How Do You Stay Organized on the Mac?

Sean recently sent me an email with his top eight list of ways to keep yourself organized on a Mac. This is an excellent list, so I wanted to pass it along to you all.

1. Stickies. I love my Stickies. I always have a spare on my Dashboard in case I need to take down a phone number, or just need to take some quick notes. If you need more control over your Stickies, you can use Apple’s standalone Stickies app. This app lets you resize the Stickies, format the text and more, just in case you need to mess around with your Stickies with more precision than the basic widget offers.
2. Notes + To-Do’s. Two of the big new features in the latest revision of Mail were Notes and To-Do’s. I use the Notes quite frequently, because anything that looks like a legal pad is cool to me. I even use the Notes for basic word processing. The To-Do’s function is also pretty cool. Basically, you can select any text in a message, and make it into a To-Do. If you have an iPod classic or nano, you can also sync your To-Do’s to your iPod and view them on the go.
3. Spotlight. Ever since getting my Mac (I was lucky enough to buy my Mac on Opening Night at the Sydney Apple Store) I haven’t found a need for folders and sub-folders. I just dump all my pictures in Pictures, all my movies in Movies and all my documents in, surprise surprise, Documents. The way I get around my files then is to use Spotlight. Hit Command+Space, or click the Spotlight icon in the top-right of the menu bar. I use Spotlight many times a day, and is much more efficient then trying to remember which sub-folder I saved something in.
4. Automator. You know that robot in your apps folder that kinda looks like EVE from Wall-E? Yeah. That’s Automator, the app that lets you create workflows, such as “quit all my apps and play my favourite song in iTunes”. You can make all sorts of workflows, and they can do multiple things at once, like “retrieve my mail, open Twitterific and empty the trash”. Basically, if you find yourself doing the same things over and over, I suggest an Automator workflow, or if you know how, an AppleScript.
5. Web Clips. Web Clips is another handy kind of widget. My organizational-related tip for Web Clips is to clip out something you tend to check a lot, be it train timetables, news or Rotten Tomatoes reviews. This saves a lot of time, as you don’t have to return to your six most viewed sites to check stuff. Just click the Dashboard icon or click your scroll ball/wheel and see all your new info instantly.
6. Quick Look. Hands-down the biggest time saver on Mac OS X. You know when you spend about thirty seconds watching the credits for Photoshop scroll by, click a few times to prevent boredom, glance at the image, then quit Photoshop? I pray that’s the last time you ever do that. As I’m sure you’re aware, there’s new functionality in the Leopard Finder to open files without waiting for the app to load them. It’s called Quick Look, and I’m sure you’re addicted to it if you have it. One not-so-hyped feature of Quick Look is the ability to select multiple files, click the Quick Look button in the toolbar (or tap the space bar) and view multiple files in the same Quick Look window, and rapidly switch between them.
7. Color Coordination. If you’re the type of user that thinks through color, then this is a great feature. Right-click on any file(s) or folder and select Get Info in the context menu. Under the General pane, you can see seven colored squares sitting next to the word Label. If you select one of these, you can color code your documents. For example, green can be for your personal life, red can be for school, orange can be for your video production… and so on. This is such a handy way to organize your files, because we know that the human eye is attracted to color.
8. Bluetooth. If you use a Bluetooth-enabled phone, you can use Mac OS X’s built-in Bluetooth File Exchange and iSync to keep your data current. I tried this the other day with my Dad’s Nokia phone. I set it up really fast, and in no time was sharing photos and movies back and forth between the devices. This is especially useful if you want to get a file off your phone to send in an email, or a contact that you added on the go. Of course, this doesn’t quite work with the iPhone as such, but if you have a .Mac/MobileMe account, you can do that kind of stuff anyway.

Thanks, Sean, for sending me your list. If any of the rest of you have other apps, gadgets or tips on keeping your data organized, please pass them along to me.