Google is my top time-saving tool. As I’m drinking my morning coffee I check my iGoogle homepage with my emails, reader, alerts, tasks, stock portfolio, everything! I find that it’s a great way to spend the first 30 minutes or so of my day.

I get to smell them cooking it..

Umm, thanks for pointing out my 508 unread items!! Guess I should have cleaned that up a bit before using that pic! I like the tips on how to use Outlook. I have started several times to use the flagging and to do lists, but haven’t worked out my own system yet. By the way, I am a multi email person too. I have 1 for here, 2 for work, and one personal all in Outlook. So, yeah..it does take some skimming and scanning, but always prioritize.

That would be the main point I suppose. Prioritization. With social media so diverse it can get overwhelming, so like you, I choose 3 or 4 sites that I make my base and work those. Thanks for all your tips and tricks!!

Thanks for the mention, sweet! :~) Sorry I am so late in reading this. I have been working on a big project and not much time for anything else. I see in your picture above that you had 508 unread items, I haven’t even opened mine this morning, oh boy.. These are the days that some people get skimmed, or skipped…

Google Alerts is a great tool, I have had that setup for quite a while and it is great. I have a few other businesses and this tool helps me keep up with the competition.

Finally my time saving daily, well sort of; Don’t laugh, but I use Microsoft Outlook. I have 6 different emails for my companies not including my personal ones (gmail and thejimgaudet). Outlook makes it easy to check and organize them all, but my main reason for using it is to support my clients.

One of the biggest problems with so many emails is that my in-boxes can become cluttered with my “to do list”.

So, in Outlook you have the Follow Up feature, which I use heavily and it helps me to organize my work (network admin stuff, web design stuff, crap to check out, etc.) Basically I just click the follow up, schedule my time to do this (in a block of time I have for each work mode I am in) and then put that email into a saved folder.

This serves two purposes. First, I am able to look at each email at a time and make a decision on it, now or later. And second, I will not forget to do something because it is buried in with a bunch of other emails.

Damn, long comment sorry. I am still on my first cup of coffee this morning.