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I have Sky Safari Pro on my iPad. I connect it via wireless to a wifi telescope control module. Take the iPad out with me and use the built in observing lists or one of the imported lists. I like hunting down carbon stars and the Astronomy League have a good list of those. The beauty of the pro version is you can record your observations on your iPad. Be it just date and time or more in depth notes. I try to remember to dim my iPad brightness before and after and have Sky Safari in night, red light, mode.
I also carry with me a pocket sky atlas and it has enough NGCs and all the Messiers by season. It's also laminated for those dewy nights.
You can also have a look at NGC/IC project website and if you've got some Excel skills write macros to capture the note pad it generates and export to Excel. You can then sort the results, I find RA best, to make for ease of viewing. Remember with this it is one constellation at a time, so if you're setup to view Eastern constellations and there is cloud there you'll need a back up plan.
I also run through sky safari on Jupiter for shadow transits and GRS, make a note of the times and go from there. Always revisit the old favourites which include Ruby Crucis, the carbon star near Mimosa, particularly if there are people who have not seen it before.
Personally I live in pretty dark skies, often cloudy, but I still like to be organised when I observe.
Clear skies.
Wayne
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