4 Ways to Get Organized [Notes from the Virtual Office]

In the years I’ve had working as a consultant, I’ve gone through periods of greater and lesser organization. I can tell you, that when things are organized well (on many levels) everything goes smoother. There’s a lot of ways to look at organization, from something as simple as your desktop all the way up to the corporate level. So let me give some examples.

· The Computer Desktop

Here’s the thing, you need space on your desktop to work efficiently without clutter and there’s three ways to get it. The first way is to get a bigger monitor. If you’re working on anything less than a single 19″ or 20″ monitor you’re missing out. Go get a new monitor - they’re cheap now. A 17″ still has you moving windows around while you’re in the middle of working or working in such cramped space that you can’t see everything you need to see. Not good.

Alternately (or even better, in addition to that) get a second monitor (or a third!). Two 17″ are better than single 20″ in my book. It gives you more surface area and allows you to keep things segregated more easily. On one window you can keep your browser and the other can have your terminal windows (or photoshop or dreamweaver, or you know, use your imagination). More surface area is better, I’ve got a 23″ and a 24″ screen - I consolidated from a 23″ and 2x 17″ and haven’t been missing them.

Lastly you can use virtual desktops. Easily the best implementation of this is on Linux. It’s the only thing that I was missing when I switched to OSX - all the 3rd party virtual desktop apps suhhhuuucked. But now with Leopard you’ve got Spaces which is a fine and dandy implementation - it lacks some of the really useful features you find in linux (i.e. making a single window sticky across virtual desktops, being able to send a single window directly to a particular desktop and renaming desktops) but it has the key features and works very smoothly. I already can not remember how I got anything down without it. Since I work simultaneously on several clients I can dedicate one virtual desktop to each client - so that it has it’s browser open, a terminal window for coding, a window for the database and a window for watching the logs. All open, all at the same time. No hunting around masses of windows for the right one.

I recommend all three of these options, the first two cost a li’l money, but you’ll make it up in your increased efficiency. Trust me.

· Project Management

If you’re llke most freelancers out there you’ve got a dozen balls in the air at once. You need a system to make sure you don’t drop any of those balls. I am not great at this, but I’m getting better. The key to this is having a system - it can be anything that works for you, pen and paper is fine, but I recommend one of several online tools for this. At this instant I use Basecamp. It helps keep your tasks in order, keeps files all available and is generally good. This is a great solution if you want to give your clients access to the system to add notes and todos and files, it’s very professional and easy to use. But it has two strong contenders as well - I’m watching Wrike, I don’t think it’s ready to be a client facing app, it’s a mite confusing, but it is a better organizational tool than Basecamp in my opinion, and I suspect it will soon be a full on contender. If you are using it as a private application, it’s definitely worth checking out immediately. And GoPlan is a strong contender as well it has a slightly different set of functionality that makes it a broader application than either of the previous two and that might be very appealing to some. And it has a strong technical base, it’s definitely up and coming.

Basically, it doesn’t matter what you choose as long as you choose something and stick to it. Sticking to it is the hardest part and will require a lot of playing around to see how things play out, but it is well worth doing. It’ll take some time initially but can save a lot of heartache down the road.

· Billing

Here’s another one that often falls through the cracks - find a system to make sure your invoicing is on target. There’s tons of them around now I’ve been using some desktop software, Studiometry, for years now. It does everything I need it to, tracks my projects, makes creating and saving pdf invoices super easy, allowed me to completely customize the look of my invoice and shows me how much I’ve invoiced, how much I’ve recieved over whatever period of time I need. It does a lot more than just that, but that’s the fundamentals of what I need. If I haven’t been paid an invoice, I know and can bug. Before this, I believe there’d definitely been a few that slipped through the cracks when clients took too long to pay. There’s also tons of online apps to help you do this, Blinksale, for example, is one that I keep hearing mentioned in a positive light. I checked it out initially, but didn’t see anything that would compel me to leave my existing system, so I stuck with it. If you’re starting from scratch, though, it is definitely worth checking out - what with it’s onlininess and ability to integrate with Basecamp.

But whatever you do, just make sure you have a nice organized system. I think a comprehensive solution is good and worth spending some money on, but even if it’s an excel spreadsheet or a binder with graph paper, make sure you’ve got some system to record this data.

· Business

Keep your business in order, whether you’ve incorporated or are a sole proprietorship try and make sure you’re taking advantage of all the things you can. Look for business accounts and discounts from various places. ZipCar has better rates and a cheaper yearly fee for businesses, there’s all sorts of loyalty programs for businesses, these savings tend to be minor but can really add up. Make sure you have a business credit card that you do all your purchasing on, this can really help out with book keeping at the end of the year - as much as possible buy on the credit card so you always have an easy record of what, when and how much. Keep a separate savings and checking account for your business for the same reason. Don’t mix your business and personal accounts together, it’ll only bring you pain in the end.

With this proliferation of accounts use something like Yodlee to keep track of all your accounts. It’ll show you your bills, how much are in your various accounts all automatically all in one view. It couldn’t be easier or better.

So those are just some ideas on how to organize things to keep things running smoothly. What’re your tips? What do you do to keep everything in order?

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