I just discovered a very cool site that promises to do to Adobe Photoshop what all of the web-based Google Desktop applications have done to Office. The website, Splashup, emulates Photoshop quite well, and is a must for any newbie blogger or web-designer who is strapped for cash and unwilling to buy PS.

I definitely recommend the site and hope that the developers continue to build up the features that are available.

One thing every blogger, web-designer, and entrepreneur has in common is that we all have some kind of office that we work out of. For some of us, it is a lounge chair on the beach, for others, a cluttered mess.

What Does Your Office Look Like?

Here’s a look at mine. I call it “Organized Chaos!” As you can tell, there are papers on the floor (they don’t last there long . . . my dogs get to them and shred them eventually), the all-important trail mix, scattered electronics (digital camera & camcorder), notes everywhere, and the centerpiece, my iMac (if you haven’t tried switching to Mac, I would highly consider it!).

Group Photo Contest

Now that I’ve shared my home office with all of you, let’s see what your workspace looks like!

While I don’t have any prizes to give out, I thought it might be fun to see how chaotic or immaculate the offices of the rest of you are.

Here’s what I propose:

1. Take a photo of your workspace (without cleaning it up first – we want to see how it looks in reality).

2. Post it on your blog in a post about your workspace.
3. OPTIONAL, But it would be great if you did: Link to this post somehow (I deserve credit for the idea, don’t I?).
   
4. Contact me via my contact form and point me to your post . . . I’ll add a link to your post from this one.

5. Visit all the other interesting workspaces of your fellow bloggers. Feel free to comment on the photos.
6. Feel free to tag your fellow bloggers if you’d like!

If anyone has some sort of prize they want to give away, we can always transform this into a fun contest. Anyone?

If no one decides to participate in any way, at least you all now know what kind of environment I work in.

So . . . Share Your Office / Worspace With The Rest of Us!

Disclaimer: This was partially inspired by all the group writing contests out there.

Here are The Offices / Workspaces of Our Friends Out There

• David Pitlyuk’s Cool Multi-Screen Office
• Blog-Op’s Workspace Exposed
• Francesco Mapelli’s Bedroom Office
• Alison’s Workspace Revealed
• Melt du Plooy’s Workspace
• Claire’s Workspace Exposed
• The World Around Us’s Workspace
• Minddriven’s Workspace
• Workspace of the author of the Banalita Blog (italian)
• Brandon Hopkins’ Workspace Video Tour
• Andrew Flusche’s Workspace
• Mark Shead’s Sparkling Workspace
• Nirmal’s Cubicle Workspace

Sometimes, a small, irrelevant, event in our lives can completely alter our thoughts on work, family, etc. On Friday, I slammed my finger in the door while leaving my garage; while this left me with a minor bruise, it was quite painful typing. As a result, I took it easy and slacked a bit. Given the opportunity to rest my hands a bit, I decided to actually take a full day off yesterday and did nothing but the most essential work on my websites.

You Can Drastically Increase Your Productivity By Simply Taking a Day Off

It is amazing how a little rest can help out:

• Rest Your Hands – As a blogger and web guy, I type all day! By taking a day off, I’ve given my hands a much-needed rest, one that I should probably give them much more regularly. I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone in having achy, tired hands after working online all day. Given the chance to rest and stretch a bit, the definitely feel better than they did just a few days ago.
• Rest Your Eyes – I used to be a professional stock day trader, but had to stop because I would get terrible headaches after a day of staring intently at my monitors. Over the past several years, I’ve found myself also starting at monitors all day. While they are much better for the eyes, I still feel eye strain after hours of work. By taking the day off, I allowed my eyes to rest a bit, which will certainly allow me to work better today and tomorrow.
• Rest Your Mind – Most importantly, by taking a day off, I’ve given my head a chance to rest. I’ve got to tell you, it feels great! Not since moving from Los Angeles to Denver a few months back have I actually taken a full day off. My mind and body seem to have re-aligned themselves. I’ve got tons of new ideas streaming through my head and I see things that I did not see before. I feel like I could just blog all day (but I won’t), and I’ve got a ton of new ideas for growing my various sites. Resting your mind is essential for productivity, as otherwise, you will not be as sharp or fresh.

I realize that this post is more about me than about people in general, but by reading it, I think people can see the benefits of a little rest. I know that I’ve done myself some real good, and I hope others can follow my lead and give themselves a bit of a break every once in a while.

I haven’t shut my computer down in 5 days now because I’ve got too many tabs open on Firefox. In an effort to give my iMac a break, I’m going to just post a few of the many interesting finds that made their way into the 27 tabs I had open across 5 browser windows. Tabs are great in theory, but this constantly happens to me . . . I am yet another victim of “Multi-Browser Tab Syndrome”. Maybe I should start a 5 step program for others like me.

How do you handle the tab obsession?

Here are a few of the useful things I had open: (ahhhh . . . it feels good to begin closing things down!)

• How to Fix Your Rankings in Yahoo and Google by Neil Patel, discusses an extremly interesting idea I never thought of: contacting the search engines to find out why your site is ranking poorly. It is more complicated then that and you should read the article to get the details.

  This is particularly intresting to me because I’ve managed to do quite well in Google, but languish on Yahoo and MSN. Looks like its time for an email!

• Attracting New Visitors By Focusing On Long Tail Search Terms by Mitchell Harper covers how to pick long-tail keywords to focus your posts on in order to get good rankings.
• In another post by Mitchell, we are reminded that Every Blog Should Have An Accompanying Ebook. I haven’t heeded this piece of advice yet, but it is definitely in the works!
• Web Users Don’t Read Online by Randfish of SEOmoz
• 6 Things High Ranking Websites Have That Yours Doesn’t written by Julia Hyde

• Garmin Gps Updater – Not something most of you will care about, but my GPS has 2 year old data and I’m trying to figure out if there is a way to update the firmware . . . I hate entering an address on it that “doesn’t exist” – LAME. When I get back to this link, maybe I’ll figure it all out.

Is Your Inbox on Fire?

I admit that I no longer find emailing to be a pleasurable activity. It is right up there with getting a cleaning at the dentist for me! Over the years I’ve probably received close to 100,000 emails since starting BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing Community. It is absolutely mindblowing to think that I get that much email, and at times it can be completely overwhealming (that number is only email for BiggerPockets, not for other sites I run or my personal email).

I have developed somewhat of a system to deal with all those message, and I’ll share it because I think others may find it to be helpful.

How to Organize Your Overflowing Inbox

• Immediately delete any and all SPAM messages. (pretty obvious, but worth a mention)
• Prioritize messages on a scale of importance.
  Most important messages (customer service emails, potential and current advertisers, partners, “important” people) need to be attended to immediately. I use Entourage (Mac version of Outlook) and flag every high priority post. This guarantees that I will not forget about the important ones. If I get lost in other, even more important, email messages or some other work, when reviewing the days messages periodically, I go immediately back to the flagged ones.

• Create folders for different categories of email.
  My Outlook/Entourage has a dozen folders and many more sub-folders. For example, I have a folder called “Advertising.” Within that folder, I have created sub-folders for each major advertiser I work with. Be sure that your folders are descriptive enough and specific enough that you’ll quickly and easily be able to locate messages down the line.

• Once you respond to a message, file it.
  After responding to the highest priority messages, move them into an appropriate folder.

• Return to the lower priority messages, and answer as many as you can.
  Once you’ve answered the high priority messages, you’ll be left with others that aren’t as important. If you get as much email as I do, you simply won’t be able to get to them all. Respond to any and all messages that will have a reflection on your business. Be sure to knock those out of the way, as your image can be tarnished if you aren’t responsive in many situations.

• Deal with the remaining messages at your will.
  I currently have 7763 messages in my inbox. While most of them are leftovers, at some point I must get to them. Take an hour or so each week to go through the leftovers. This may or may not get you through them all, but it will at least help you dig through the rubble. When looking at the remaining messages from the past days / weeks /months, re-prioritize again. Take care of the most important ones first; I often find that I can actually just remove many of the other messages to my trash.

If that all fails, you can always do like the mob does and “burn it down” (erase everything so you’re not stuck looking at the 7763 messages you still have to answer)! Do some spring cleaning and just get rid of the old messages sitting around. If the messages were important enough, you would have answered them right away anyway, so you do what you have to . . .

The simple fact is that sometimes, you can’t get to everyone. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. If I were to respond to every message, I would never get anything accomplished . . . sometimes that happens anyway, but you can’t let your inbox get in the way of your productivity!

BTW – Here are 2 posts worth a look regarding productivity:
- Ten Productivity Tips – geared to web designers, but applicable to everyone
- A 2006 productivity hot-or-not guide – one bloggers look back at the tools that helped and didn’t help his productivity during 2006