Looking for documentation of daily activity advice

My wife is a personal assistant, new gig is very cool, great hours, pay is great, etc. just one problem. She needs a convenient way to document her communication with clients, and record her tasks.

Examples of what she’d be recording:

  • 9:30 AM moved personal trainer appointment from Tuesday at 3:30pm, to Tuesday at 6:30pm, spoke over the phone with Greta
  • 9:45 AM made payment to architect for Job A
  • 10:00 AM General contractor for job B called, they need documents X,Y, and Z by Friday

Occasionally she’ll set, or move an appointment for her clients and the vendor confirms this with her over the phone. Sometimes the vendor doesn’t record this information properly on their end, and her client’s appointment is messed up, with no documentation to show this wasn’t a slip up on her end. To avoid potentially looking anything less than perfect, she’s resorted to writing down the persons name who she spoke with, (happened twice since January) what time they spoke, especially when she thinks the vendor might drop the bal. Her clients are demanding (understandably) and a mistake like taking time out for two appointments unnecessarily can be very costly, as their time (and appreciation for her work) is very valuable.

With that said, I mentioned to her it wouldn’t be a bad idea for her to keep a daily log of every task she completes, with details added when thy make sense. I’m not sure if there’s an app perfect for this type of task tracking yet. Most of the productivity apps are too bloated, I was hoping it could be as easy as dictating these things using workflows/shortcuts, Siri and having them all stored in the same place daily. Thinking of annotating the notes section of a single calendar event for her work day, so it can be shared/recorded if needed.

Tried researching apps that do this well, and didn’t see anything that made sense for her to use yet, or any great ideas for the DIY capable. Figured this would be the perfect place to ask. Has anyone seen any cool solutions for this type of documentation need yet?

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Agenda is a calendar-based notes app which might work. But I’d just dump it in a text file (or TaskPaper) using TextExpander or the like to add dates and times - it doesn’t sound like it’s generally going to be something she needs to look back at. Will she need to retrieve any of the info. for reporting purposes?

I keep a log of work tasks completed that I need to report on in a TaskPaper file which has the advantage of being able to tag lines depending on which reports they’ve been added to, then I can easily filter to see what’s been included in reports and what hasn’t, e.g.

Service:

  • XXX thesis @cv @efile @meritstatement

Teaching:

  • course name @efile

Publications:

  • “some article” @cv @grant-funder
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The Agenda recommendation isn’t bad. I’d also suggest Noteplan, which is Mac/iOS and can pull info from your calendar. I think it’s impressive, and I own it, but I struggle to find a use for it for myself. (I buy too many apps I end up not using. :worried: )

It’s a gorgeous app, at least as nice as Agenda. You can see Mac screenshots here and iOS ones here.

As far as service/apps you might consider Trello, or maybe something outline-based like Dynalist or Workflowy.

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I second/third/n+1 the Agenda recommendation. It’s developing quite nicely, and the calendar can always be there at her side. Notes can be linked to calendar events, contain checklists, due dates within notes, tag people, tags, etc. They’ve recently added Reminders too.

I mean, just look at it :slightly_smiling_face:

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