10 Surefire Ways You Can Stay Organized…

Hey everyone, Rachel here!

Someone recently asked me how I stay organized with internet marketing. She wanted to know what tools, websites, and other things to use.

I was overdue on this question, and VERY busy, so I made a video while on the airplane to answer it. (Talk about maximizing time! ) However, I just listened to it and realized it’s much noisier than I anticipated… so I had it transcribed. Here’s the main gist of everything:

#1: Calendar. I put everything that’s going on in a main calendar that syncs to my phone. At one glance I can see all upcoming appointments, due dates for projects, and anything that I need to remember. It’s a GREAT way to have an overall big picture look at what’s happening.

#2: I use a 3 subject notebook method that you may have heard me mention before. Here’s how it works: the last section of the notebook is where I list out my yearly goals (like making $10,000 a month). In the second section I break down how I can achieve those goals in 3-6 month increments (like having 500 people pay $20/month). The first section is daily to-do items where I break down the second section even more. This helps me keep my eye on the end goal. If you want to learn more about this, I recommend Time Management Tricks, where I outline this (and a lot more) in more detail.

#3:  30/60/90 day plans are also great. You can outline what you want to get done in 30, 60, and 90 day increments if you’re not yet willing to go a year out.

#4: Outsourcers are a highlight of my life! One of my VAs is just amazing. I spit out any random thought that I have for her onto a Jing video, and she’ll make a list out of it, and then an action plan. You can hire someone like that too.

#5: I have a different folder for every single project. It’s MUCH easier to organize things that way.

#6: I ONLY put things on my desktop if I’m working on them at the moment. If I get more than 5 icons on my Desktop I start to get uncomfortable. I literally feel repulsed when I look at some other people’s desktops and see a computer littered with icons. How can you NOT feel overwhelmed by opening up your computer and seeing that every day?!??

#7: Mindmaps are VERY awesome. You can use them to brain-dump a bunch of thoughts and not worry about them fitting in any kind of order. There’s also something about them that make even the most daunting tasks NOT seem like they’re too much to bear.

#8: I LOVE Google Docs. I share a lot of spreadsheets and files in Google Docs with outsourcers. I find it easier to use than Base Camp, and it’s free!

#9: Dropbox is another FANTASTIC tool that I love collaborating with people on.  Here’s one way I use it: I put a file in Dropbox for my VA, she downloaded it, edited the file and designed it, and then uploaded the finished PDF in there. It was so easy!

#10: Use Action Enforcer or a timer. When you set amounts of time that you’re going to allot to certain tasks, it helps you get them done a LOT faster. I won’t go into this too in too much detail since this blog post is about organization, not productivity, but I think it needed to at least be mentioned.

I hope this helps! If you have any other internet marketing questions, simply reply to this page and let me know. I’ll be happy to make follow-up videos or blog posts!

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