Organizing Creative Professionals: Sorted

Electric April: Organizing everything with the iPEP!

When I became a Paper Tiger Authorized Consultant, I discovered the Paper Tiger software and was rather amazed by what it could do. I had frequently wished for two computer functions to transfer into the physical realm: "find" and "undo." I'm not holding my breath waiting for "undo" anytime soon, but the Paper TIger software put "find" into play for physical files and objects. You didn't have to scan anything in; you just listed what was in your files by keyword and then you could search the software to find where stuff was.

That was pretty great. But the new iProductive Environment Platform™ (iPEP) is even better.

For one thing, the iPEP is online, which means no platform issues. (I had to get a PC netbook just to run Paper Tiger software, but now I'm back on my Mac with iPEP.) It also means major portability; you can find stuff from any computer anywhere—even on your iPhone, iPod touch or Blackberry!

Also, the iPEP uses the same pbworks (formerly pbwiki) platform that's been used for project management and collaboration for the past couple of years. So it can organize your personal/business files, the files for a workgroup or the files for an entire corporation.

Like the old Paper Tiger software, you index your files in iPEP by using keywords that describe what's in each physical file. In the iPEP, you create a new page for each file and enter "tags" for searchable keywords. Unlike the old PT software, the iPEP can contain electronic files, Web links, audio, video, notes—if you can post it online, you can put it in the iPEP!

That means that all of your resources for any project can be searched and tracked from just one spot. Enter the keywords, and you can find files on your computer, in your filing cabinet and on a Web site half the world away. That's a lot of potential time savings.

Next week, we'll discuss the iPEP further, but I just wanted to share my initial excitement about the new platform with you. If you have any questions about it, just let me know in the comments.

Electric April: Managing your email

Email is a very useful, powerful tool. Like a chainsaw. It's definitely more common; I no longer have a chainsaw, but I have four email addresses. And like a chainsaw, it's all too easy for email to get out of hand, and the results are not pretty.

There are entire workshops, lectures, books and consultancies built around email productivity, so today we're just going to touch on the basics: climbing out of your overstuffed inbox.

My mentor, Barbara Hemphill, once told me that the average inbox of a corporate worker has almost 2,000 messages in it. At first, I didn't believe her. Then I had occasion to visit a woman who had 1200 emails in her inbox, and I started to think Barbara probably had it right, as usual.

Here's the thing: you cannot manage 1200 items if they're all in one big open place. I watched the woman I was visiting scroll down screen after screen of inbox, trying to find one email that had been sent to her a week before. It was like watching someone look for a needle in a haystack—and given the proportions of 1 desired item to 1200 potential items, I mean that analogy quite literally.

The good news is that there are plenty of options to reduce your inbox size and help you handle incoming emails. One of my favorite tools for Outlook on the PC (sorry, Mac users) is Orla. It applies an expanded version of the file/act/toss sytem to email, which is a powerful step unto itself. But the main benefit of Orla is that it keeps you focused on your tasks and your calendar instead of your inbox.

If you can't use Orla (or don't want to add any software to your existing email client), then you know the system I'm about to recommend. It's a modified version of our paper filing system, and it applies just fine to email. Say it with me: "You can only do three things to an email: file it, act on it or toss it."

Start at the top of your inbox (because the most recent stuff tends to be the most relevant), and work your way down. If you can delete an email, by all means, do so. If you can act on that email in 30 seconds or less (reply, forward, call someone, etc.), by all means, do so.

But what about the emails that you need to act on but that action will take longer than 30 seconds? Like we do with paper items, we schedule a time to deal with them. Right-clicking on an email will yield all kinds of options including "Create a Task." This will make you set aside a time to deal with that email, and keep you focused on what needs doing, not the messages in your inbox.

And what about the emails you don't need to act on but want to keep around? As we've done with paper, we create Action folders and Reference folders. Action folders can be organized by project (again, a right-click will enable a project to be started), by type of action required or by category. And reference folders can be organized by project and category as well.

If you're using a web-based email client, you can still create folders, as I've done in the Hotmail inbox below. (Note that the inbox has 6 messages in it. Much easier to navigate than 1200!)

Like I said, email organization is a major topic unto itself. But I hope the tips in today's post at least help you get started in turning your inbox from an overgrown morass of messages into a useful tool.

If you have any tips of your own, don't hesitate to share them in the comments!

Electric April: Organizing your desktop

If you're anything like me, you do most, if not all, of your work on a computer. Sure, you use paper files, but the files on your computer are where the rubber meets the road. And based on some of the desktops I've seen, there's a lot of potential for potholes.

Here's one example of a desktop that isn't exactly being all it could be:

(Yes, I use a Mac. Don't worry; the tips I suggest will work for Windows, too.) It's not the worst desktop I've ever seen, and I'm sure some of you are shaking your heads, muttering, "Cripes, that's nothing. My buddy has a desktop so covered in icons he can't remember what his desktop picture is."

But it's still chaotic, and it's cutting into your productivity in more ways than one. Not only is the visual cacophony making it difficult to find anything on the desktop and interfering with your focus, having that many files and folders on the desktop can actually cut into your computer's operational speed.

For most users, the goals of desktop organization are to minimize the time spent looking through folders, to minimize the time spent going into Finder (or Desktop Explorer) to activate applications for opening files and to have a clear view of a desktop picture you like.

Fortunately, the only resources you need to achieve these goals are close at hand: the nice folks at Google have provided a fantastic tool for finding anything on your computer, and your operating system can take care of the rest.

Google Desktop is a great tool for finding what you need on your computer. It displays the results of your search like the results of a web search. If you were pretty sure that you had a PDF explaining debt capacity, but you couldn't remember what it was called or where you put it, entering "debt capacity" into Google Desktop would give you a list of files you could just click on to open. And it's free!

Desktops have an area where you can place aliases (shortcuts for Windows users) of all the applications you use on a daily or weekly basis: the Dock for Mac OS and the Taskbar for Windows. You won't have to gamble that Photoshop is still in your "Recent Applications" roster, you can just click its icon and be off to the races. Mac users can move the Dock to the left or right side of the screen if they want; the Windows Taskbar won't move, but it's innocuously small.

To clear the desktop proper, create a single folder on the desktop and move everything that isn't a hard-drive icon into it. Then go into your "Documents" folder (Mac or Windows) and begin creating project folders.

If your business name is "Acme," a folder called "Acme" will probably be way too generic and will wind up in subfolder hell. However, folders called "Acme-Accounting," "Acme-Current Projects," "Acme-Marketing," etc. should provide enough structure and latitude for sorting your files into a system you can navigate.

Once you've got a sorting system you like in place, put all your current project folders into a folder called "Work in Progress" (or something similar). Move that folder into the main Finder tab on a Mac or into your Start Menu in Windows.

As you've gone through your files, you've probably found some duplicates and some stuff you don't need or want anymore. Feel absolutely free to trash that. If you have files of projects you've completed, create a folder called "Archives" for those files—but sort them into folders, just in case. You'll also want to be certain to back up your hard drive every month.

Your desktop should now have only your Taskbar/Dock and your hard drive icon on it (plus the Recycle Bin for Windows), but unfortunately you can't leave it that clear. You'll need a place for downloads to go, because they can clutter up the desktop like nobody's business. Enter the "Inbox." Like the In/Out/To File unit on a physical desktop, this is where stuff goes before you've had a chance to look at it. Be sure to set your browser to put downloads into the "Inbox" folder.

You also need a place for easy access to the projects you're currently working on. As with your physical space, that would be an Action folder. Create a folder called "Action" and fill it with aliases (shortcuts) to the stuff you're working on right this minute: a problem set for a class, an updated marketing plan, a fun project for a friend. As you finish these projects, you can just delete the aliases/shortcuts from "Action" without having to move the files themselves around.

Finally, why not do something about that desktop picture? Instead of a busy pattern, why not choose a shot that brings feelings of calm and refreshment, as well as memories of your honeymoon. Now you've got a desktop you can look forward to working with.

Here's a Windows desktop with the same principles applied (and a more energizing desktop picture).

Do you have any additional desktop organization tips or questions? Let me know in the comments!

Electric April: Organizing your bookmarks

Think about all the changes that have occurred in Web design, usage and power over the last 15 years. You know what hasn't changed? The bookmark organization system for most browsers. It's still all about pull-down menus, subfolders and toolbars.

Not exactly inspiring, is it? And it can get unwieldy; sometimes it's hard to know how to classify a bookmark to put it in a folder, and it's often easier to just hit "Bookmark" and let the link fall where it may. And it might lay where it falls for a while; most people have a lot of bookmarks they haven't visited for months or even years.

But before you settle down for an afternoon of sorting your bookmarks into little folders on a toolbar, why not see what else is out there? Some third parties have come up with options a little more enjoyable than the bleak browser offerings.

One option for organizing your bookmarks that has the profound advantage of portability is a social bookmarking site. You know those options at the end of blog posts that mention saving that post to Digg or Delicious? Those are social bookmarking sites. Here's an example of a page at Delicious:

What "social bookmarking" means is that not only can you view your own bookmarks, you can view what other people have bookmarked, if they've chosen to share it. And you can see how many other people have bookmarked that same page, to get a feel for overall trends on the net.

You don't have to share your bookmarks on these sites; you can keep them private and be able to view them from any computer you log into the site from. However, you have to opt out of sharing rather than opt into it; sharing is the default state.

Another possibility for bookmarks is to organize them visually onto pages or tabs, using a personalized Web portal. Google, Microsoft Live and Yahoo all offer personalized web portals; CEO Express is an example of a personalized portal targeted at executives.

NetVibes is another personalized portal provider; like iGoogle, it offers "widgets" that put modified content directly from the site onto your NetVibes page. Sites such as Hotmail, Facebook and eBay offer these widgets, as do many travel search engines and shopping engines.

If your linked site doesn't offer a widget, most personalized portals provide link modules that store the URL, the link title and notes and a screen capture of the site. This is especially useful for visual thinkers.

For bookmarks, as for all other aspects of organizing, I really want to emphasize that what's important is that the system you use works and that you like it. Getting Sorted isn't about forcing you into a system, it's about finding and implementing a system that fits you.

What kind of bookmark system do you use? Personalized portal, social bookmarking or browser-supplied folders? Let me know in the comments!

Electric April: Cable management

In yet another series with a theme, we're focusing on electronic organization this month, culminating in an unveiling of the new Web 2.0 platform of Paper Tiger software, the iPEP. But we'll talk more about the iPEP later. For now, let's focus on your desktop area and the physical consequences of all your super-powered devices: cables.

Here's an example of my own cable situation after purchasing a spectacularly heavy printer and the necessarily all-steel stand to go with it:

Oh, dear. That little blue box was just not working. Every time I wanted to update my iPod, I had to wrestle with the USB-to-iPod-touch cable, the USB-to-iPod-shuffle cable, the headphones, the weirdly long USB-to-USB cable—something was guaranteed to fall out onto the floor. And I had a rough time attaching the external hard drives and DVD burner to my PC because their cords were just sort of shoved in back of the inadequate blue box. Where did I go wrong?

My previous printer stand was actually a kitchen cart with a butcher-block top. It worked beautifully; the scanner was on top, where I could open it up. Peripherals were on the middle shelf, with a row of hooks to keep the cords straight, and my old inkjet printer was on the bottom. If that cart could have supported 83 pounds of multifunction laser printer, I totally would have kept it. But it couldn't, so a sturdier cart was acquired, and my previous sytem fell into disarray.

Fortunately, I had taken a couple of steps to manage the electronics. I had color-coded all my peripherals, using electrical tape for the power cords and matching-color velcro cord minders for their connector cables. Yellow for the FireWire drive, green for the DVD burner, etc. And my old cart had provided me with a blueprint for a workable system.

I found a set of hooks long enough to span the side of the new cart and set about making some modifications. I measured and drilled pilot holes in the cart (note: drilling holes in sheet metal is not a quick or easy task, but with enough muscle and/or an impact driver it can be done) and attached my hooks.

Finally, my old system was back in play. I had a couple more hooks than before, so I was able to give the headphones a home, and keep some space open for easy access to the power strip. Now, I can reach over and get the cord I need, by itself, without involving other cords, and without emptying the whole lot onto the floor.

Now, you'll notice that while the center shelf is tidier, it's not completely cord-free. There's still a lot going on behind the peripherals, on my other power strip. And my point here is that that's okay. The goal for me wasn't a sparse shelf, it was to be able to access my cords without making a mess.

I think many people believe that getting their desk organized means clearing it off completely, or hiding everything, but that's not what getting Sorted is about at all. It's about creating a system that works, that meets your goals and that you like to use.

Next time, we brave the many offerings of the Web as I organize my bookmarks. See you then!

In the meantime, if you have any of your own cable-wrangling suggestions, leave them in the comments!

What a puppy can teach you about time management

Two weeks ago, my husband and I adopted a Wirehaired Dachshund puppy—and our worlds turned upside down. We've owned two cats for years now, and thought we were prepared for expanding our pet ownership. What we weren't prepared for was the significant increase in supervision that little Peach required, because puppies have essentially two modes.

Puppy mode 1:

Puppy mode 2:

During that first mode, you have to be on that pup like white on rice. Everything around her is a potential food source, chew toy or latrine. Plus, she has no concept of scale, especially as it applies to her own size: she believes she can totally jump off the couch with no problem, despite being maybe 4 inches tall.

For the first few days after we got Peach, I'd try to do things while it was my turn to watch her. I even attempted to write a blog post while she played on the couch. It was a nightmare. I'd take my eye off Peach for a second too long, then have to go through the whole "What are you eating? Where did you get that?" routine -- and eventually, I had to wash a couch cushion cover. I was worrying that we had made a bad decision.

And, in fact, I had made a bad decision: to try to do two things at once. After the night of the blog post and soiled couch cushion, I made a different decision. When I was watching Peach, I was just going to watch Peach. I wasn't going to work, or do stuff for school or do household projects; those would be done when Peach was in puppy mode #2 and asleep in her crate area (or when it was my husband's turn to watch her).

What happened astonished me: once I gave up the idea of puppy multitasking, I was able to focus on my work and school tasks while Peach slept, and I got them done much faster with excellent results. I didn't procrastinate or putter around, I got that stuff done. Then, when I was watching Peach, I was able to focus solely on the puppy cuteness and enjoy my time with her.

Now, not everyone can go out and get a supercute small-breed puppy. But I bet most people do find themselves trying to do two things at once and not doing either one very well. What I'd suggest is that you treat each thing you're trying to do like a puppy, a precious entity that demands and deserves your full attention. You might surprise yourself with how much you can accomplish when you stop trying to "do" so much.

What lessons have your pets taught you? Let me know in the comments!

Introducing my free eBook: "How to Harness a Hobgoblin"!

Aw, isn't it the cutest thing you've ever seen? No? Well, okay, the hobgoblin itself has a face only a parent could love (on payday), but the strategy I outline in this free eBook will help transform your creative work.

The full title is "How to Harness a Hobgoblin: The #1 Strategy to Unleash Your Creative Productivity." In the interests of maintaining some suspense, I won't reveal the topic, but I will admit that there's not a whole lot of material about it out there. So it's exotic, in its way.

One note about how to use the eBook: My content is on the right-facing pages (the odd-numbered ones). The even-numbered pages have quotes from or about creative leaders concerning their relationships with the hobgoblin.

To get your copy, just fill in your name and email address in the form on the right-hand side of the page.

I hope you'll enjoy the eBook, and please let me know your thoughts on it. Also, since this is hardly likely to be my last eBook, let me know what else you might like me to write about. Enjoy!

The Sorted Seven - No. 7: SwiftFile

Lord help us, we're spending the rest of March celebrating the seven desktop tools that are essential to managing paper in your office! I call these tools The Sorted Seven, and you can see an overview of the whole system here.

At last, our tour of paper productivity concludes with my favorite tool of all: the SwiftFile. "The what?" you ask. The SwiftFile is, in my opinion, the best version of the tickler file ever invented.



"What's a tickler file?" Oh, my dear reader. A tickler file is a collection of 43 folders that can help make sure you never forget anything with a deadline or a due date. It's that powerful.

The 43 folders are numbered 1-31 for days of the month and marked January-December for the months of the year. Therefore, every month, each day gets its own folder, into which you can put invoices to be paid, papers you need for a meeting, notes to yourself to do something you do on a regular basis (like "back up your data").

Remember, on Monday, we discussed action files and how they're the perfect place to put papers where the ball isn't in your court, or there's no obvious next action step. But if there is an obvious next action step, the paper goes into the SwiftFile, specifically into the day where you've decided to take that action step.

And that's another great aspect of the SwiftFile: it makes you decide when to do the things you know you need to do. When you have to assign a specific date to your to-dos, they're a lot more likely to actually get done.

Productivity guru David Allen swears by tickler files; devotees of his Getting Things Done system even created a site called 43 folders dedicated to life improvement based on Allen's system. Another productivity guru—my mentor, Barbara Hemphill—swears by the SwiftFile.

You can get the combo I use, the SwiftFile with a mesh box for your desktop, at this link. And to learn the best way to use the SwiftFile, Barbara Hemphill offers a teleclass full of tips that you can purchase here. I've taken Barbara's class, and it's shown me how to get the most out of this fantastic tool, the ultimate member of the Sorted Seven.

So there we are: a complete system to handle every piece of paper that comes into your office. I hope you've enjoyed the tour. Let me know how it was in the comments!