I am a huge fan of Google. They have so many great, free tools that are extremely useful to me. I use their Gmail for several different clients as well as myself. I love their Google ‘Docs’ which allows me to collaborate on documents for free. I have Google Alerts set up for my clients and myself along with some other keywords I’m interested in. Do you have Google Alerts set up?

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, when you log in to your Google account (with your Gmail address) click on the ‘My Account’ link at the top of the screen. You’ll see the little icon of a bell on the list of available tools - that’s Google Alerts. You type in keywords that you want to be notified of coming on the internet. Example. If you’re a real estate agent, you could type in the street name of one of your listings and you’ll receive an email notification the next time that street name appears online.

You can set up Google Alerts for anything. I have alerts set up for my name, my business name, my clients’ names, virtual assistance, etc.

I read my blog feeds in Google Reader, and I check my web stats with Google Analytics…and the list goes on.

But Google just outdid themselves….er…outdid itself? I don’t know…but in any case…they have just done something wonderful.

I am now able to sync my Microsoft Outlook calendar with my Google Calendar. I kid you not. I can do two way syncs between Outlook’s calendar and Google’s. That is the most exciting thing to happen to me this week.

It was super easy to set up, all you do is click the bold red link above your Google Calendar that says ‘New! Outlook sync” or something obvious like that. After that, I had to download something very, very small, then type in my Gmail account info. I chose two way sync instead of one way, then clicked on the neat little calendar icon in my little Systray thingy. When I click that, my calendars magically sync.

While this might not seem like a big deal to some people, consider the scenario in which you are managing someone’s calendar in Google, without an easy sync feature. Or someone is managing your calendar and counting on you to keep them in sync.

In my case, I have someone checking my email for me. She will sometimes take things from my email (Gmail) and enter them in my Google calendar for me. Outlook really distracts me, so I try to keep it closed during the day. My VA forwards my urgent and important messages to a secret Gmail account so I don’t have to open Outlook and end up losing my focus! Now, I won’t have to open up my Outlook account at all during the day if I don’t want to.

Thanks, Google. Great feature!

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One of my fabulous VAs, Victoria, is just the best at finding cool software solutions. Yesterday she sent me a link to a program that has resulted in the freeing up of a ton of my time and it’s keeping me on the ball like nothing else!

It’s called Toodledo, and you know it has to be good because of the name.

What it is, is a program to manage your daily/monthly/weekly/yearly/wheneverly ‘to-do’ items and goals- hence the name ‘Toodledo‘.

So, you might be thinking, “ya, big deal, another to-do manager”, but listen up! This one is different. It has a super cool Firefox add on so right now, as I type, my list is staring me in the face on the left hand side of my screen.

I’ve asked Victoria to take over my email management because it eats up way too much of my time, and because I upgraded from a free ‘Toodledo‘ account to a Pro Version (for the hefty sum of $14.95/year) I can add Victoria as a collaborator. She can add tasks for me as things come up in my email, so I can deal with them.

I’m one of those people that’s very motivated by crossing off items on a list, so this is just perfect for me. Yesterday I accomplished an amount of work I didn’t think was even possible, because it was all listed right there for me all day. Tasks are organized by folders, which I have set up for each of my clients, Mann Made Time, and my personal items. Since I don’t necessarily need Victoria to know when I’m going for a physical or what grocery items I am out of, I set up my own personal folder as private so she won’t know what’s in there. Not that it matters, because she has enough information about me, including all of my passwords, to completely hack into my life anyway.

Anyway, It also has a very cool feature with the Pro Version that’s perfect for those that procrastinate or are easily distracted. You can tell Toodledo that you have some free time, let’s say one hour, and it will search your hottest or highest priority items and tell you what you could do for that hour. You can even choose one of your folders (or clients) for it to pick tasks from.

It really is a great tool, and you can get an account for free. Check it out!

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I was over at VANA yesterday and came across a post that’s worth its weight in gold! Well, that doesn’t really make sense does it? How do you weigh a message board post? Anyway…it’s great information. If you are a member of VANetworking.com, you probably already read it, and if you’re a virtual assistant and not a member, you should scoot over there and register!

One must give credit where credit is due, and this thread was posted by the fabulous VA, Karri Flatla.

Check out this article at PC World.com, and then feast your eyes on PC World’s 15 Best Downloads of the Year.

I’ve already replaced my virus scanner with Avast! (featured on the list) and I also downloaded the coolest program ever that I never knew existed - CCleaner. Seems popular. The creator of the program claims it’s been downloaded 100 million times. (100 million and one now thanks to moi :)) In my very nontechnical assessment, from what I can tell, it searches your system for…well for lack of a better word…crap that is slowing down your computer. I let it run and it cleared out something like 385MB of stuff that had been gumming up my poor ‘puter.

Get yourself a cup of coffee and check out the list. There are some great free goodies there.

Enjoy and thanks Karri!

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This is not another post for me to complain about my lack of sleep. No…I got to bed at 1am and got to sleep until almost 4am and was only woken up twice in that time. So this isn’t a post about lack of sleep. Not this time.

At 4:15 I put on the coffee pot, checked my email and started on a client project. I crossed a lot of items off my to-do list yesterday because I worked into the night on some of my own outstanding projects, so today I have a clear focus and I won’t have to work this weekend.

As I buckled down this morning and got into this project I realized it’s not exactly a fun project. It’s the type of thing I like to do because it breaks up the monotony of sitting at the computer - this is old school hands on stuff. But…I hadn’t been into it 15 minutes before I got distracted by my blog. I turned off my time tracking software and decided to post in case I don’t get back on here today.

I must admit I am guilty of procrastinating the odd time. Because I do tend to put things off (the odd time), I have found a couple of ways to help me stick to the plan and not veer off too much.

• Make a list - a REAL list on paper written down with a pen. My to-do list is an entity onto itself. It never really gets completed, but it gives me a starting point every day. I do start a new list every day, adding the items I didn’t finish yesterday. I itemize the list by client and add notes about what needs to be done for them. I prioritize items, highlight some things and I add Mann Made Time to that list just as if I were my own client. This helps me see what I really need to be doing and which items can be delegated or put off until tomorrow. My friend, fellow VA Sally Kuhlman wrote a good post on her blog about this very thing. Read it here.
• Change email settings. If I let my email send/receive every few minutes I would never get anything done. I change my settings to check every hour. It really does help.
• Make a schedule. Accounting for your time will make it harder to stray from the task at hand. If you have a schedule to stick to, start sticking to it. Of course there will be interruptions, life happens. However, a schedule will at least give you a plan for the day and you should add all extra-curricular activities to that schedule! Networking, checking online forums, watching TV, etc.

On that note - I better turn my time tracking back on and get back to that project!

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