I have been busy lately setting up another new blog (more on that later). The whole situation has had me running circles. Today I am asking you for some nuts and bolts advice on maintaining an organized approach to email overload. Not the common problem of too many emails, no, my problem is that I have too many accounts to check, as well as having to go to a different place to check them all. Here is the situation: I am basically a one person operation. One person that now finds himself running 4 separate domains. I am looking for a one stop solution that has everything I need to stay on top of all the emails and resultant tasks and to-do items, the ability to have one calendar and I am trying to avoid what is probably the obvious answer, Outlook. I would also somehow like this potential system to integrate seamlessly with my personal Gmail account, as it is the nerve center of everything I do that is not work related. In fact, the personal/work line gets seriously blurred because I use Gmail for so much.
I don’t need collaboration tools, as I mentioned, I am just one person…but I would like one place to receive all the emails, schedule appointments and tasks, etc. My love for Gmail had me thinking Google Apps For Your Domain would be a good solution, and maybe it is, but having 4 accounts there would be very unwieldy. The integration with Google Docs, and the ability to access it from anywhere is very appealing though.
I think my reluctance to embrace Outlook has a lot to do with not being able to access it from any web enabled computer anywhere in the world, but there are other reasons as well, it’s bloated size being one of them. When I think about that reasoning, however, I realize that I never actually access email from ‘anywhere’. I am at work or at home, and the few times I am not in one of those places, well, that is why I got a Blackberry. So the web based argument, probably holds not much water. If Outlook is the best solution, it’s the best…but I can not help but think there are other people out there in a similar situation that have discovered a better way. I would love to hear how you handle this and what tools you use.
Remember, I don’t really want to cobble together several tools, I ideally want a one stop solution to my issues.
Let me know your solution in the comments. And if you are not in this situation, please forward this to someone who is.
