By Jennifer Sax

If you are not up-to-date on the latest “smart” technology, a smartwatch is essentially a mini smartphone for your wrist. They are made by a variety of manufacturers and function as a companion to your smartphone. In addition to answering phone calls, reading text messages, tracking steps, and controlling music, there are many features that may help you with your organization, memory, and time management skills. Smartwatches are an excellent tool for individuals with executive dysfunction, so we’ve highlighted a few features that are sure to help strengthen these vitals skills.

Display settings: A useful feature of most smartwatch brands is the option to customize your display. The face of the watch can often be set to ensure important information or applications appear when you glance at your watch or tap a button/screen. This can support your memory and time management skills, as it decreases the likelihood that you will forget about important events, tasks, or even the weather!

Reminders: Another helpful feature for those who struggle to stay organized is to use reminders. Reminders can be set to notify you at specific times or even at a given location (location-based reminders will use GPS to initiate reminders when you are at a particular location). So, if you need to remember to pick up your dry cleaning while running errands in your neighborhood, you can set you reminder to pop up on your wrist when you are in that particular place.

Vibration alerts: When you receive an email or reminder on your smartphone, your paired smartwatch will notify you via vibration. The wrist vibration allows for easier access to notifications than if you relied on your phone, which could be buried in your purse or in your pocket. With a quick glance at your wrist, you are more likely to remember to buy milk at the grocery store or get the notes from your teacher during lunch.

Speech-to-Text: The ability to quickly set reminders, notes, or events by talking into your wrist is one of the best features of the smartwatch. It ensures you will not forget to add items to your to-do list, call your aunt on her birthday, or forget to add you doctor’s appointment to your calendar.

Productivity Applications: Many smartwatch applications, such as wunderlist, evernote, easilydo, and 24me, are smartwatch compatible.  Therefore, you can become more organized when your smartwatch is linked to your favorite productivity app.

Let us know how you use your smartwatch to help you “think organized!”