I quite often get asked how I manage to do so much and run the Girl Geek Dinners.  Well I thought maybe it was about time to de-mistify the way I do things.  It’s no real secret that I like my mobile phones and that I have a full time day job whilst running the Girl Geek Dinners.  And those that know me reasonably well also know that I’m into my sports and geeky hobbies.

So how do I do it?  Well first things first I time box things to some extent.  So from 8:30 – 4:45 mon – fri is time boxed to work!  Nothing else can, or will get in the way of that.  During that time, work is my priority.  Nothing else.  As such everything else must fit around this. So what about the rest of it.  Well since I finish work at a reasonable hour and don’t live far from the office I don’t take much time out for travelling and as such that is minimized.  When I do travel I tend to at least have my mobile phone and a notebook with me.  The notebook is for jotting down ideas and planning things.  The mobile is for syncing plans with my diary.  Outlook is one of my key organization tools.  I use it more and more outside of work.  It plans when I am at events, when I need to have done important things by… it reminds me when I have things due and when they are over due.

I am an advocate of OneNote and Evernote… I transfer notes between the two quite regularly.  I have a tablet pc which I use for taking notes when I don’t want to type or when I’m formulating ideas.  I don’t write ideas a draw them as mind maps… seeing the links and intricacies between things.  I then take those and put them into a plan which is pretty much a list of dates.  I then write my todo list for that plan with deadlines against the items on the list to then meet the main goals of the plan.

When I’m trying to have quick conversations I avoid e-mail.  Instead I’ll go for picking up the phone, skype, gtalk, msn or Twitter.  And from time to time when forced to I’ll use Facebook.  I’m generally not a Facebook fan, just because I don’t get out as much information as I put in… and by that I mean if I put in stuff on Girl Geek Dinners I don’t tend to know when someone has updated something on there or asked a question.  So I prefer blogs for that really.

On the note of blogging… I go through phases with blogging.  I write things in sets usually.  Not generally around the same subject either.  Just 3 or 4 posts on random stuff that interests me.  I then decide which blog it is most suited to and post date it for a day or a week and off it goes.  So although I write not so regularly, the posts spread quite evenly between sites.

I get a huge number of e-mails in and this is what takes up most of my time out of all the different things I do.  E-mails are the one thing I really despise at the moment.  I filter them as they come in.  I mark them up based on content for quick reponses where possible and get responses out as soon as I can.  At times I send out blanket responses stating that it may take a few days to respond to your e-mail.  And generally that makes things managable. I’d love to be able to get rid of e-mail completely however it’s a useful conduit with the ability to attach anything and send to anyone so I don’t think it’s going to disappear altogether any time soon. (unfortunately)

As for finding time for hobbies, I tend to try and have the weekends to do sport and such.  And spend every other evening on doing something fun (for at least part of it!)  And I do count blogging and designing stuff as fun!  The things written about here today are only a small part of a much larger picture of how I manage information.  I’m sure it would take a lot more than one post to cover it all!

I’m sure many of you have other ways of approaching information overload and hectic social lives, so feel free to share any tips and hints, especially any that you have with outlook…

Bonus Tip: Xobni – very good for finding contacts and e-mail trails when you have a busy inbox!