So you’re a busy little bee. “Go hard or go home,” you say. “Sleep when you’re dead,” etc. But scheduling anything with you is a nightmare. It’s almost not worth the hours of back-and-forth – the shuffling, the shifting.

And it’s not just you. It’s your friends and family and coworkers. It’s the whole blasted system, man.

But wait. Instead of pitting the smelling of roses against the buying of green bananas, perhaps we should all just start using Doodle.

Doodle is an online scheduling system. It synchs with calendars you already have on Gmail, Outlook and Lotus Notes. But it also allows you to propose appointments – from half-hour meetings to potluck dinners to weeks of vacation – and have the interested parties vote on which slots are best for them.

 That means no more dithering. No more consolidation.

 Halle-Doodle-jah.

Of course, there are other companies that do scheduling. There’s Tungle, TimeBridge and Jiffle to name a few.

Not to mention that such a system competes, in a way, with the monsters it manages. Ahem… Google, Microsoft and Lotus. So how did little ol’ Doodle do it?

Well, “It just works.”

That’s what a lot of people say. And you couldn’t ask for a bigger compliment in the tech sector. Functionality, reliability and ease of use go a long, long way with the masses.

But it’s also about realizing the limits of those big guys. As the PR and Communications arm of Doodle, Tilman Eberle describes those companies and their size in interstellar terms. 

“Big systems are confined to their universe, and that’s not what we’re about,” Eberle says. “We fill gaps between universes.”

So even Gmail snobs and iCal devotees can meet up for a picnic.

Plus, because Doodle is democratic and allows comments on your events, you can figure out everything you need on the same page. You know, the really crucial things.

“Who’s bringing the chicken?” Eberle offers. And more importantly, “Who’s bringing the beer?”