How To Organize Your Whole Life With Google

June 1st, 2010

NOTE – Links and pictures open in a new tab/window when clicked. This article is 3245 words long (after extreme editing) so you might want to bookmark, print or save it to read later.

In this article, I am going to teach you how to make your Gmail inbox the central hub of your Internet experience. Plus give you some more time saving automation tips including:

• Setting goals with Google
• Get Google to send you a to-do list every day like clockwork
• Filter your email like a pro (and labelling)
• How to sign up for services and avoid email spam
• Using easy-to-create scripts that work at any computer to save you tonnes of time
• Centralizing your notes in a place where they’re easy to recall (free!)
• Minimize Facebook/Twitter time and still get what you want in a way that suits you
• Moving your documents digitally into “the cloud”
• Execute simple emails to update Twitter/Facebook
• Upload videos and save notes from anywhere with email access (including your phone)

Setting Goals

Before this month I set goals on paper using the system I raved about in a previous article. I feel paper is equipment heavy and not flexible enough. Google can change appointments without looking messy. In my paper calendar, I’d write a goal, then change my mind and not have enough space to write a new one.

I was using a paper system because I felt I couldn’t handle working online because of distractions so I knew I had to face this challenge. You won’t see “Google Goals” being released any time but you can combine Google’s existing products to take care of all of your needs in a way that is free, flexible and bends to suit you.

For some, moving from paper to digital can make things more complicated but it doesn’t have to be the case. This system involves a bit of work upfront but after a week you will be plain sailing.

The first thing is to decide what goal to set yourself and identify a habit to get you there. If you want to start your own business writing online, you could install the habit of writing 1000 words per day. Now let Google do all the organizing for you.

If you don’t have a Google account yet, sign up for free here and get used to Google Calendar and Google Mail. If you prefer another email service then you can sign up for a Google account, and set Gmail to automatically forward your mail to your main account. You can set it up so all of your email addresses receives and sends email from this account.

Open Google Calendar and create a new calendar called “Routines”. On tomorrows date enter write 50 words. Then the day after than enter write 100 words and so on for the next 20 days increasing by 50 words per day. When you get to day 20 you will be at 1000 words and for the 10 days after that you will be solidifying the habit you’ve created. Enter into the calendar 1000 words per day on these last 10 days. Many days you will find yourself writing over your minimum but as long as you hit the minimum everything will be fine.

Now here’s the brilliant part. Go to the “My Calendars” on the left and click the arrow next to the calendar your habits are on and then click “Notifications”. Check the email box next to “Daily Agenda” near the bottom and click “Save”. From now on, every day you will get a reminder in your email inbox at 5am of what is in your Habits calendar for the day. You can change your calendar appointments any time before that email is sent and it will get updated.

If you want to be reminded that an event is coming up, you can set a reminder. Create a new event or click an old one to edit it and on the right under options, you can add an email reminder to appear at a time before the event determined by you.

If you want to set a new routine in your life I recommend you start on the first of the month. Go to Google Calendar and create an appointment on the first of the next month in your Routines calendar. If you want to get up at 5am, write that in the calendar and select when if it needs to be done at a specific time.

Now click “repeat”, scroll to “daily”. Check “until” and then click the last day of the calendar month. Return to your calendar and it should have a new appointment repeated daily for the next month. Now sync that calendar to Gmail like we did above, and it will remind you every day. Try not to focus on any other major goals during this time to maximise your focus and chance of success.

Gmail is so flexible that you can sync just one calendar or all of them. Here’s my current calendar setup:

To Do List (Blue) – Tasks that I’ve decided are priority for today.
Routines (Red) – Habits I’ve developed and am in the process of developing. eg. Raw food diet, daily exercise, wake at 5am. I create a single event, set it to repeat daily for the next month and if it goes well, the rest of the year.
What else is happening today (Turquoise) – Things that aren’t important enough to get on the To Do List but that I may do when it’s finished.

I mention the colours because in the email I can tell by colour what is most important.

All that’s in my morning inbox is my schedule for the day. The rest is sorted into folders to be processed after my tasks are complete. It might take a while to get to this point of just one email, but there’s no rush. Spam needs to be deleted and emails need to be filed correctly over time as they come in.

You can sometimes leave emails that are marked too. If you see something in ‘Paypal’, you might know it is a receipt for a payment and doesn’t need processing. Here’s what my email inbox looks like most mornings.

(Click to enlarge. It will open in a new window)

We sometimes get email from people who haven’t contacted us before and that’s not sortable, is it? If you want to give your email to someone who you meet on a night out but don’t want it messing up your clean inbox there is a work around. You’d usually write something like JohnSmith@gmail.com. Iif you change it to JohnSmith+3@gmail.com then the email will still get to your inbox. Anything you put after the ‘+’ sign and before the @ will be OK. Then go to Filters in Gmail, set a filter for all email with the words “Johnsmith+3@gmail.com” to go to a label called Socializing.

Sometimes you sign up for sites for access but don’t want any emails from them. They might send spam or pass on your data to someone else who does. Use this technique again to sign up with an email address like “JohnSmith+nottoday@gmail.com” and set a filter for all mail to that address to be deleted.



About Habits

Habits can get you anything you want in life. Success is repeated action in the right direction. It will feel all so natural after just 30 days. It’s June 1st today, and this would be a perfect opportunity as it has exactly 30 days. If you stick to this simple effective technique and let the system work for you, I promise you will find success.

Then, install a habit next month of improving your writing in a little way by 1% each day. A month from now your writing will be 34% better. Little daily changes are big overall changes. You won’t need extreme willpower because there is no time where you really have to push your comfort zone. You start small and build. Brick by brick.

I’ve used this to get paid writing posts. I set the goal of applying for 3 every day and got 4 within 2 weeks. I figured if I applied for 150 positions in a month, someone has to hire me! This system is magical in that failure is not possible. If you change your daily habits you can achieve anything.

I also used this to eat a 100% Raw Food Diet. I never thought I could at the start but now it felt like the most natural thing in the world. That’s the power of 30 days. It taught me a lot about the nature of mind. It tells you something is absolutely impossible and 30 days later you are living that impossible reality. That’s the power of a limiting belief.



Gmail Task List

Gmail has a simple yet great task tool in the left column of Gmail which can be opened to a full screen. When I get the to do list email each morning, I immediately put the list on the task list with the hardest task at the top of the list. This way, I’m always rewarded with an easier task.



Google Labs

Google Labs has great little features to help you in Gmail. Go to Gmail > Settings (top right) > Labs and browse. I use the “Send and Archive” button which allows you to send and archive an email in one click when it’s been sent and also use the “Undo Send” which allows you to undo sending a message up to 20 seconds afterwards. This is a real lifesaver! Other options include the hilarious “Mail Goggles” which makes you solve simple maths problems before you can send an email to make you think twice.



Gmail Shortcuts

Google has installed shortcuts for many of their programs which save you tonnes of time if you use their products daily. You can print off or just browse here:

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Calendar
• Google Reader
• Google Search Shortcuts
• Youtube/Google Video – uses the same as Google Search Shortcuts. Great for finding specific videos

For Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Reader you can view the shortcuts by pressing “?” and then pressing “Esc” to remove it. Gmail Labs also has a feature to allow you to create your own shortcuts.



AutoHotKeys Scripts

Whilst we’re on the subject of shortcuts, let me introduce you to free program AutoHotKeys ( (about / download / quick start tutorial / forums). It’s a free tool which allows you to create keyboard shortcuts to simplify common tasks. It has many uses to save time. Don’t be put off by the way, I’ve never programmed a line of code in my life and found it simple to use.

I use it to do things like:

• pen regularly visited websites
• access my music
• shut down my computer in one second

I’ve set it up so the useless key between ‘Alt Gr ‘and ‘Ctrl’ is set up to minimize all windows and maximize once pressed again. It removes the need for clutter on my desktop as I can just link to them all.

The best thing is that you can download a .exe file of the script you have created and email it to yourself in Gmail (or upload to Google Docs storage) and run it from any Windows machine with email access. The Google Docs storage is 1GB total and 250MB maximum for a single file. It can be found here and is a great replacement for your USB stick.

If you get confused about what the shortcuts are, I’d recommend creating a desktop background with them on so you see them regularly. Also, use each one with a letter that makes sense. You might want to use “Windows Key and D” to open Google Docs. I’ve added the basics of my AutoHotKeys script here which you can use as a basis or add to your own script.



What about Google having all my data?

I don’t feel scared that Google or Facebook will abuse my data to a level that will bother me. The whole uproad about Facebook recently only affected me because I wanted to lower the amount that I used Facebook anyways rather than that I cared about my data. But I realise others are a lot more private than me. If anything absolutely major did come up I’m sure I would find out and there are many alternatives. You could go from

Google’s Picasa –> Flickr
Google Docs –> Zoho
Facebook Video –> Youtube/Vimeo – I’d actually start with Youtube for uploading videos for business OR personal video. Facebook video is terrible.
Facebook Status Updates —> Twitter only

I just like how clean and efficient Google is and expect to use them for a long time.



How to stop wasting time on Twitter/Facebook

There’s a couple of free tools that I use that are fantastic for this. The first one is TweetByMail (free). Staying with the theme of controlling everything from Gmail, it allows me to send emails to update my Twitter. I’ve used Facebook’s SelectiveTwitter application to automatically send my Tweets to Facebook whenever I end them with the hashtag #fb. This way I don’t have to visit the site where we will procrastinate.

The next one is my personal favourite and is called NutShellMail (free)

(Click to enlarge. It will open in a new window)

You can set up NutShellMail to land in your inbox before you wake just like the task list. It gives you a highly customizable email which tells you all about what’s gone on in the last 24 hours on your social networking pages. It works with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace. It helps you to get rid of those annoying messages when someone comments on your wall or likes your status. You might think you will miss out on big social events but people will get hold of you another way.

You can stop Twitter sending you annoying update every time someone follows me through Twitter notification settings.

Since running this site, I like to update my followers on Twitter/Facebook but don’t want to have to log in 3-4 times to send them. This is where SocialOomph (free) comes in. It lets you send updates to Twitter at precise times. I tend to schedule 3 in the morning to publish at something like 9am, midday and 7pm, People still get updates from me and I don’t even have to be there.

Another great feature of SocialOomph if you’re running a business account is that it can send a message to new followers automatically to forward them to your site or tell them about yourself.



Google Docs

I use Google Docs to digitize nearly all text documents. I only have music stored on one computer. Google has mountains of space for my needs on Docs and odds are they have enough for you too. I store things like PDFs and scanned documents in my Skydrive account (free) because it has more space.

The filling system they have is great. You can add a bookmark-like star to important items, put items into folders and use the inbuilt search feature to find old or related articles. I store things like my goals list, ideas for posts and the posts themselves before they’re published. It automatically saves your post as you’re writing it and I’ve never had a situation where I was writing something and I lost it completely because my Internet cut off.

If you’re a fan of GTD (Getting Things Done) or similar systems, you can integrate Google Docs. If you have an “@My Boss” list for things you have to ask your boss about for example, you can create a document called @Boss and bring it up on your smart-phone via Google’s free docs application and update or read it there and then.

Docs also integrates with the book reading system that I recently blogged about.The basic principle is that you take notes on your books, upload these to Google Docs and only keep a few really high quality high books but you can read more here.



Uploading via Email

Sites that you can upload to via email include:

• Facebook Photo/Video
• Flickr Photos
• A WordPress blog where you store notes. You can store notes here whenever you get one via email which is great for those great ideas you get on the move (more on that later).
• Youtube Videos

If you add the email address to your Gmail contacts then you just start typing something like “Facebook upload” and it will come up. You don’t have to memorize the address. To add a contact, click “Contact” on the left in Gmail and above “My Contacts” click the “+” sign next to the little man and enter details.



Automating Reminders

For some things, you want to be reminded when they become available like videos of your latest shows etc – FeedMyInbox (free) is fantastic for this. You simply find the RSS Feed URL of the site you want the updates for and FeedMyInbox will automatically send you a link when the feed is updated. I use this for watching Family Guy (RSS feed link).

If you watch lots of videos on-line, the best quality ones tend to be Megavideo. They have a 72 minutes daily limit but this can be worked around. Make sure you’re using Firefox browser and download the Illimitux Add-on and follow on screen instructions.



Collecting Notes

I used to track my calorie intake on blogspot sites daily so I could see how far I’ve come and make improvements along the way. Now I send my emails to a site where I tag them in the email and they are automatically organised into tagged sections for recall later.

I email what I’ve eaten and the total calorie amount daily to my WordPress site and write [tags calories] at the bottom and if the tag hasn’t been created yet, it is created new on the site. All I have to do to get all the calorie posts is go to the site, click the tag and they’re all listed in chronological order.

This could be used with workouts or simply to collect interesting links online. The only tough thing is remembering the tags to use but if you make them simple you’ll be fine. I picked a minimal theme called Sandbox. It’ s easy to navigate and has the tags displayed under each post. Make sure when you are registering your blog to enable the option to not allow Search Engines access to your website if there is confidential information on there. To create your own WordPress site, click here (free).



A Great Side Benefit

I love looking on Google Calendar over the past few months and being able to see how far I have come in terms of personal development. The times when I couldn’t get up at a regular time and slept all day keep me humble but also confident that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. It’s like a vision board for you except it’s looking back rather than forwards for motivation.



The Final Goal

You’ll get to a point where your email is extremely efficient. You set goals online, you have all of your documents/pictures/videos in “the cloud” (stored online) and your Twitter/Faceboo is minimized to what you want. Your email in-box is your processing centre for everything on-line and is constantly updated with everything you want, want to add and you’re free to change at any time.

I recommend blocking out a few spare hours to upload everything from your calendar to Google Calendar and then throwing away your old one so you are not tempted to go back to it. Upload the documents you currently have on your computer to Google Docs. If it makes you feel comfortable then back them up to your desktop using Google Gears too.