Staying on top of everything can be hard work and leave little time to spend on the things you’re really interested in. The more stuff you get involved in, the greater the need for a suitable custom made system of dealing with it. Something i’ve worked on a lot over the years, and this last few months, i’ve taken time out to pool everything i’ve tried into something that i’m hoping will allow me a lot more time to do.

It’s an evolving thing and in the early stages, but for the moment, here is what i used and an overview of what i did, in case anyone else is in a similar dingy

Outlook
I’ve resisted this program for years, but it seems to be the only thing that will sync my calender, contacts, and email accounts with my new phone. Before outlook i tried Sunbird and Thunderbird (when they were first out), then exclusively just gmail and google calender, but the time has come to have it all one place, and here’s why.

I wanted a central contacts database which could deal with the 10/15+ areas of contact details effectively.

I wanted a calender that synced with my phone and thinking rock, and one that i didn’t have to go online to look at.

And the other main area was that I wanted all my emails in one place, be able to view them online or on my phone, and a much faster process of dealing with them.

I’ve now set all email accounts to get delivered to outlook, which was as easy as looking at the gmail help page, and the good thing for me is that wherever i access them they are updated in the other areas, so i’m always up to date. Its also nice to be able to copy and paste info in the same program, and i like just deleting emails safe in the knowledge they are still in gmail for searching.

On the email basis, this was a really nice system which might be useful for you too – http://lifehacker.com/software/top/geek-to-live–empty-your-inbox-with-the-trusted-trio-182318.php

Another thing i wanted to keep on top of is to add useful contacts to a central database as they come in. For some reason i used to tag everything that came in with the view to one day i’ll add all that to my contact databases. That day never came, and its just easier to add them straight away to already setup address books in outlook.

Setup filters in gmail to tag, and outlook to read. Filters are a great thing so you can only read stuff you want to. I do use folders to keep things organised as opposed to tags, which may be fairly pointless as everything is searchable, but its a learnt process, and makes track history easy, when i need to check back on bigger projects.

Thinking Rock & Getting Things Done

For me, this is a great piece of software which makes the whole GTD process nice and easy.  Its taken time to implement in a way that really works for me  (Dubber introduced me to it about 3 years ago), but if you’re someone who has a multitude of roles, or creates a lot of ideas, then a system like g.t.d is a lot easier than trying to keep track of them in your head.

The basic premise is that everything has a next action associated with it to move it forward. If that next action will take you less than 2 mins do it ..always.. without fail. If its not then process it (which means either defer it, delegate it, or add it to your next action list tagged in context and topic). Whichever one it basically means that its out of your head and safe in a system that works.

For me i just add anything that needs doing to Thinking Rock and then process all the thoughts in the weekly review, though like i say the way you use the system changes over time. As long as you keep to it (a learning curve in itself), your headspace and productivity improves massively. For some people this isn’t needed, and it seems its more commonly used in business, but from my experience creatives often have so much to do and self manage on top of their own creative practices, jobs and lives, that a system that addresses it, is definitely worth a try/read.

Dubber explains it a lot better than me here – http://newmusicstrategies.com/2007/11/26/best-software-ever/

One Note

Again it pains me that this comes from microsoft but its really useful with outlook and the gtd system as you can create virtual notebooks, link stuff easily, move text, pics, vids, audio, etc around the pages. I really like it for project reference material and sketching stuff out.

Thinking Rock for Mobile

I think this is another pc only thing, but is great for capturing your thoughts to add and process in thinking rock. A godsend and a free program for anyone who wants to take  thinking rock out on their mobile.

Music Collection

Being a dj, this deserves/will get a section in itself, but basically Traktor, Scrobbling and music navigation was the reason, alongside having a kind of flow of music, so that the music collection evolves and dynamically feeds into promos, reviews, radio shows, and various gigs.

This started from when i moved over to cdjs. I had hundreds of vinyl records, and a fair amount of tracks i’d dj from compilation cds, so the first task was to sample, edit, save them all to the computer, and then to burn them all to cd, naming each one so the case would be correct.

Now i’ve got traktor, which means i can play anything, as mp3, though the key time consumer is that if i want to see what i’m playing, the id3 tags need to be correct, which with thousands of records, most of which arent tagged at all,  has been a labour of love. Ultimately though this will allow me to do a lot more with djing and respond more fluently in the forthcoming gigs in more diverse environments.

There’s a lot i’ve learnt through trial and error over these last months, which might be useful, so i’ll try and blog them in short top tip fashion for anyone who might be in the same boat.

Update : Rich Batsford shares his way of organising http://www.richbatsford.com/?p=339