If you’re like me you have way too much to do.  Keeping up with the critical tasks just to do your job is daunting enough, never mind keeping up with important things like social networking and reading industry news!

Here are three free, easy-to-use technical tools that I use to better manage my time….because you simply can’t rely on Outlook alone.

Stickies for Windows – http://www.stickiesforwindows.com – I love this program.  If you are not familiar, it allows you to create sticky notes that sit on your desktop.  They are simple to edit and remove once you’ve finished your task.

Backpack – http://www.backpackit.com – Backpack allows you to centralize your calendar, documents and schedule reminders that are sent to your cell phone!  The service is positioned as being useful for team collaboration, however when you work from many locations throughout the day (like most of us) this is useful for a team of one.  Google offers similar products, but I really like the reminder feature with Backpack

Google Reader – http://reader.google.com - Finally if you’re not using a blog reader to keep up with industry news I highly suggest you start using one.  They are very easy to use and will allow you to digest a great deal of information in a very short amount of time….I like Google Reader. 

Hopefully these help you as they have me.