26 January, 2012

Organizing your online "stuff"

Today I want to share my tips on organizing your inbox, lists of favorite websites, and online bookmarks.  How can you keep all this online "stuff" under control and be able to find what you need in no time?



EMAILS
I do not like having multiple email addresses so my inbox gets full quite fast with work-related messages, personal emails, newsletters and occasional promotional info.  I've discovered 2 things that make it easier to overcome inbox clutter: creating multiple folders/labels and using filters.

Divide and conquer: No matter which email service you use there is an option of creating categories within your inbox: some services call them folders, others refer to them as labels.  Take a look at your regular messages and thing about broad categories you can divide them into:
- work
- family
- friends
- contacts (emails with important contact information)
- accounts (welcoming emails from online services)
- links
Now go through your emails and apply corresponding label or drag it into on of the newly-created folders.

Use filters:

To "automatise" this for your future emails take a look at "filters" in your email settings.  Filters allow you to set up new rules/chain of actions for incoming messages.  Find a way to "pick out" an email you want (ex. from a particular address or containing a particular word in a subject line) and decide which folder you want it automatically be moved to.
The process is quite simple and you can set up multiple filters to manage most of your incomings.



BLOGS

I use BLOGLOVIN to keep track of my favorite blogs.  The website allows to organize blogs that you follow into groups/topics.  You can also "like" any particular post - saving it in your favorites for the future reference.



is another helpful online organizing tool.  Simply put it's a visual pinboard where you can "pin" (save) your favorite web pages, that contain images or you can upload your own images.   I use PINTEREST to keep track of craft projects I want to try, recipes I want to cook, and other interesting, useful, and fun pages.


FAVORITES

I also use DELICIOUS to save useful pages (usually those without images) and the good ol' "favorites" option of my browser.

What's your secret for keeping online "stuff" under control?

Click here for more organizing ideas from SAS-does

2 comments:

  1. I would recommend Google Reader for organising all the blogs and generally all RSS'able content. The interface is simple and effective!

    Never got into Delicious or Pinterest, just good old Chrome bookmarks for me, sync'd across all the computers. Call me old fashioned!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wouldn't call ti "old fashioned". Different tools are good for different types of favorites/blogs. I use Google Reader for academic stuff but prefer Bloglovin for food and craft blogs.
      And Pinterest is very visual so it works great for the image-heavy posts and pages.

      Delete
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