Guest post from Ann Brennan of Ann's Social Media & Marketing and Ann's Running Commentary.

Over the past year and a half I have gone from part-time employee with a local running store to owning and running my own business out of my home.  To make my life even busier, my youngest child has joined two rock bands and started middle school where he plays in the school band and the jazz band.  Some days I feel as though I will never catch up.

But in the past few weeks it has gotten easier.  I found an app that I really love.  It saves me time on so many levels.  While I may come back to write about some of the other features I love about this app, today I want to talk about the one that is saving me time on a daily basis.  This app saves me not just minutes but hours every week.

iStratus DayPlanner

Let me be honest.  When I was first asked to try this DayPlanner it was literally less than a month since my assistant had convinced me to switch from using just the Apple calendar to using the Google Calendar.  It had been a nightmare to transfer my busy schedule over.  But I had finally done it and was feeling pretty good about myself.  Why would I want to put myself through that again?

The Good News

The good news was I didn't have to do that.  iStratus works with the Apple calendar.  If you have synced another calendar with it, such as Google or Outlook, that works too.   The iStratus uses what is in your iPhone or iPad already.  

So, Why Do I Need It?

That was the question I asked Phil from iStratus.  His answer?

"It's like the iCalendar on steroids."

And boy, was he right.

Everything In One Place

There is a place in the Google and iCalendar for notes.   But iStratus takes that so much further.  This app allows me to add photos, notes, and checklists to each calendar entry in an easy to use, dynamic way.

How's It Work?

I use the DayPlanner for so many things but the one that comes in handy the most often is in meal planning.  For example, today I was planning the meals for the week.  Usually I would put the meal on the calendar on Sunday. Then the morning of that meal I would look for the recipe to double check that I have everything.  

Meal Planning With The iStratus DayPlanner.

After putting Jamie Oliver's Chicken Curry into the DayPlanner, I click on the additional info icon.

Here I can add attachments, makes notes, and even create a checklist. 

Using the iStratus DayPlanner app I take photos of the recipe and add that directly to my calendar. This allows saves me time trying to find the recipe the day I should be cooking it.  In this case I found the recipe online but often the recipe is in one of my 40 cookbooks and I cannot tell you how much time I waste trying to remember which book it is in. 

After making sure I have the recipe, I can then make notes.  Sometimes this is a simple reminder to cut the recipe in half because my husband won't be home for dinner or it might be something about the recipe itself.  In this one I wanted the reminder that I had added it to the calendar for the spice in the first place.

But one of my favorite features is the checklist.  I could use this for ingredients or I I can use it in the way I did below as a reminder to set out the chicken and to send my son to the store for fresh ginger.  Nothing beats fresh ginger.

And the cou d' etat of the iStratus DayPlanner is something no other calendar offers.  With the DayPlanner I can create repeat events on any day, not just on regular intervals.  So in this case, I know my family loves curry when we go skiing and it's become a tradition to have it on Super Bowl Sunday so I can click on those dates now and add this entire entry to those days.  This feature comes in hand for so many areas of my life.