I was looking at an article on Problogger about an interesting organization method created by a woman named Julie Bonner, a blogger on the website Declutter It. Julie created an organizer she called the Blog Binder, which she uses to organize her blogs:

Ever since I started blogging, my mind is always going a mile a minute. I find myself constantly thinking about new article ideas, new monetization models or tips I had heard that I knew would add value to my blog.

Before I knew, it my desk was cluttered sky high with scribble notes and articles I had printed out. I also could not sleep! It was driving me crazy. My mind was so full of ideas that when I would lay down at night, the wheels would keep turning, I felt like I was on a hamster wheel.

Julie lays down the guidelines for the creation of the binder, including putting one’s work/blog schedule, as well as sorting all of the blogs you might be doing to where each has notepaper, a to-do list, etc. The organization here is great, but for all of you GTD fans, this simply won’t be enough.

So with that, I’d like to take Julie’s idea of the Blog Binder, and apply the precedents of GTD to present in four easy steps to an upgrade…

The Blog Binder: GTD Edition

1. Set up a communal inbox

Julie’s setup requires that all notes be placed directly into their respective blog folders. This really isn’t a good idea for a GTD’er, but I need to explain why later. Instead, all notes about each different blog should go into one main inbox. This actually is particularly good if you suffer from one of Julie’s examples, where you gain inspiration that keeps you from sleeping. Rather then shuffling through the different blogs, putting the ideas into one main segment will help you process them at a time when you are more coherent.

2. Process the notes

Your inbox will get big. Therefore, you’ll need to process it each day. Now, here’s the good thing. You might notice a To-Do item that you might need to apply to another blog, or maybe you can do two variations of one article! This makes the communal inbox important, because then you can modify it so every blog gets the best potential

3. Modify the To-Do lists

In Julie’s version, each blog has two To-Do lists: A Must-Do list, and a Running To-Do list. The Must-Do list can be transferred to the concept of the Actions/Next actions list, and the Running list is easily a Someday/Waiting list. Anything that needs to be done can be assigned contexts according to need (i.e, @template, @entry, @adsense, etc.) so that you know what needs to be done based on what the action requires.

4. References

Julie writes about printing good articles and Must-visit blogs. I suggest treating these like your GTD References: Place the articles in a list according to context, and the blogs you visit in a page on its own, indexed with the appropriate contexts.

This was Julie’s idea originally. I’m just giving her binder a GTD upgrade.

Technorati tags: Productivity, Blogging tips, GTD, Getting things Done, Blog Binder, Organization Tips, Blogging