Get Organized: 5 Ways to Be More Productive With The Amazon Echo

The Amazon Echo , a smart Wi-Fi-connected speaker that does what you ask, has a few excellent ways for helping you stay organized. If you're a new owner of one of these devices, you might not yet realize just how smart and helpful the Echo can be at managing your calendar, reminding you of upcoming events, and even keeping a list of which songs you've heard.

The Echo can carry out commands using apps and services that are otherwise unaffiliated with Amazon. Some of them include Evernote, Gmail, Spotify, Todoist, and Wunderlist. Connecting your Echo to these other tools is actually quite simple.

While integration between the Echo and Google Calendar is supported natively, that's not the case for a lot of other apps. Luckily, you can use a free service called IFTTT to connect them very easily.

IFTTT stands for "if this, then that." It lets you create interactions between different services and apps without having to know any code. For example, by following a few simple selections on the IFTTT website, you can create a command so that every time you add a new contact to your iPhone, the same information is recorded in a Google Sheet, creating an automatic backup of your address book. Another example is "if there is a breaking news story on The New York Times' website, then email a link to me."

In November, IFTTT brought Amazon Echo into its fold, making it really easy for Echo owners to give voice commands to Alexa (the robot voice of the Echo) that the Amazon device cannot carry out on its own. And many of these commands help you stay organized. Here are a few that I find particularly valuable.

1. Add a New Task to Your Favorite To-Do App

If you use Evernote, Google Calendar, Todoist, iPhone Reminders, or Wunderlist to manage your to-do list, you can tell Alexa what to add to your task list using just your voice. Wunderlist users need to use an IFTTT command that actually routes the task through Gmail. When you tell Alexa to add a to-do to Wunderlist, the command prompts an email in Gmail that sends the task to your Wunderlist email address, which adds it to your account. The work-around is invisible to you, though, as the one voice command will trigger all the necessary actions. Here are links to create each of them:

• create a Google Calendar task
• create a Todoist task
• create an Evernote task
• create a Reminders task
• create a Wunderlist task via email.

2. Email Yourself Your To-Do List

While I'm not a fan of mixing email and my to-do lists, many people use unread messages in their inbox as a way to remember things. There's an IFTTT recipe that works like this: If you ask Alexa what's on your to-do list, then she'll email you the complete list.

3. Make Your Phone Ring When an Echo Alarm Goes Off

The Echo has alarms that you can set just by telling Alexa when you want them to ring. But they don't work so well if you wander out of earshot. As a backup, you can set your phone to ring anytime an Echo alarm does. One note is that this command won't take your phone out of mute mode, so be sure to leave your ringer enabled.

4. Add Sports Games to Google Calendar

Echo users who are also sports fans love the ability to ask Alexa for game scores and standings of their favorite teams. Keeping up with game schedules is another challenge. With this command, any time you ask Alexa when your favorite team plays next, you'll get a Google Calendar entry blocking off time for the game.

5. Add Songs Echo Plays to Spotify or a Google Sheet

The Amazon Echo can play music from Amazon Prime Music. There are two IFTTT recipes that help you save the song list. One adds the tracks to a Google Sheet, and the other saves a playlist of all the songs in Spotify.

For more suggestions on how to use IFTTT, see the 110 best IFTTT recipes.