I am a big believer in customizing your folder icons to help improve searching. After changing some of my folders to differentiate between reference material, programs and action items, I have noticed a dramatic increase in speed while browsing folders.
One of the easiest ways of implementing icon customization is to color-code your folders. Come up with some sort of key and then assign the colors to specific folder types. Personally, I color-code my client’s folders to differentiate between leads, research, working and finalized. This is a very simple means to get an instant snapshot of your pipeline.
I’d recommend using Folder Maker. They have a few different versions - but the free editions features all of the basic folder customizations that you need.
Managing my bookmarks is something that I have had a lot of difficulty with. It is much too easy to bookmark 20+ blogs/articles/sites within one day and then completely lose track of them later on. I have experimented with a few different systems - traditional bookmark folders, del.icio.us and Netvouz. I find that each have their up-side (I think tagging is a great feature offered by del.icio.us) but in the end, they required too much input to be efficient.
Over the past week, I have been experimenting with my own system. Basically, I have moved all of my bookmarks to the Firefox toolbar from the original bookmarks menu. Although this seems like it’s no major change, I have found that the constant access and visualization of these folders allows me to sort my bookmarks instantly. Let me explain a bit more . . .
I have divided my links into three main categories:
- Favorite Links
- GTD Moded Action Folders
- Topics of Interest
My favorite links include classics such as pandora, wikipedia and digg. The GTD moded folders are pretty slimmed down (Items to read today, read later, media later, ’somedays’ and venture actions). It might not be completely GTD kosher - but organization is all about personalization. Finally, I have found that I can narrow my topics of interest into a few broad categories and then sub-category folders from there.
Integration into the system requires a bit of sorting at first - however, I have found this strategy to be much more efficient than other systems out there.
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