you add tasks, they’re added to your dashboard—but don’t be afraid of being overwhelmed. Any.Do will only show you the tasks for today (or this week, if you’re on that tab), so you can take them one bite at a time. (Want to get the whole picture? Navigate over to the “all tasks” tab to see, well, all your tasks, in order that they’re due.)
Finished a task? Simply mark it as complete, and Any.Do will mark it off for you—line through and faded out and all. Any.Do syncs across all your devices, so you can access your lists and mark tasks as complete from anywhere!
You can also use Any.Do to incorporate many different apps into one place. Any.Do connects with Google Calendar, iCloud, and Outlook easily in the free version. For Premium users, they can utilize Any.Do and Zapier to connect to over 1,500 apps, including Slack.
Is Any.Do Premium Worth It?
Any.Do offers a free service, which works well, but their premium doesn’t cost much either. Monthly (the least cost-effective way to purchase it), Any.Do costs 5.99/month—about as much as a sandwich. If you pay for 6 months at a time, it will cost $4.49/month, and if you purchase a whole year, it will only cost you $2.49/month.
Premium comes with some special perks. It allows you to have repeat reminders—that way you don’t have to put in every Friday that you have a paper due, or put in your regular doctor appointments every time. It also has the ability of location reminders—a unique tool. When this is connected with your location, it will give you reminders at certain places—even distinguishing between when you arrive or when you leave. So you won’t have to forget about grabbing eggs at the grocery store, nor forget about giving the dog her medicine right before you leave home.
Premium also allows you to integrate with more apps, like taking comments from Slack, and easily turning them into tasks.
If you’re using Any.Do only for personal lists and tasks, then the free version should be sufficient. But if you’re integrating Any.Do with your work tasks, or need to seriously organize your life, then the low cost of Any.Do Premium is definitely worth the price.
How To Best Use Any.Do
While there are plenty of productivity apps out there, from Todoist to OmniFocus, none offer a grocery list feature quite like Any.Do. This is a unique feature that you should definitely take advantage of. While a grocery list may not seem important, Any.Do’s intelligent grocery list is a great tool to keep your shopping in order. You can even make separate lists for separate stores.
Once you create your first list, you’ll start getting personalized recommendations—whether that’s from ingredients you regularly purchase, or from things you’re already buying. You can also paste in ingredients from recipes online, and Any.Do will automatically organize them. No matter what order you put them in, your eggs, milk, and cheese will all be listed together, and your meats and veggies will do the same—that way you’re not having to walk back and forth across the store a dozen times.
You can also connect your list with all members of your family—as long as they have an email or google account, they can all access the list. That way, anyone can add, and anyone can shop—and you won’t have to worry about getting home just to hear, “Oh, we needed more dog food!” Take advantage of Any.Do’s features to help even your everyday shopping go smoother!
Conclusion: Any.Do
Any.Do is simple to use—but it makes your life simpler as well. It doesn’t have many frills or fancy tools—but your life doesn’t need complicated tools. With its natural language, ease of use, and the ability to share with others even on the free version, Any.Do is a solid workhorse, perfect for everyday use. Available on all devices, it’s one of the best free productivity apps—and it can help you to organize your life.
