Life gets busy. Scratch that. Life gets absolutely, crazy, cat-jugglingly insane. Tasks and projects pile up every day, and some great ideas simply slip through the cracks for lack of capture. If you're like me, you have about 14 projects going on right now, at least five of which are super-high priority for clients.
Sound familiar?
On a recent Marketing over Coffee podcast, John Wall and Chris Penn asked about "swipe files"--that is, how do you keep track of ideas, tasks and projects so that nothing gets lost in the mix?
Great question, guys. Here's what I do:
Situation 1: at my desk
If I'm at my desk, my computer is nearby, which makes this super easy. For new tasks (pick up mascara at Walgreen's, have navy pants altered, post Seesmic video for client, research Facebook for upcoming class), I use TOOL #1: OmniFocus' Inbox.
You guys know I'm a huge OmniFocus fan (full disclosure: I did work with the OmniGroup earlier this year), and this is one reason why: you can easily dump every task into the Inbox, and then sort them into their respective projects later.
So eventually, "pick up mascara at Walgreen's" and "have navy pants
altered" will go into the Errands context; "post Seesmic video for
client" will go into that client's Project, and "research Facebook"
will go into the Social Media Boot Camp Project.
Also, TOOL #2, Zenbe lists iPhone app, is great for keeping running lists. So "pick up mascara at Walgreen's" would be translated into "mascara" on the Walgreen's list--at which point, I'd see that I have three other things to pick up there, so I should stop by today. Zenbe also has online synching and sharing, so you can sync the list and call your sweetie to pick up the four things you need from Walgreen's today.
What if it's more informational or idea-oriented?
Use TOOL #3: a Google doc for ongoing brain dumps. When I was putting together my latest Twitter class, I kept running across ideas and articles I wanted to include, so I created a Google doc to harness all the links, ideas and "oh, you have to remember to include THIS"'s. Google docs also work great for dumping content and potential content for upcoming podcasts: for each podcast, I keep a Google doc and drop in links, listener emails, reminders to play promos, etc. in the doc. Then, when I'm ready to podcast, I simply pick and choose the content, arrange it in a logical way, open up any links in tabs on Firefox, and voila! An organized podcast.
Situation 2: on the road For all those great ideas that only seem to come when in the car listening to a podcast, try TOOL #4: iTalk for the iPhone. Use it to verbally record to-do items, new project ideas, and books to download/order and read. Then, once at destination, listen to the brief recordings and throw each item either into OmniFocus, Zenbe lists or a Google doc.
What about you? How to you keep the juggling to a minimum; what are your best tools for juggling cats?
