More organization Stories

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Springpad Facebook screenshot

Note-taking service Springpad wants access to your Facebook profile. Why? It wants to scrape all of those random “likes” of movies, music, restaurants and TV shows scattered throughout your Timeline and organize them into notebooks, which you and your friends can search and share. Read more »

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Typewriter and fax machines

If you want to use your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to go paperless, these apps have many basic business needs covered, helping you take notes, scan documents, sign contracts, send faxes, convert business cards to Address Book contacts and even process payments. Read more »

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Email overload

What’s wrong with email today? That’s the question posed to me recently on Twitter, and considering that I use email as a primary method of communication, I was happy to think of a few ways to help tame the inbox. Read more »

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Knock Out

Today, I stumbled across a new prospect for email management, SaneBox, which can automatically prioritize and sort email into folders. Could this new hopeful mean the end of email insanity, as it claims? Time will tell, but it looks very promising. Read more »

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1 order

Although our work is steadily moving to the cloud, we still have a physical space to maintain and keep in order, whether that’s in a traditional office, a home office or from the road. Here are a few gadgets to help you keep your workspace organized. Read more »

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postling_dashboard_1

Keeping up with Twitter, Facebook and all the posts and comments written about your company can be overwhelming. Postling is a centralized dashboard for organizing, managing and tracking all your social media efforts, so that you can engage with your entire online community from one location. Read more »

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2011

A recent survey of New Year’s resolutions found that the number-one resolution is to get organized. Sixty-one percent of those polled pledged to keep their business more organized in the new year. If you have a similar resolution, here are some ideas to improve organization. Read more »

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juggle

Recently, I was talking with a client about how to manage multiple, large-scale projects simultaneously, and still make progress on each of them. While it’s not an easy task, I’ve stumbled on a compartmentalization strategy strategy that is helping me do just that. Read more »

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If you’re a blogger, your most common problem is likely not knowing what to write. You open your word processor or editor to find a blank canvas staring back at you, which causes the same thing to happen to your mind — it goes blank. Read more »

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I’m on the road this week, and it’s times like these when I really appreciate the tools I use to stay organized. Even while working remotely, I’ve managed to stay on track and not get behind because these tools rarely let anything slip through the cracks. Read more »

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It’s Friday afternoon. You clean up and get ready for respite. Surprise, surprise … within an hour of checking out for the weekend, a phone call comes in. What do you do? Ignore the call? Pick it up? Read more »

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There are times when it’s easy to get frustrated by the little inefficiencies in our work environment. Sometimes we just want things to work a little better than they currently do, so this past weekend, I set out to clean things up a bit. Read more »

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At first, though, figuring out what to delegate and when was a bit overwhelming, so after getting a pretty good start, I thought I’d share how I did it and how it’s working out so far. Read more »

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Do you ever get to a place in your life or business when you just need to clear the decks, start fresh, clean the slate?

Maybe it starts with the long-awaited end of a project, a move, or even the reorganizing of a close. Read more »

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Here I go again, writing about organization. This time, though, it’s not because I’ve found a great new app to help me. That’s my inbox, aka my “to-be-dealt-with” pile. And there are two more like it. If only there were an app that could help me! Read more »

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addressbookmail_thumb

Apple’s original implementation of “smart” file management isn’t just limited to the Finder, and in fact, you’ve probably seen it more often in other applications like Address Book and Mail. Here are some ideas of how you can harness the power of these two applications using […] Read more »

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Mac OS X offers a computing experience that, according to many, is still unparalleled by its competitors. Built on a rock solid UNIX foundation and continually adding refinements that make interaction easier, OS X has a lot of powerful functionality that many users were unaware existed. […] Read more »

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desktopzero_thumb

Many readers are likely familiar with the Getting Things Done craze of the past few years. This task oriented methodology has spawned a system for managing the chore that is email, with battle-cries of “Inbox Zero!” resounding around the Internet. While I’m not exactly an “inbox […] Read more »

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Whether you work for someone or yourself, things tend to slow down for many of us in the final two weeks of the old year. What better time to do a little business sprucing? Here are ten things to do before the New Year to feel […] Read more »

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We all know that we should safeguard our critical data and documents in case of a disaster. Yet way too few of us follow the best practices of having these items backed up and kept in multiple locations. As a Florida resident conscious of the threat […] Read more »

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In this gimme-gimme-now-now-now! Internet era, even waiting just a few seconds can spell the difference between someone staying on a page or exiting immediately. To appeal to the instant gratification set, YouTube unveiled its “YouTube Feather” format today. Feather is basically a lightweight version of a […] Read more »

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I’m one of those fanatics who goes out before dawn on the day after Thanksgiving, to wait in line for the doors of my favorite stores to open so I can snap up the best deals before they are gone. It sounds really crazy, until you […] Read more »

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Last spring, I bought my first Mac laptop to replace my aging Windows laptop. Mac fans may say the result was predictable: My shiny new MacBook quickly became my primary computer while my desktop PC gathered dust. That change left me with one problem I hadn’t […] Read more »

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I just finished reading Twyla Tharp’s book “The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life.” Although it focuses more on creative types, much of the advice can be applied to solo entrepreneurs and small business owners. One helpful tip was her organizational system: a […] Read more »

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In case you’re an Apple user who isn’t on board with iPhoto ’09, Google has just updated its own free image management software, Picasa, which shares its name with the web-based Flickr rival. Picasa 3.5 for Mac takes a lot of direction from iPhoto ’09, borrowing at least […] Read more »

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Do you ever wonder what is keeping you from making progress toward your goals? Perhaps you’ve set up a schedule for yourself, outlining the things you need to do each day so that you focus on the most important tasks related to your business, but somehow, […] Read more »

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I recently came across a video by Jon Larkowski entitled, “The Way I Get Things Done,” in which he outlines his personal productivity system. He offered several useful tips for increasing productivity, but the two phrases that really stuck out to me were that you need […] Read more »

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I came across an idea about keeping a one-sentence journal to improve happiness, and thought they could be helpful for improving my business, too. I’m very intimidated by the thought of keeping a personal journal. I’ve tried to do it many times, but I can never […] Read more »

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The two biggest problems for most small business owners when it comes to marketing a business are effective planning and consistency.

After what seems like a lot of effort attempting to drum up new business, it’s easy to get discouraged when you aren’t seeing results, but with the right tools and the right approach to planning and carrying out a lead generation plan, you’ll find yourself gaining more and more confidence and traction with your efforts.

Step 1: Setting Up the Nuts and Bolts of Your Plan

First, you have to take the time to carefully consider your options for marketing and promoting your business, rather than just taking a scatter gun approach.

There are many possible tactics for finding new clients and customers, but if you try to do everything, you’ll end up spreading yourself too thin. That said, during the evaluation phase, you should throw out every possibility, carefully weighing the pros and cons of each. Then, after you’ve evaluated them, select the tactics most likely to lead to success for your particular business, taking into account your personal strengths and weaknesses, as well as your available resources.

You need a tool to help you with the process. I like using Bubbl.us for this, since it’s like mind mapping and allows you to throw out every available option, while keeping you organized. Read more »

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I use a lot of Google’s applications to stay organized and productive, but I’m especially fond of Gmail. In its standard form, it’s a fine email client that makes it easy to stay on top of that mountain of email, but with a little customization you can use it to become even more efficient. Here are six super ways to send Gmail into productivity overdrive.

#1: Use super stars.

You know how Gmail has the standard Gmail star? Now you can make it a super star! Enable Superstars within Labs under Settings. Once enabled, you can select the super stars you’d like to use by dragging and dropping them within the General tab under Settings.

Here are a few examples of how I use super stars.

I use the red and yellow exclamation points to mark items that (a) are work-related and (b) require some action on my part (red indicates something more pressing than yellow). I use the purple question mark for pending payments, deposits, and other things I’m waiting for.

#2: Use search.

I don’t really use folders (or labels) in Gmail, only because the search functionality is so easy to use. If I need to find something related to a particular client, I just type the client’s name and find it that way.

The advanced search functionality allows you to search within a date range (say within a month of a particular date), so finding a particular email is generally pretty easy and requires a lot less upkeep than folders (unless you set up filters to maintain this for you).

The best tip for searching is to use very specific search terms. If you can remember a particular phrase, name, or keyword that was used and the approximate date it was emailed (say the month of June), you’ll reduce your search results tremendously, making it even faster to locate information. Read more »

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We all know how painful it is to coordinate a meeting involving more than a couple of people. Everyone has to check their calendar of events to find a date and time that will work for everyone’s schedule. The more people involved with the meeting, the […] Read more »

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I can always tell when I’m just putting out fires (moving from one “urgent urgency” to the next).

“What? A client needs help with an über pressing concern, and it has to be handled right now or his website will explode? I’ll get on that right away!”

“What, Ms. Prospective Client, you have the ultimate web project, but you need a quote within the hour? No problem.”

It starts with checking email first thing in the morning. Open, read, react, and an hour later, reply. Open, read, react, and an hour later, reply.

On and on it goes, until it’s two o’clock and not one smidgen of paid work has been done, or if it has, it’s been done in a haphazard way, usually at the client’s demand instead of using my own tried-and-true schedule and system.

By the end of the day, I’m zapped and feel like a heel for allowing my work to control me instead of the other way around.

There has to be a better way, and you know there is. Read more »

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Recently, I attended a Barcamp for web workers, where I popped in and out of two groups discussing Getting Things Done (GTD). There was a beginners’ group, and one they called “Kung Fu GTD,” for the hardcore efficiency crowd. Despite not being a GTD user myself, […] Read more »

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It’s Friday! It’s 4:50 p.m.! You’re about to kick back and breathe a sigh of relief, happy to forget about work for the next 48 hours…

Wait a second. Before you escape into the blissful freedom of the weekend, take a few minutes to prep things for next week. I know it may sound crazy right now, when you’re about to shut down the lappy and start up those Friday night plans. But you’ve still got 10 minutes before you wind up for the day — why not spend them productively? Spend a little time getting organised now, and you’ll be thanking me come Monday morning… Read more »

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Often my reviews here at WebWorkerDaily are peeks at beta or early release versions of an application or service. While I think it is useful to provide these sneak peeks, it is often in the first couple months of a product’s life when a lot of […] Read more »

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