After reading a post from Russell Quinn at Spoiled Milk I was inspired to rethink the way I use GTD in combination with Backpack. I have borrowed some from Russell’s system, kept some of my own system and incorporated some other ideas as well. This has all become possible with the great news that you can reorder your sidebar in Backpack.

If you read Russell Quinn’s explanation you will quickly see that I have borrowed the Dropbox/Inbox home page tip. Which I think was the most powerful for me. Before my homepage was a hodgepodge of next action lists, ideas, my @task lists, and even some projects made there way onto the homepage. Next I borrowed the ^ Tasks, ^ Projects, ^ Waiting For, ^ Tickler, ^ To Buy, ^ Someday/Maybe although I was already using a few of these in a similar manner.

The next series of pages are prefixed with *. These pages are strictly reference pages which I might need certain days of the week, times of the month and during meetings.

The next series of pages are prefixed with @. All these pages are projects with more than five actions. Those I keep at the top of the page in the ^ Projects Page. Some of these projects are recurring like my Squidoo lenses, my weekly ezine and some annual events I organize.

Another prefix I use is $ and this marks all the pages for my blogs. These are blogs I run and ones I contribute to with others. It’s easy for me to take ideas in my inbox/dropbox daily and move them into the appropriate @ blog page.

Last is a list with no prefix. These are pages I share with small business and non profit customers. We collaborate on work for their wordpress blogs or social media campaigns. I also use these pages to share video tutorials and screencasts for training and digital coaching purposes.

Backpack is so great and there are so many uses. I recommend it to everyone. Whether you are a small business, a solo professional or a freelancer, sign up for a free account or trial.

OK I’ve done it. It took about two hours, but would have been much shorter had I not tried multitasking. Why did I multitask? The only exception I make for multitasking- watching sports, namely the NFL playoffs and Kentucky versus Louisville annual rivalry game in basketball.

I had let my Gmail inbox get way out of hand lately. I have followed David Allens GTD system in the past, by addressing emails when they show up if they take less than two minutes to address. I also had created a series of @ labels to capture next actions. For example @ read/review and @ add to database and @ waiting for. The missing ingredient was a whole lot of elimination. I realized last week that I cannot keep up with the endless emails coming into my inbox on a weekly basis, nor do I want to. It’s not like they all lead to profit. Between comments from my blogs, twitter and facebook notifications, email newsletters, email advertisements (why can’t everybody send one update per week max), customer conversations, billing statements, reminders, and everything else; I could no longer find the important messages amongst the clutter. After reading a few other blogs and books, and using organizing principles I decided to tackle this problem of information overload via email.

1. I decided that I would much rather get my content from RSS (google reader) than from email newsletters. If the ezine (email newsletter) I was subscribed to had a blog with an RSS feed, then I subscribed to the feed and unsubscribed to the ezine. This presents a small issue because some, myself included, send ezines and do blog posts. Here is the difference: I only send one very well organized weekly ezine. Everything else is posted to my blogs. If I couldn’t get the feed or the ezine had different content, oh well. I have the websites bookmarked and I can always go there if I really want to check in on the authors latest information. This cut back drastically on the number of incoming emails I was getting.
2. I decided to unsubscribe to all email ads. Even the really cool ones from Apple, 37 signals, and Igourmet. It didn’t take much will power to boot the uncool like Vistaprint. I love their printing for certain products but I don’t want to hear from them every time someone at their office uses the bathroom. This cut out a lot more incoming mail.
3. I turned off many of my reminders and notifications, except Twitter. I love Twitter and really feel it’s useful. Although lately, many people have stopped answering the question and started using Twitter as 2nd email.
4. I deleted all the unread ezines and updates in my @ read/review label (works like a folder except better for non Gmail users). Let’s face it I wasn’t going to sit down and read all 200 backlogged ezines. If it was important enough it will be recycled.
5. I consolidated many of the labels I had created to store my mail. Google already has great search features for finding your messages and they give you so much storage space you don’t really need to delete. I love to delete though. It’s liberating. I do label and archive most semi important messages. When consolidating my labels I looked for common bonds when sorting through my system. For instance I took all funny emails, political emails and neat stories and put them into a label called Keepers. Then I purged the labels for Funny, Politics and Misc. In Gmail you can edit any message or multiple messages by selecting the email via clicking it and then by clicking “More Actions” new label or existing labels. The cool thing about Gmail verus using a folder system is that messages can have multiple labels. Maybe you got an email that was from a customer but pertained to a software or blog they recommended. You might want to label it with both the customers name and the new blog.
6. Now my inbox is empty. My @ read/review can now be managed on a weekly basis. I batch (let it accumulate and do it all at once to avoid start up time and task switching) this activity for Saturday afternoons or Sundays while watching football, basketball or golf. It’s not power reading and doesn’t require a lot of concentration, so I just quickly sift through and see which ones interest me.
7. Last I use the star function in Gmail to star the emails that require a next action. These would be responses, info requests, passwords or billing info to print or record for future reference. This could also be a thread that needs a reply. I like to use a @ waiting label for emails that have been sent or that require someone else to act.

Now that I’ve given you a game plan, get on top of your email inbox this month. January is a great time to clear out the clutter and close those open loops in your head. The fact that your inbox in cluttered up probably means that you don’t know what you might be missing. Here is the rub. It may be nothing and all your worry is for naught, or it could be a very important opportunity that is going unaddressed. Don’t procrastinate it any longer. Block out a couple hours with no task switching and get er done.

Here is a list of topics that we may organize during January to promote “Get Organized Month”.

1. My Documents- Finder in MAC
2. My PC
3. My Backup Files
4. My Delicious Bookmarks
5. My Fridge
6. My Pantry
7. My Physical Files
8. My Supplies
9. My Pictures on PC and Flickr
10. My MAC
11. My Backpack Account
12. My Contacts in Google and Highrise
13. My Domains
14. My Blog Posts
15. My Van
16. My Garage
17. My Wife’s Craft Room
18. My Wireless Network
19. My Home Office
20. My Notes
21. My Books
22. My Email and Labels(folders)
23. My Google Reader
24. My Children’s Toys
25. My Shed
26. My Closets
27. My Fireproof Safe
28. My 2009 Calendar
29. My Equipment
30. My Itunes
31. My Basecamp Account

Forget the changes happening each and everyday with web tools and technologies, how are you with the basics of productivity?

Take a look at Seth Godin’s little quiz here.

To start with:

37 Signals products- Highrise-Basecamp-Backpack- Now we can share pages and update them with task lists, notes, pictures and files. We can organize the info and act on it seamlessly.

Copilot- now I can sit at my computer and fix yours by actually taking over your mouse and looking at your screen. This happens with a simple link I send you and takes 30 seconds to download.

Apeer- Now we could share and edit documents, videos and photos in a live environment. This is not sharing- it’s better.

Gotomeeting- we can conduct live webinars or meetings from the comfort of our own offices. I can train you or your staff to work better, and use their stuff better.

These are just a few. Their are so many new ones each day I have trouble keeping up. Somebody has to sift the tools and show you how they make your business work better.

Now that I’ve switched from Outlook (It makes my stomach turn when I see it open on someone else’s screen these days), I am learning how to use Gmail more effectively. I am very amateur on the true power of Gmail at this point. I am however, getting very good at transitioning small business customers to Gmail and other Google apps. This would include setting up the accounts, imapping old folders, popping multiple accounts, creating labels and other handling other administrative tasks.

I haven’t had enough time to figure out the little tweaks that will I’m sure make Gmail even more efficient and effective. Organizing is much different in Gmail than in say Outlook or web-based email clients. Instead of creating a series of folders, and then moving an email to a particular folder for reference later; Gmail’s labeling system with the use of tags (Web 2.0 concept- I guess, but I could be speaking out of turn), allows users to tag an email with several labels instead of putting it into one folder. Although dragging and dropping an email into one solitary folder is simpler on the surface- and I love simpler- labels in the long run are much more intuitive. Need a for instance- here you go.

Say you get an email of a receipt from your backpack account. Well in my mind I need to label this with a star or with an @ action label, because I would like to print it for my tax file. I also want it labeled accounting. Just in case I needed to reference it by association, I may label it Backpack. Now six months from now if I needed to access this for tax purposes or to correct a bill, then I could by association look in one of two or three places. In the old way of doing it. I would be forced to choose one folder that best associates with the email. Well I probably couldn’t make that decision at that point, so I would just procrastinate and leave it in my inbox.

I’m still getting used to not dragging and dropping files but I can see the benefit in this new method of labels/tags.

This is not a new revelation to anyone in the digital world. I am going to link to a video which explains how Google Reader increases the efficiency and organization of online reading. Most small business owners I meet are not using this time saving method of keeping up with their favorite blogs.

Instead of the old way (going out to each website, news site or blog site to see what they’re up to) you can read your online news the new way using feeds. RSS feeds are changing the way we get info.

Check out this video from Common Craft.

I highly recommend Seth Godin’s blog.

I don’t agree with him on every issue, but he has some serious knowledge of trends in marketing and productivity- among other things. I bet we’re as different as night and day, but we have this in common- he knows marketing and I want to learn it much better.

He is very consistent in his blogging and it is usually encouraging to me. I read the Dip a while back and just recently finished Meatball Sundae and Tribes. I’m going to trim down the number of blogs I follow and this won’t be one of them.

To start with, I’m sure there are some high tech ways to keep passwords. I know people who use open ID and I’m sure I’ll be there with them soon enough. For now, I keep my passwords organized in a excel spreadsheet. I strive for the simplest thing at the current time. For me the simplest thing now is Excel. The spreadsheet is one of only a few actual documents I save to my desktop. The main spreadsheet has several sheet tabs labeled with some general categories I find helpful. For one I have a lot of Financial Passwords. If you’re worried about all the identity theft stuff- get LifeLock- they can clean me up to the tune of a million dollars if I suffer the misfortune. I have another sheet/tab of Social Media passwords. I have two sheets earmarked for my Web Tools as I call them. I have another sheet for General Business websites, and last I’ve got shopping websites.

In the sheet itself on each page, I have 4 columns and multiple rows. The column titles are:

• Website
• URL
• Username
• Password _ since most passwords are pretty short, I use this column if the website has any password clues or questions-which most financial sites have.

I also save this document on some of my web-based programs so I have it if I’m accessing the Internet from another location.

1. Start a blog- I have used google eblogger but I like Word Press better. Don’t know how to get going- call me- it’s a service I offer.
2. Start reading and commenting on a select few blogs that you really like. This will get your name or business name circulating on the Google organic search results.
3. Start an email newsletter. There are plenty of good programs and if you preplanned your content it is something you can keep up with. Pick a frequency- I suggest weekly but monthly would be OK as well.
4. Create a Facebook page. I have one but it’s not at all customized or tweaked. Remember this is a process and Rome wasn’t built in a day.
5. Get a Twitter account (it’s free just like Facebook) and start telling the world- What you’re doing? You’ll be surprised how many people will begin to follow you or your business based on the content of your tweets. Tweets are the short two line entries you make when you answer the question- What are you doing?
6. Post reguraly on Twitter and on your blog. Make it a habit at certain times of the day or the week.
7. Set up a profile on LinkedIn. It’s a site for professional business networking. Every little bit helps.
8. Use Youtube, Vimeo and Flickr to host your videos and pictures that you’d like to share- in an effort to promote your business of course.
9. Try as hard as possibly to do all these things consistently without sacraficing time or attention from the things that really bring in the cash flow.