I've always been an advocate for making New Years Resolutions - I'm just not usually the type to actually keep them. This year, I have a few resolutions: quit smoking (which I've been trying to do for over a year now), work-out more (once I fix my injured shoulder), and get more cool stuff done at work. I find it incredibly frustrating that there is so much I want to do, but it feels like there's never enough time to do it all.

So, regarding resolution #3, I've become obsessed with not letting anything get lost in the shuffle. For me, it has become a three-step process:

1. My inbox. We all get way too much email, and it's often very difficult to manage. We hear so much about declaring inbox bankruptcy. Since EchoDitto recently switched to using Gmail (the best email system EVER), my solution is three-fold: filters, labels, and multiple inboxes. Almost every email I receive is filtered and labeled in some way. Generally, if I get an email from a specific client, I'll apply a filter (from:client@clientemail.com) that automatically labels the email "client name." If I'm constantly receiving emails sent to a group that I know I can read later, our tech team for instance, I'll apply a filter (to:group@groupemail.com) that labels it, marks it as read, and skips my Inbox (automatically archives).

So, what if I get something important that I've filtered to skip the inbox? This is where multiple inboxes comes into the equation. For me, at the LEAST, each client has its own inbox. The EchoDitto tech team also has an inbox, my bug assignments for any/all websites I'm working on have their own inbox (we use Mantis), and so on.

Finally, what I consider to be the most-helpful trick of all: I refuse to have pagination in my main Gmail inbox. I limit the number of displayed emails in my MAIN inbox (not any of the multiple ones) to 25, and every morning I spend 30min responding to emails, acting on them, or archiving them if there is no action. The only 25 emails I keep in my inbox are those I need to act on immediately. If I miss a day of going through email, I make sure to do it at least every other day. Without fail.

Also, if you know you need to act on something, but not immediately, why keep it in your inbox? This is when multiple inboxes and advanced gmail search come in handy, as well as #2. So keep reading...

PS: My Gmail ninja level? Master.

2. Paper & Pen. I've gone through so many time/task management apps - Things, Remember the Milk, etc. Usually I'll start out with an efficient and well organized list of projects and tasks, but eventually just managing the app itself becomes a daunting task, and time-consuming. So I've given up and am now doing it old-school using pen and paper. I have a notebook, and every day AFTER acting on the things I can act on immediately in my inbox, I'll date the page and write down each project I need to be working on, and list tasks for each one that need to be completed that day. For tasks that need to be completed by the end of the week, I'll asterisk. As I complete tasks, I cross them off. Asterisked tasks that don't get completed that day are re-written on the next page the next day. Sometimes a task can be as simple as: finish all Mantis items for X project that are due today.

For longer-term tasks, things that I can just do "eventually" I block out the last 5-10 lines at the bottom of the page and write these tasks in that block. These tasks carry over every day, and I try to cross one off a week, depending on the urgency of each task. But it's a good way of keeping them on my radar.

3. My calendar. I've found that my calendar can be more than just a place to schedule meetings. Why not block out time during the day to work on projects? 9-9:30am attack email, 9:30-9:45 update task list, and by 10am I'm hard to work on all of my projects. Normally I'll book myself through to 6 or 7pm to account for the 30-60min I've been planning, and haven't really been doing client work. I find that if I fill up my Gcal with the things I need to do that day, in blocks of 1-2 or even 3hrs, I'll actually get more done and be less prone to distraction. Setting a time limit (i.e. 1hr to fix X bug on X website), also makes me more efficient in getting that task done.

Conclusions? This all sounds like a lot of work. But there are so many benefits to this system! Once you set all of this up, you get into a rhythm and it actually doesn't involve much work to do 1, 2, and 3 on a day-to-day basis. It takes me about 15-30min to get set up every day with a list of things I need to do and when I need to do them. The other benefit is that when I go to do my Timesheet for the day, I can look both at my sent email, my task list, and my calendar, and have an extremely accurate record of how I spent my day.

Now obviously this doesn't work to perfection every day. There are distractions, there are days when ... as Forrest Gump said ... stuff just happens (he didn't say it exactly like that, but you get the idea). Sometimes you get behind. For instance, writing this blog post was not blocked out in my calendar, or on my list of to-do's for today. Whoops.

I'm curious how others do the same. Do you have a system? Are the comment text boxes on our website long enough to accommodate? If not, send me an email! My email address is my first name @echoditto.com. And if you spam me, that's okay, I've got a filter ready. From: jerk@spammyjerk.com, mark as read, send to trash. Done.