Some folks think they can finally get organized if they find the right app. What’s more, for some folks, that might actually be true. But if you’ve gone through a slew of to-do list apps and organizational tools and you’re still searching for the right one, the problem isn’t the tools. It’s you.

More specifically, it’s your willingness to embrace one fully and make it a core part of your life. Doing that with task and project management software is tough. It’s a hard habit to build and maintain. You fail to put a few things in that list, or you start adding stuff just to cross it off, or you stop checking that list… It quickly becomes useless.

But I think folks sometimes jump into major task management software projects too quickly. It’d be like if your first day of flight lessons, the instructor said “Okay pal, we’re in the air — you land the plane.”

Start simpler.

One genuine secret to my own success is my ability to follow-up well. I’m not talking about the email sequences that unsolicited marketers use. (“I noticed you still didn’t reply to my second email from three days ago, LEX, so I’m just following up a second time.”) I’m talking about the idea that if we’ve spoken or interacted, and you indicated that you want to do business with me, I’m going to follow up with you.

My system? Calendaring and Reminders. I use the Reminders app from the Apple ecosystem (iOS and Mac), and Fantastical with Google Calendars to sync. These aren’t the best systems for you, necessarily. But they’re the right systems for me. I fire off an email and then set a reminder “Check in with Dan in two weeks.” I can say that to Siri, or type it into a Reminders field, and it’s parsed automatically. Sometimes I use my calendar instead for scheduling follow-ups, depending on what’s closer and what feels right.

Your potential clients and customers have a lot on their mind. They actually want you to follow up, if they want to spend with you. But I don’t automate the nudges, and I don’t write obnoxiously — I just check in, typically on the same thread where we were before.

But seriously: You can win so much business by just following up with people who want to work with you. This sounds obvious and simple, and in my experience many, many people are terrible at it. Don’t be!