I’m terrible at remembering things. Seriously. Give me sixty seconds and I’ll forget what I was supposed to do.
Fortunately, the web is teeming with systems, applications, and advice. Unfortunately, a lot of it is misguided and often just silly. Recently I’ve come to the follow most of the guidance of one Mr. Merlin Mann pretty regularly. He runs the website 43 Folders, amongst a zillion other things, and focuses on using your time and attention effectively to get your work done.
I’ll say this: most other sites tend to focus on the latest, newest technique or system, constantly supplying new ways to get organized and “hack” your life. While that’s awesome and cool, eventually it becomes too much to handle and not a good spend of time. Merlin tends to throw the traditional productivity blog mindset aside in favor of things that will actually allow you to work and get stuff done. How about that.
He’s written/blogged a lot lately in the area of iPhone apps and organization and it’s really helped me a lot lately. Here’s some of the incredible things he’s shown me lately:
Notational Velocity + Simplenote

For a long while I was using TextEdit and my iPhone Notes app to create little notes and reminders for myself, in addition to all my other notes. This combo, which Merlin explains in the above link, turns taking and reviewing notes into cake. Easy syncing, instant updating, a search template, AND I can save it as a plaintext file? Beautiful.
Siri

Siri is magic. Plain and simple. Voice recognition to the next level, with the Game Genie turned on. It’s insane. Tell this app anything - anything - and it’ll do it. Merlin demo’d this on the Macbreak Weekly show and blew my mind. Examples:
“Hey Siri, book me a taxi cab.” - Siri uses TaxiMagic to book you a cab.
“Siri, remind me to mail our taxes in.” - Siri emails you at your default email address with the reminder.
“Siri, who is Merlin Mann?” - Siri pulls up his Wikipedia entry.
It’s mindblowing, and free dollars.
1Password

This is slick. Complex password generator, Mac-based password storage, credit card (“wallet”) holder, secure notes, secure identities, and it all syncs over WiFi to your iPhone. Neat. This is a great way to stay secure on the web and still be able to access your sites on the iPhone without a text note full of long strings of gibberish passwords.
Dropbox

If you use multiple computers, you have to have Dropbox installed. This app syncs 2GB of data across any computer or device you hook up to it. I’ve got a Mac, PC and iPhone (plus their web interface) syncing nearly all my crucial documents and notes (generated from Notational Velocity). It’s lightning fast and secure, plus it means all my important files have another redundant backup source. Neat.
Pastebot
Here’s another magic app. Pastebot takes anything on my iPhone clipboard and, upon opening this app, dumps it into a user interface that allows me to easily edit or move my clipboard contents (to email, search as Google, etc). It’s cool, sure. But where’s the magic?
The magic is in the Mac syncing. This app is complemented by a Mac utility that syncs via Wifi. When you have the computer and the iPhone synced, any time you hit Command-C on your Mac it dumps that data into the iPhone app. Boom. Like so:

Conversely, if I hit Send to Mac inside the Pastebot app, whatever’s on my iPhone clipboard gets shoved into my Mac’s clipboard.
…like, say, this image above. I took the screenshot and then copied it. I opened Pastebot and sent it to the Mac, then pasted it to my Mac desktop. There, magic. Nothing up my sleeves.
Things

Last, but not least, is Things. Things is my organizational central nervous system, so to speak. It’s a to-do list manager, sure, but it’s so much more than that. Reoccurring to-dos, a “someday” storage file, powerful search, tagging and more. This app is how I stay on top of everything I do in life. It’s not cheap - $10 for the iPhone app and $50 for the Mac app, but well worth it (or you can wait around for a MacHeist bundle or something).
This app syncs, like the others, over WiFi with my phone, and gives me a quick and easy Inbox section to dump my ideas and random to-dos. It’s based loosely around the David Allen Getting Things Done mantra, which Merlin Mann has based some of his work off of (I guess). Basically this app does a lot of the thinking and remembering for me, so I just have to do the things I want to do. Not as easy as it sounds, but hey. Better than forgetting.
Outside the field of productivity, Merlin has also turned me on to other amazing apps, like Instapaper, a “read later” tool for reading articles and blogs. Genius, and simple. The Firefox bookmarklet for the app (and web interface) has made me read more - seriously.

So that’s about it. I’ve got six pages of apps - that’s 100 apps, all in - but those are the ones that help keep me organized. What am I missing?