I have found myself really thinking about my productivity recently. I feel I need to get more done. A lot more. You may have picked up on this from my posts about Google Mail and Calendars which I have started using. They are really useful to me. Google Mail has cut down the amount of time I need to spend on email as well as letting me access all my inboxes from one central webmail account. Calendars has allowed me to plan and keep myself organised in a way I had never managed before.

For those looking to take their organisation to the next level I suggest checking out Remember the Milk. This was recommended to me by Maki of DoshDosh. It is essentially a to do list which integrates with a whole host of other technologies such as Google Calendar, Mail, Twitter, various instant messaging services and even your phone!

Why are we obsessed with productivity?

I guess we all feel it is the answer to our woes. It has become almost cool to do everything last minute. At college when there were deadlines, how many of the cool kids did any work before the last minute? I know I never did anything until the pressure was on big time. Unless you look totally stressed at work, you are not working hard enough. Some of us thrive when under pressure, others break down.

Clearly it is a topic a great number of people are interested in. Look how popular blogs such as LifeHacker and Zen Habits which deal with this sort of topic area are. Thousands of people read them every day looking for tips and tricks on organising their lives, prioritising, saving time, and reducing stress. Self help books fly off the shelves. The evidence is plentiful.

Tired and stressed should not be the norm

It has become part of popular culture to be tired and stressed. Whenever you ask anyone how they are you will almost always get the answer that they are tired, stressed, busy, overworked and underpaid. I myself have been guilty of this but I do not want to be any longer. I have been following Gary Vaynerchuk on Twitter, and watched a few of his shows. I like wine, but I am not a total wino by any stretch of the imagination. Wine Library TV for me is not about the wine. I just love this guys energy and enthusiasm. Every day on Twitter he is happy, energetic and offers nothing but encouragement and good vibes to everyone, then in his videos he is just the same.

It is a bit late for new years resolutions, but I challenge everyone to be more enthusiastic, offer more encouragement, be more positive and break the mould. Lets make getting up early and having a productive day cool. It will not be easy to start, but remember the harder you work the luckier you get. If you need more encouragement, go find some videos of Gary. His enthusiasm is contagious.

I mentioned Google Mail not so long ago and explained how it has really helped me out. Checking all my email accounts from one central place wherever I am is immensely useful. On the same theme, I just have to mention Google Calendars. This is a very simple, easy to use calendar program and I think it can really help anyone.

It is full integrated with your Google account, so you do not need another password or anything like that. By default it sets up a personal calendar for you. Planning your own day and making notes of appointment times, travel plans etc is great. This is nothing new to calendars. The true potential for this lies in the ability to create a number of different calendars and share them.

Keep organised

You can create a different calendar for each project you are involved in. This calendar can be shared with everyone involved in the project. You can even give other people the access level to invite more people, edit events etc. Already this is useful. By having a system like this, any conflicting schedules should stand out instantly!

Keeping different calendars for different projects prevents you from getting too involved with any one project. It allows you to step back and see how much time something is taking up. The world revolves around compromise, and this tool should help you decide where you can compromise.

Shared Calendars

On a more personal note, having your own schedule planned in, and shared amongst your friends makes arranging a get together so much easier. You can instantly see who is in town. Another great use could be to create a calendar with all your family’s birthdays entered. Share this amongst your family and I am sure they would appreciate it. Do the same again for your friends.

Public Calendars

There are loads of different public calendars you might want to add. I am terrible for knowing when public holidays, mother’s day and that type of thing are. So I added a UK public holidays calendar. Now I should be able to keep on top of things. Other popular calendars involve film releases, TV show releases, musicians and bands gig schedules, politicians public appearances (This has to be hot right now following the presidential candidates) and many many more.

There you have it - another great productivity tool that I highly recommend. Give it a shot and let me know what you think. For those who use outlook, I believe it synchronises really well with outlook, but I have not experimented. Let me know if your a Google Calendars fan, and any tips or tricks you have. If you prefer something else, let me know what!

As many of you know, I have been on the road a bit recently. Things have changed the way I have to work. This is a good thing as everyone needs change in their life. It is what keeps things exciting. One of the big obstacles I faced being on the move vs working at home is that I can not lug my desktop around and having everything with me. In fact even a laptop is not always a possibility. Webmail is what I needed. Now I could set up webmail, but I manage many different websites, so need a centralised system to manage all my accounts from.

Key properties I need from a centralised system

1. Ability to receive email from multiple websites
2. Ability to send email from multiple domains
3. Simple filing and searching
4. Ability to synchronise with my desktop email client
5. Simple to set up and manage
6. Affordable (ideally free)

What was the solution?

Well the business solutions typically revolve around Microsoft exchange server and similar systems. These are neither simple nor affordable in my eyes. The solution I went for was Google Mail. It is simple, fast and oh so easy to set up and use. I already use many of the Google tools and Mail has now become a key part of my day to day life, even when at home. It does everything mentioned above!

How I set it up

The way I set it up was to set all my email accounts as forward only accounts on my hosting control panel, and send them to my Google Mail address. From here I would then sort them. You can add loads of outgoing accounts and it is very easy to set up. My only gripe was having to forward emails to the Google account as opposed to being able to just enter the details. You can only enter details for five email accounts in Google Mail.

I have to say - the spam filter at Google Mail is unrivaled in my eyes. I have gone from deleting around one hundred emails a day manually from my inbox that my spam filtered missed to one every other day!

Extra benefits

I have found that Google Calenders and Documents all work well together with the email client. I am actually writing using Google Documents right now. It is just simple and lightweight. It also has the power to post directly to your blog although I have not experimented with that just yet!

Your experiences

I know many people work on the move today. The only drawbacks to this system are that you have to be online to do anything. Personally, almost all my business is online anyway, so that is a given anyway. Do you use Google Mail as described above? Any tips and tricks? Do you use anything else?