Between 2008 and 2011, global pop phenomenon Lady Gaga has created an impressive empire - three bestselling albums, nearly a dozen hit singles, and two of the highest-grossing tours of the past couple of years. On top of that, she's created a line of headphones for the popular Beats brand, is a creative director at Polaroid, a spokesperson for MAC's Viva Glam line, performs advocacy work, and more. And regardless of the length of her task list, she does it all while refusing to wear pants!

You don't have to be a fan be impressed by the sheer amount of output this young woman has achieved. How does Lady Gaga get through this seemingly endless task list, what are some of her productivity secrets, and how can you apply them to your everyday work and life?

Motivation. In any given interview, Lady Gaga always says that she has relentless drive to create. Without a driving force, it can be hard for anyone to stay productive and in action. To feel purposeful, busy people need a reason to do the things we do - for her, it's her fans and a dedication to her craft. For you, it may be a love for the work you do or the desire to stay on top of your projects. Reminding ourselves why we do what we do is essential to keeping us energized and on track, no matter the length of our task list. Make a practice to remind yourself what your own motivation is and your productivity will get a regular boost.

Delegation. Although she's know for her "interesting" sense of fashion, it's not actually Lady Gaga herself who creates much of her clothing - her multi-person Haus of Gaga is the creative force behind many of her famous (and infamous) fashions and hairstyles. It would be impossible, regardless of her motivation, for Lady Gaga to get through her certainly voluminous task lists herself. If you're a busy professional with too many tasks on your task list, you can't possibly accomplish them all - no matter how many time management tips you read. One key productivity and time management technique is learning how to effectively delegate so you can offload items from your task list. When you delegate tasks, you can still be in control of your output, but you personally let go of doing each and every task yourself.

Tools. Regardless of our time management techniques or skills, we all need the right frameworks and tools to stay productive. One of the ways that Lady Gaga was able to record her latest album while simultaneously touring the world was she had a custom bus created that housed an entire recording studio. This bus would drive behind her main tour bus, and after each show ended, she'd board the recording bus and create songs for several hours each night. Of course, you probably don't need a custom bus following you around, but for whatever task or project you're trying to accomplish, make sure you have all the tools you need close at hand, and you're likely to get more done.

Quality of work. In a recent interview, "Now that you have everybody watching, Gaga, you'd better be f***ing great." Especially for business owners, the quality of the work we produce can be a big determining factor in the success of our projects. In my work with clients, I've noticed that busy people tend to get more done when they always keep a close eye on not just the quantity of the work they produce, but also the quality. In our rush to get through our task lists, it can be easy to focus on either getting things done perfectly, or just scraping by. Now, unless you're a global celebrity and have all eyes on you, shooting for perfection probably isn't a needed goal. Rather, create benchmarks for what a great experience - for you or a client - would be, and work towards that.

Clearly, Lady Gaga's career success has depended in large part on her organizational skills and time management. What lessons can you adopt to help you get through your task lists so you can complete your projects?

We all share the same finite resource – time. No matter what we do, we can’t magically add more time into our days, or extend our weeks. Therefore, how well we manage our time, and our tasks, is critical to our overall success. There are many time management books and systems out there, along with ones that you can create from whole cloth. For off-the-shelf systems, choosing one can be daunting – there are so many, and it’s hard to know what criteria to look at when you’re selecting one to try. Here are a few key things to keep in mind to help you:

Big picture or small tasks? Are you more of birds-eye view person, focusing on ideas and high-level plans, or do you really like planning out every detail? Different systems approach these two perspectives in different ways. Getting Things Done is about getting the small tasks under control so you can focus on the big picture, while FranklinCovey is about focusing on the big picture to help guide you towards the right small tasks. It’s all a matter of perspective – both the one you already have, and the one you’d like to gain.

How planned do you like to be? Each of us varies on how much we like our days to be structured. Some of us thrive with lots of structure and have most of our day fully planned, while others work better when just a few key items are planned and the rest of our time gets filled as each day progresses. One method is not necessarily better than the other – and there’s certainly a continuum between them. Systems vary on how much structure they encourage – for instance, Action Method helps you plan and strategize your individual tasks, while The Now Habit’s Unschedule leaves your day more open. Choose a system that fits what works well for you, and you’ll likely be more successful.

Learn and use your system and give it a fighting chance. Once you’ve chosen a system, make sure you take the time to understand not only its big tenets, but also the ins and outs of how it’s meant to work on a daily basis. Listen to podcasts or read blog posts from the makers of your system, or work with a productivity expert to help guide you through the process. As you gain understanding into your chosen system, make sure that you’ve given yourself adequate time to practice using it. As with anything new, it takes both understanding your new time management system and putting it into practice for a while before you can see what is – and what isn’t – working well for you. Especially with time management, change typically doesn’t happen overnight.

Use bits and pieces. Whatever system you choose, don’t feel obligated to use every single element of it – especially if you find that parts of it don’t work well for you or if all your needs are not fully addressed. Use the parts that DO work well for you and if there are areas where your chosen system doesn’t fit the bill, choose elements from other systems to fill in the gaps. For instance, maybe some of the big-picture planning tools from your main system work really well for you, but you find that the day-to-day task planning isn’t really your cup of tea. In that case, choose a daily planning method from another system. After all, it’s your time – how you plan it should fit you!

As someone whose previous career was in the design industry, I know how much of a challenge it can be for busy, creative people to get and stay organized. When you’re faced with meeting client deadlines and marketing yourself to find your next gig, it can seem like getting organized is just “one more thing” on the ever-growing to-do list. But taking the time to get organized can help you – and your business – in a variety of ways:

Recognize the benefits of getting organized. When I work with creative professionals of any stripe, one of the concerns they raise is that getting organized could stifle their creativity. In fact, what I’ve seen with my clients is that getting organized can enhance creativity by letting you focus on what’s important to you – rather than the details of “where’s that important client file” or “under which pile of stuff is my extra printer ink.” Getting organized takes a little time and focus up front, but can save you lots of time and stress down the road.

Set aside time to organize. I know you’re busy with design projects for your clients, but remember, taking care of the administrative end of your business, including managing paperwork, billing, and email, is critical to the success of any endeavor. Unfortunately, your admin and organizing-related work won’t do itself, so schedule time to work on your organizing projects. Once they’re completed, build a regular appointment with yourself into your calendar to maintain your systems. One rule of thumb – it takes about 15-30 minutes each day to deal with that day’s worth of new paper. Make sure you have enough time set aside to process your paper – especially client billing!

 

Get creative with your organizing tools. When I’m working with designers and other creative folks, I frequently hear this refrain: “but the organizing tools are so ugly!” Unfortunately, it’s mostly true – many of the containers and other organizing gizmos out there are pretty bare-bones and focus on functionality over form. That said, there are ways to make sure that your organizing tools match your aesthetic sense. One technique I like to use is to get clear containers, and then line them with decorative paper from a high-end paper store. By doing this, you can completely customize the look of your storage, rather than trying to find an off-the shelf solution that fits. Look for organizing tools that you can customize in various ways – either by decorating, painting, or using in new and unexpected ways.

 

Give things a home. One of the most important concepts when you’re organizing is to recognize when your supplies, files, and other stuff don’t have assigned homes, they simply can’t be put away – they have no homes to go back to, and they become clutter (or “homeless stuff,” as I like to think of them). Make sure to take the time to assign homes for each of the things that are around your design studio or office. That way, when it’s time to find things, it’s easy to do so – and it’s equally easy to put things away when you’re done with them.

 

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Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.

 

© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.

Reach your organizing goals with these easy tips!

 

The prospect of getting organized at home or at work can seem pretty daunting. Working towards your organizing goals can be energized with anticipation and effort, or can be derailed by frustration and confusion. It’s critical to understand that getting organized is a process – and as such, it will have its highs and lows. Whether your goal is to clear that pile off of your desk, to organize your computer files, or to finally see the floor in your closet, here are some strategies to help you to hit your target:

 

Have a plan. The most common downfall that people who try to get organized run into is they haven’t planned out their project. Often, they’ll begin without first defining the smaller tasks in the project, and how they will recognize when they are finally finished. Before you start your organizing project, take a few minutes to write down your plan of attack – your goal for the project, the steps involved in getting the project completed, and what some important milestones are. This way, as you complete each task, you can check it off and visually see the progress that you’ve made. And if you run into trouble, a good Professional Organizer can help you develop an organizing plan that’s right for you.

 

Set aside time. Take a look at your calendar for the month. Do you have an extra 15 minutes each day, or a free hour on the weekend? Those might be good times for you to schedule time to make progress with your organizing. Once you find the right time in your schedule, make sure you write it down as “organizing time.” The simple act of setting time aside for working on your project can go a long way towards your success, because you’ve just let yourself know that organizing is a priority that has earned time in your schedule.

 

Enlist help. Organizing can be a solitary activity, and if you’re a social person, getting organized alone can be torturous. If you enjoy having another person around to bounce organizing ideas off of, work with a Professional Organizer, or get an “organizing buddy.” You and your organizing buddy can put your heads together on each other’s organizing projects, and can share that extra bit of support when it’s needed.

 

Reward yourself. As you make progress on your organizing plan, give yourself a treat for reaching important milestones. You don’t have to wait until you’ve completed your project to sit back and enjoy the work that you’ve done! Some great times to reward yourself might be when you can finally see the top of your desk, when you have just gathered a bag of unused clothes to donate, or when you’ve got that undeniable feeling that things are starting to get “under control.” You get to choose your reward for reaching those important milestones!

 

Remember, getting organized is a process, one that can help you build skills that will last for a lifetime. Individual projects can take awhile, so be patient and don’t get mired down in the day-to-day ups and downs of your organizing. Try the strategies mentioned above and you’ll be well on your way to success!

 

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Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.

 

© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.

Improve comfort and increase productivity with a few simple tips!

 

Once an afterthought, people who spend time at a desk have come to recognize the benefits of creating an ergonomic, efficient workspace. Whether you’re spending time at a desk at home or at an office, a comfortable, well thought out space can go a long way towards making you feel more productive. Here’s a few tips to get the process started:

 

Choose the right workstation. Think about the functions that you’ll be doing at your desk. Analyze what you do in a day, and make sure that your desk or workstation will be able to accommodate your needs. Will you have lots of cables running from a computer and other equipment? Choose a desk with built-in cable management and an adjustable keyboard drawer. Will you be doing a lot of paperwork or making scrapbooks? You’ll want a desk with lots of flat space so that you can spread out.

 

Streamline your storage. Planning your storage in advance can result in significant time savings later. Group the things you need to store into categories (office supplies, filing, books, inventory, etc.), and then measure the items. That way you can determine just how much space you’ll need for storage. Decide what type of storage (a desk hutch, bookcase, freestanding shelves, drawer unit, etc.) makes sense for the space you have available and the amount of storage that you need.

 

Have a plan. Based on the information you just gathered, develop a storage plan. Make a map of the shelves or drawers, and assign items to each shelf or drawer in a way that makes sense for you. Keep more frequently-used items closer, and place infrequently used items higher up or down lower – away from the “prime real estate” of eye-level storage. Make sure to leave extra space in your plan for items you’ll purchase in the future. According to the storage plan that you just created, arrange your items on the shelves or in the drawers. Containerize smaller items as necessary.

 

Make it yours. For many people, a desk or workspace doesn’t feel right until they decorate it in some way. Personalizing your space can go a long way towards making you feel more at home and productive. The key here is to not go overboard and clutter up your desk with mementos, photos, and personalized mugs. Instead of dozens of personal items, choose and display a few that really mean something to you. Monthly, swap your mementos for others that have special meaning – that way, you’ll get to honor your treasured items, while also keeping your space clutter-free!

 

Working at home or work at the office can be more comfortable and productive than you previously may have thought. By implementing a few of these simple tips, spending time at your workspace can be a pleasure!

 

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Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.

 

© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.

My friends get pretty jealous about me having an office in my home, saying it must be cool to be able to sit around in my sweats and do all sorts of errands during the day. Well, while there are definite perks to working from home - spending nothing on gas (a big benefit in $4/gallon San Francisco) and eating a healthy lunch that I prepare – it’s important to remember the work part in the work-from-home equation. For most of us with home offices, it’s key to our success to find ways to put the “office” back in “home office.”

 

Reduce distractions. Here’s a scenario: even though you hate doing laundry, as soon as you sit down to start your workday, suddenly your laundry jumps to the top of your must-do list. You get out of your chair, collect your laundry, sort it, put it in the machine, and before you know it, you’ve lost 20 minutes that was supposed to be spent on an important project. Sound familiar? Most of us have distractions in our homes that can divert our attention from the work that we have in front of us. For us work-at-homers, it’s super-important to combat these distractions. True, we can’t make them go away, but look for ways to shift your focus back to your work. For instance, putting all non-work-related items out view of your desk, closing the door to your office, and turning off the ringer on your home phone during the day have all proven helpful to people I’ve worked with.

Set the scene. Is your home office set up to help you do your best work? If it isn’t, take some time to get the space organized, comfortable, and conducive for how you like to work. For instance, if you have trouble getting started each day because you can’t find your papers, take an afternoon and set up a paper management system. Are your frequently-used supplies all the way on the other side of the room? Move them closer so you spend less time getting up and interrupting your workflow. Does the space itself reflect your personal aesthetic? How things look and feel can play a big part in how much (or how little) we like our workspace, and when we like our space, we do better work. Spend some time “dressing up” your work area or desk with items that reflect who you are and the things you like.

Dress for work, not for home. Even though it might seem working in your home office in pajamas or sweats is a good idea (you’re already wearing them, right?), doing so doesn’t lend itself to enhancing your productivity or helping you do your best work.  Your pajamas may be silk and your sweats designer, but chances are you’d never see a client or go to an office wearing these decidedly not-work garments. Dressing up helps us shift our mind into another state – in this case, dressing for work helps make the mental shift into work mode. I’ve seen people work much better when they dress as if they may be called off to a client site at any moment.  For example, a client says when she puts on her shoes, she knows it’s time for her to go to work (even though her office is just down the hall from her bedroom). What outfit can you change into to signal work time?

 

Find the things that you can do, whether it’s putting on a dress shirt or closing your office door, to create a physical or mental “workspace” that is distinct from your home. When you do, you’ll find yourself being much more productive and enjoy your work more.

 

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Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.

Master your calendar with a few easy ideas!

Time flies when you’re having fun, but what if you’re not having fun and your time still seems to “fly away?” Do you ever feel like your schedule runs you, rather than the other way around? Maybe you’re feeling like you can’t get everything done, or that you don’t really know where your time goes. Sound familiar? If so, a “time makeover” might be just what you need! Here are some simple strategies to help get your calendar under control:

Take stock. To truly maximize your use of time, it’s helpful to first find out how you’re currently spending your day. In a journal or on a notepad, write down what you’re doing from hour to hour for a few days. Note what your current daily schedule is (if you have one), what’s working, and what isn’t. Also notice what your energy rhythms are – are you more “up” in the evening, or are you more of a night owl?

Check it out. After keeping a log for a few days, start looking for patterns. Are you spending most of your time on the things that you want or need to do, or are you wasting lots of time procrastinating or surfing the web? Where is time being used well, and where do you see room for improvement? Also see whether the things that are most important to you are synchronized with when you are the most “up.”

Build blocks. Group your different daily tasks into categories, and then make the categories into “time blocks.” Common categories are work time (time you spend at your job or business), admin tasks (paying bills, processing paper, etc.), pleasure time (breaks and other downtime), and kid-related time (carpooling, getting the kids ready for school).

Fill it in. Look at a blank calendar, and start setting up your revised schedule. Put your time blocks onto your calendar, based on how much time the tasks within each category take up. As things come up during your day or your week, you’ll now have time literally “blocked out” for the tasks to fit into. Try to group related tasks together – for instance, if you noted in your logs that you were paying bills online on Tuesday and writing checks on Friday, try to group those together on your calendar. Every process that you can group or streamline will make a difference in how efficient you can be.

Keep at it. After you’ve filled in your time blocks with tasks, you’ll be left with a revamped schedule. Try implementing your new schedule slowly – that way you can make adjustments and tweaks. If something works well – great! If not, see if you can shift a task to another time block or shift the blocks around. Keep with it until you find the mix that works for you.

You CAN get control over your schedule! With a little advance planning and a few of my tips, you’ll soon be master of your day once more.

 

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Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.

© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.

Easily organize your digital photos in 4 easy steps!

Digital cameras make it easy and fun to capture your memories. Many digital cameras can store hundreds of photos at a time – many more than the 24 or 36 that film cameras can. Organizing the sheer number of photos that can come from one memory card can be a challenge. Managing your digital photos can be easy – and fun – with a few simple tips:

 

1. Toss the junk. Unflattering photos, bad camera angles, and just plain awful shots can take up lots of space on your hard drive. Before organizing your photos, go through your digital photo collection with a fine-toothed comb, and make sure that you’re only keeping photos that you like. Not only will you free up space on your computer, you’ll make it easier to organize your photos by reducing the number of photos that need to be sorted.

2. Sort and separate. If you’ve been keeping all of your photos in one folder on your hard drive, it can be tough to find the one that you’re looking for. Instead of using just one folder, create multiple folders by month and year, or by month/year and subject or event. Once you have your folders set up, them sort your photos into their new, separated homes. As you take new photos, create folders in the same manner to store your new shots. This will make it easy to find your photos later on when you’re looking for them.

3. Software makes it a snap. Once you’ve set up your folders, managing your photos is easy, using readily available software. On a Mac, iPhoto is the standard, and on the PC, I usually recommend Picasa or Adobe Photoshop Elements. These software tools are designed to make it easy for you to organize, fix, search, and print your digital photo collection. Using software, you can browse your photos in various thumbnail sizes, repair the dreaded red-eye effect, add tags to your photos to make them searchable, and create slideshows to share with your friends and family.

4. Backup for safety. Losing all of your memories if your computer crashed could be disastrous. For that reason, I always suggest backing up your digital photos to CD or DVD (preferably the rewritable variety, so you can reuse your discs again and again). Many of the software programs used for organizing digital photos have a backup feature built-in, which can make the process of storing you files for safekeeping very easy.

 

Photos (digital and traditional) are meant to be seen. Once you’ve organized your photos, it’s easy to share those memories in photo albums, prints, and slideshows. Spending a little time organizing your photo collection can make sharing your memories easy and fun once again.

 

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Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.

 

© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.

There are two tools I use almost daily - Evernote for keeping track of notes, ideas, things I see out in the world, clippings for clients, etc., and the Neat Company's family of scanning tools, including NeatReceipts and NeatDesk, for getting paper documents into my computer. Just like mixing chocolate with peanut butter (my favorite combination), sometimes you get a great result when you combine two things that may not necessarily have been intended to work together. While Evernote and NeatReceipts weren't designed with each other in mind, there are some great ways to combine them to do more than either one can do individually.

NeatReceipts gives you the option to scan any document and directly create a searchable PDF from it - single page or multi-page, black and white or color. Conveniently, Evernote lets you import PDFs and view, search, and organize them inside Evernote. The tricky part is automating the process so that your NeatReceipts PDFs go directly into Evernote with as little input from you as possible.

First, create a new folder on your computer called "For Evernote." This is where you'll save your scanned PDFs into. You'll then need to tell Evernote to look in this folder for any new documents you've scanned in. If you're using Evernote on Windows, click on the "Tools" menu and then "Import Folders." From here, you'll be able to choose your "For Evernote" folder, and you'll be able to select what Evernote notebook you'd like your scans to be imported into.

Now, when you scan a document to PDF using NeatReceipts, your scans will automatically show up inside Evernote, where you can then add more notes and annotations, organize and tag them in ways that help you retrieve them later, share them with other people, and easily find them using Evernote's search tools.

NeatReceipts does have a great document manager of its own that is part of the NeatWorks software, and it's perfect for managing documents and receipts that you don't necessarily need on all your computers at once - for instance, it's unlikely that you'd need scans of your office receipts anywhere other than your office, or owners manuals for your home office computer anywhere other than your home office. But there are some types of documents that it's handy to have access to wherever you are - and that's where Evernote shines.

Here's a few ways to put these two tools to use together:

 

Random thoughts - If you're writing notes on the backs of envelopes, on sticky notes, and scraps of paper, scan them with NeatReceipts and keep them in a "Scraps" notebook in Evernote. Once they're scanned, you can tag your notes with the topics they're relevant to so you can easily find them later. This helps to make sure that you don't lose those random, but sometimes important, ideas, brainstorms, late-night and during-drinks inspirations. 

Business cards - Let's face it: if you're like most people I work with, you probably have too many business cards buried in drawers and cluttering up the bottom of boxes. When we go to networking events, we can collect dozens of cards at a time - and most of those folks won't (and probably shouldn't) make it to our address books. For the cards that don't make the cut, scan them with NeatReceipts, and instead of putting them in your contacts manager, send them to a "Cards" or "Networking" notebook in Evernote. You'll be able to organize them by date, event, topic - and they won't be cluttering up your contacts manager. 

Article clippings - I'll admit it, I'm one of those people that tear articles out of magazines. I've left many a magazine with missing pages at the gym (sorry Gold's Gym members!). Why? Rather than keeping a whole magazine, I tear interesting articles out and scan them into Evernote using NeatReceipts. Since both programs have powerful OCR technology built-in, my scanned articles are now searchable. Also, since Evernote is also on my laptop, I can read articles on the go, wherever I happen to be.

 

What other ways can you think of to use NeatReceipts and Evernote together?

 

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Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visitwww.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.

© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.

Do you feel like email has taken over your life? Well, you're not alone - in a recent study by Information Week, over three-quarters of the people surveyed said that email is essential to their lives - and an additional 15% say they'd rather lose their spouse than give up email! It's important to remember that email is a tool that we can control - one that is meant to improve communication and make our lives easier. To that end, here are four top tips to wrangle that inbox:

• Smarten up your subject line. Put as much descriptive information in the subject line as possible, and your recipient will know what your message is about without having to even open your email. For instance, "Rescheduling Meeting: Orig. 6/1/07 3PM - New 6/1/07 5PM" is a lot better than "Meeting time changed" - the more descriptive, the better.
• Don't use your inbox as a filing cabinet. Instead, create descriptive folders in your email program - by topic, client, vendor, etc. As you're finished reading your messages, file them accordingly.
• Filter your messages to save a step. Once you've set up some folders, you can then tell your email program to automatically put messages from specific senders or with specific subject lines into the folders where they belong. For instance, if you're receiving dozens of newsletters, create a "Newsletters" folder, and have your email program filter those emails right into the folder, bypassing your inbox entirely. In your email program, search the help for "rules" or "filters" for more instructions.
• Beware the 4000-message inbox. Instead of letting emails "pile up" in your inbox indefinitely, set a limit for how many messages you want to have sit in there at any given time - I recommend no more than 25 or so (once you have more than that, it's hard to actually see what's in there). Once your messages start growing past the limit that you set, schedule some time to process your email.

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Joshua Zerkel, CPO® is a the founder of Custom Living Solutions, a San Francisco-based productivity and organizing consulting firm, specializing in helping busy people save time, space and money by getting organized at home and at work. For more FREE organizing ideas, visit www.customlivingsolutions.com or call 415-830-6345.

© 2009 Joshua Zerkel and Custom Living Solutions. All Rights Reserved.