Getting Organized with Google's Tools

Introduction

It's a sad fact of our personal and professional lives that we have so much to juggle. Jobs. Family. Friends. All those little (and not-so-little) things that need to be done around the home. More tasks and appointments than we can handle. It all becomes overwhelming. At least, it can if we let it.

This quote perfectly sums up my feelings about being organized:

Disorganization causes stress. Stress makes you flounder. Floundering makes you even more stressed. That makes you flounder more. It's a perfect definition of a downward spiral.

– Douglas C. Merrill, Getting Organized in the Google Era

To prevent that downward spiral, you need a simple and easy-to-maintain way to stay organized. Which is why I wrote this little book. I want to show you some tools and, more importantly, techniques to help you simply and easily get and stay organized.

Going Google

My journey to writing this book took quite a bit of time. I wasn't always the most organized person in the world. But, to paraphrase one of my favourite lines from the movie Pulp Fiction: I tried real hard to be a shepherd. Over the years, I've tried many different ways to get organized: a Day Timer (remember those?), a personal digital assistant or three, various pieces of desktop software, and numerous web-based applications.

None of them really worked for me. That's not quite true. Some of them did work, but not as well as I wanted them to or in the way that I needed them to. The bits and pieces were there, but I couldn't find (or create) a cohesive package or stitch the various pieces I had at my fingertips together into that package. 

But using Google's tools does work for me, for a variety of reasons. I'll be discussing those reasons in a few moments. 

Keep in mind that I’m not just going to be talking about the various tools that Google offers. They’re useful, but they’re only a part of the picture. I also want to share with you some techniques and some ideas about how to get and stay organized. Google’s tools are merely the peg on which to hang those techniques and ideas.

And if you decide that these tools aren’t right for you (and they might not be), you can carry the techniques and ideas that I’m going to share over to any application or tool that you choose to use.

Disclosure

Before continuing, I want to make it clear that I don't work for Google. I've never worked for Google, and probably never will. I have no business relationship with them. In fact, my only relationship with the company is that