And there's more that the cloud can do for you.  Three common organizational problems with practical cloud solutions are:

The Memory Stick Problem

The memory stick.  The jump drive.  Whatever you call it, you probably have a half dozen of these things, including one from years ago (what's even on this thing?)  with 128 MB capacity.  You find these things months later stuffed in suitcases, gym bags, and at the back of desk drawers.  And you've got other important photos and XL files somewhere on a laptop, a home computer, or scratched up CDs.  And the document you need the most is accessible to you about 25% of the time.  The old trick of sending yourself a document as an e-mail attachment was, essentially, a cloud-based solution to the memory stick problem.  But even better is Dropbox.  Or Google Docs.  Create a document from your tablet, laptop, or home computer, then leave it in the cloud and forget about the thumb drive.  For photos, Flickr or Picasa offer similar benefits.

The Calendar Problem 

One of the first questions I ask a client who is struggling with forgetfulness or distractibility is "can you show me your calendar?"  What I'm hoping is that they can show me a usable calendar in their smart phone, or produce a portable and efficient paper system that's always right with them.  And that they can demonstrate how they are using that calendar to make sure they're doing the most important things, on a day by day basis.  Often, however, they will tell me they don't like the idea of using a calendar.  Or, at the other extreme, they'll tell me they find calendars super helpful and -- for that reason -- they have one in the bedroom, one at the office, and one in their car. 

I really want to recommend a unified calendar for all areas of my client's life.  The gold standard is this: someone stops you at the grocery store, and invites you to an event scheduled the weekend after Labor Day... how do you respond?  If you've got an excellent, unified, portable calendar, you can answer the question on the spot.  Otherwise, there's the risk that you'll forget to check with the important people in your life, or forget to respond to the invitation, or get the dates mixed up in your memory.  So again the solution is a practical and portable calendar.  One of the challenges with a paper calendar, obviously, is that it can be misplaced or burned or dropped in a toilet.  And one of the challenges with early PDAs was the frequency with which they simply crashed, and if you hadn't performed your regular wired backup, you'd lose a bunch of important data.  The beauty of web-based calendars -- at this point I'm deeply in love with Google Calendar -- is the ease of access for laptop, phone, or hotel business center computer.  If all five of your devices crash, your time sensitive calendar information is still available, safely nestled in the cloud.

Carbon-Based Information Overload

Many adults with ADD/ADHD tell me that their information eyes are bigger than their stomach.  Meaning, they oversubscribe to magazines and newspapers.  When it's time to clean up, or to move house, my clients are sometimes heartbroken by all the material they haven't worked through, and overwhelmed by all of the physical paper that now has to be moved or recycled.  Maybe you're like me, and the physical newspaper had to be pried from your hands, but you're ready -- or almost ready -- to let it go.  For the sake of a tree, or your sanity. 

Services like Instapaper allow you to retain access to interesting web-based articles so that you don't end up with shoe boxes full of carbon-based clippings.  One of the best newspapers in the world has a fantastic Reader application for subscribers, and the experience of that application on a tablet or big-screen smart phone is, for me, almost as satisfying as the old-fashioned licking your thumb and turning a page.  The sad truth is that we will come to the end of our lives without having accessed all of the really great information that's out there -- in magazines, on blogs, in big-city and small-town newspapers.  Making important gatekeeping decisions about information overload is a crucial decision for adults who struggle with focus and distractibility.  This is such a big problem for some that a good practice might be regular scheduled reading appointments - sticking to information consumption during just those periods of time.  And making as much of that reading as possible non-paper.

Entertainment Hoarding 

This last one is personal.  It has to do with access to music.  I love music.  I spent much of my childhood collecting vinyl.  And much of my 20s collecting CDs.  And then the MP3 hoarding began.  I've always been amazed by people who aren't as crazy about music as I am.  People who boast a collection of 100 CDs, for example.  I would think to myself, "I've got 100 CDs under the front seat of my car!"  Or someone who is surprised to find that they actually have a whole gigabyte of music on their laptop.  Seriously?  I have a gigabyte of Beck remixes.  On my phone!  But finding any of this music, on vinyl in my basement, on a CD at my office, in a mislabeled folder on my netbook, really has never been easy.  Or practical.  That's why I was overjoyed when I heard that Amazon, and then Google, and now Apple, offer cloud-based services providing access to one's music.  There's almost certainly a really important function for these services - but when I discovered that I need to upload my music (slow!) to these services in order to access them later, the shine was off the apple. 

And then came Mog.  And Rdio.  And finally (wait for it) Spotify.  These just may be the cloud-based services that many obsessive and disorganized music fans have waited for.  And a recent Slate article suggests that web based movie streaming services could actually scratch the same itch for film buffs, some of whom maintain enormous libraries of VHS, DVD, and movie files stored on computers and hard drives.  The selection, ease of access, and legality (!)  of these services  solve a number of big problems for disorganized music fans.

The Car Key Problem 

I had a fascinating conversation with an attendee at a recent workshop about how he is using SecondLife with his therapy clients.  In a training at last week's APA convention in D.C. I had a chance to think about the ethics and practicality of e-mail and Skype based clinical work.  How about you?  I'd love to hear how you use technology to stay organized and live a more focused life, or to deliver clinical services. 

Oh - as of this writing, we still haven't figured out how to put car keys in the cloud. 

photo:  Dutch Clouds