Your smartphone can be either a powerful tool to enhance your personal effectiveness or an equally powerful distraction to unravel it. Sure, every now and then you need to use your phone to text friends about dinner plans or unwind with a rousing game of Angry Birds, but your smartphone also has the capability to make you a productivity superstar.

3 Personal Effectiveness Smartphone Apps

1. Trello (Free, iPhone and Android)

Trello is a free, web-based project management system that helps you organize anything in your professional or personal life. You create boards for projects you are working on (private or shared with collaborators), then add cards for checklists, comments, photos, videos or task delegation. The Trello smartphone app syncs with your web dashboard and allows you to create new to-do items, assign tasks or upload media for top personal effectiveness on the go.

2. CallFlakes (Free, Android)

CallFlakes is a free Android smartphone app that makes it a snap to follow up on work phone calls. As soon as you end a call on your phone, a screen pops up with seven possible action steps:

• Send an email to the caller
• Send a text message
• Call back
• Share something on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook
• Schedule a meeting in the phone’s calendar
• Set a reminder
• Search web

3. MailShot (Free, iPhone)

MailShot is a free iPhone app that helps you organize and segment your email contacts into groups directly from Mail and other phone apps. Create a contact list for the sales team and send everyone a message before a big presentation on your morning train commute, or start a list for the HR department and stay in touch about upcoming policy changes as you are boarding a plane for a business trip.

What are smartphone apps help keep you productive and organized? Share your tips.

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