Quick update before we jump in: my book is finally out on Kindle – woohoo! Order your copy here. Not sure if it’s for you? Check out what 77 fabulous reviewers had to say.

I’m very excited to have my first post up on Lifehack.org today — a site that has inspired my own thoughts on organization, lifehacking and providing useful content for readers for as long as I’ve been blogging.

My Lifehack post is about how doing a cleanse (and subsequently “going Paleo”) changed my life — and business — for the better. It’s not necessarily the fastest, magic bullet-iest (new word!), or sexiest lifehack (or maybe it is?); it requires dedication and tough choices, but I’ve found the rewards to be exponentially positive. I’ve included an excerpt at the end of this post.

Here are some related posts (a virtual welcome mat, if you will) for all the new readers this week — hopefully this serves as a nice recap for the veteran readers as well!

On Health & Fitness: 

• I owe all of my success with Paleo to this soup recipe, which I make every Monday
• Check-out my detailed health journal from the first 21-days of my cleanse / health experiment
• Related books I’ve recently read and enjoyed (more reviews on GoodReads):
  • The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolfe
  • The Four-Hour Body by Tim Ferris
  • Wheat Belly by William Davis
  • Clean by Alejandro Junger
  • Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink

On Side Hustles, Leaving Google & Solopreneruship:

• 6 Ways to Manage a Side Hustle Without Going Insane
• Forbes.com: 5 Tips for Managing Your Energy, Not Your Time
• I’m a Free Agent: From Six Figures to Suitcase
• Free Agent Part Two: On Big Decisions & Very Real Fears
• LocationRebel.com – Someday.
• 20 Lessons from 2 Months of Solopreneurship (Part One)
• 20 Lessons from 2 Months of Solopreneurship (Part Two)
• Escape from Cubicle Nation: Side Hustle & Flow Feature

On Lifehacking & General Organization: 

• How I stay organized, Part 1 - 15 tips to get your online and offline life in order
• How I stay organized, Part 2 - 27 new tips & tricks (primarily focused on Internet-based tips and apps)
• Make Sh*t Happen Tools – 50+ resources to help people with big, hairy, scary goals (Sound interesting? Sign up to be notified when my Make Sh*t Happen course re-launches in January!) 
• Book Recommendation: The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry

My latest greatest (pen and paper!) organization strategy:

I’ve tried everything for daily organizing – Todoist, TeuxDeux, Evernote, Google Docs, Google Calendar, my own Weekly Activity Tracker - the list goes on.

And then I discovered the one…the only…Post-it Weekly Organizer! It’s simple, it helps me map out my week, and the best part is that I can SEE it all day while I’m working.

This has also helped me ensure that work, people and health get equal billing in my life. No one category takes priority, and I made it a point to list the daily health goals first. At first I resisted only having five lines for each category, but now realize that it helps me stay focused and prioritize the most important tasks.

Intro from tbe Lifehack post: The best decision you can make for your business — that has nothing to do with money

Imagine two people starting identical companies with the exact same resources, network, and time at their disposal (gender randomly assigned for brevity’s sake):

Both of these people are me.

I quit my job at Google two months ago to pursue my passion as an author, speaker and coach, and during my first month of solopreneurship I was Person #1.

I wasn’t running my business, my business was running me. And as 100% of the company, the opportunity costs of operating at half-mast were extremely high.

Continue reading the full post on Lifehack.org, which includes 4 key tips for growing your business or big goal, and improving your life by putting your body first.

Okay, okay — I’ll let you judge the ninja-level of my organization skills, but I needed something to spruce up the title!

The two most popular posts of ALL TIME on my blog are the original How I Stay Organized (9K page views) and 8 Ways to Organize Your Life with Google Docs (15K page views), in addition to my Templates on everything from personal finance to professional development to processing a break-up (sign-up for my monthly Inside Scoop newsletter and you’ll get access to all 15+ templates, including many other tips and tools).

Start with How I Stay Organized (Part One) if you haven’t already read it; today’s post will cover more nuanced tools and processes that I use.

A quick aside: I just started monkeying around with Google+ (connect with me here) and am really enjoying it. But does anyone else think that saying, “I want to circle you?” or “circle me” connotes an impending shark and/or stalker attack? 

Gmail Tools

• Priority Inbox: This is saving my life! Groups emails by priority: important and unread, starred, and the rest. You can teach gmail over time what emails should be marked as important. Each day, I set a goal to answer at least five “starred” emails. For emails that I’m long overdue on a reply, I use the exclamation star.

• Auto-advance:  My email productivity doubled (if not tripled) after I started using this feature. I used to hem and haw over what email to answer next — now auto-advance sends me right to the next one — when I get in the zone, I just answer via auto-advance without going back to my inbox for 30 minutes at a time. It’s amazing how much you can get done!

• Canned responses:  Any email that you’ve written more than once deserves a canned response. I save a bunch of these and use them as a starting point, then modify to personalize for the recipient. I don’t use them all the time, but they come in very handy for repetitive emails.

• Superstars, Send & Archive, Shortcuts = A MUST.  Not much else to add here! Superstars are awesome: I use the yellow star to indicate an important or high priority email, and an exclamation mark to indicate something high priority or overdue that I want to reply to that same day (or the next one).

• Boomerang (browser extension):  Boomerang is amazing!!! It enables delayed send, but more importantly (and true to the name) it allows you to “hide” an email and boomerang it back to yourself in a set amount of time. This is a great way to clear your inbox and have emails sent back when it’s time to follow-up, or at a later date. Procrastinators, beware! It gets very easy to boomerang everything…

• Rappaportive (browser extension):  Another incredible tool! When you open an email, it shows you all of someone’s social media profiles and latest updates in the right-hand sidebar. You can see if you’re following someone, see their picture (if they have one), add them to social networks, and stay up-to-date on their latest news. LOVE this feature.

Task management 

• Still in it for the long-haul: Post-its and my moleskine! Every day I write a post-it with my top 5 priorities, ranked in order. This can include project-oriented tasks, people to reach out to, or anything else that I want to finish before the day is done.

• Todoist.com: I use this for tracking ALL non-timebound activity, particularly longer-term items, ideas, open questions, and anything else that is not fixed to a date (those things go on my daily “to do” post-its, a weekly list, or into Google Calendar). My Todoist categories include:
• CURRENT WEEK (you can also use TeuxDeux.com for super simple weekly planning)
• Accountant (questions for her)
• Condo (any tasks related to repair, rental, etc)
• Blog posts (where I track ideas, in addition to my “drafts” folder)
• Networking (people to follow-up with)
• Life After College (general website-related tasks)
• LAC Strategic Tasks (broader business-related tasks)
• Personal Development (courses I’m considering signing-up for or purchasing, ebooks I own that I have yet to read)
• Coaching / Speaking / Yoga (follow-up items related to those parts of my business)
• Travel (I keep one running item for each city and who to reach-out to when I get there)
• NYC (things to do related to my move)
• Shopping / Wish list (things I want to buy, but know that I shouldn’t purchase on impulse!) See related: 4-Step Budget Template and Mint.com (for tracking all financial accounts and expenses).
• Errands / To-buy (self-explanatory)
• Tools & Resources (things I haven’t used yet, but want to check-out)

• Project Plan template: Created by yours truly! I use this format to track all major projects that I’m working on — I’ve tried more complicated tools and they don’t work for me. The benefit of this is you can also share with others for collaborative projects. Want to see a project plan on crack? Check-out my 15-tab Master Book Marketing Spreadsheet.

Scheduling

• Tungle.me: for speedier appointment-booking (so you don’t have to go back and forth via email), though I’m considering switching to Google’s appointment feature (that I used when I still worked there). I’ve also adjusted my schedule so that I only have meetings two days a week — this keeps me focused and batches my tasks so that I don’t have meetings scattered throughout the week.

• Google Calendar: For any super important meetings, I add reminders via email. I also have Facebook email me weekly with a list of upcoming birthdays — then plug my close friends’ birthdays into my “Birthdays” calendar with an annual repeating event and email reminder.

Data Storage/Back-up

Social Media

Other Tips and Tricks

**Update: both problems below are solved!! I’m doing a jig around the house. Leaving the post up anyway so that you can learn about my favorite people and helpful resources. Cheers!**

I am taking a break from my regularly scheduled programming to fix two urgent blog issues at the moment:

1. My blog has been hacked. In a possibly related issue (but not sure if they’re linked)…
2. My new posts are not publishing to the RSS feed; therefore you are not being notified of new posts (via email or RSS). It’s like a tree falling in the forrest — if you don’t know when I post, then I have no blog!

I will be taking a short break from adding content so that we can focus on getting these issues fixed. This is my baby and I didn’t realize how much my LIFE revolves around my blog (for better or for worse) until this all went down. A piece of my heart breaks when my blog does!

I’m feeling calm at the moment only because I am graced with the help of three (yes three!) rockstar men who you should absolutely know about. For bloggers: I also want to share some of the tools that they’ve shared with me.

My Heros:

• Willie Jackson — who got me all squared away back-up wise after my laptop was stolen in March. He is a WordPress security and optimization machine.
• Robert Granholm — an incredible developer recommended by my good friend Cath Duncan, who has put in hours with me troubleshooting the RSS issue even though we’ve never met or talked.
• Andrew Norcross — a self-described (and confirmed by the masses) WordPress ninja who is the go-to guy for just about anyone and everyone on the Internet. He discovered that my blog had been hacked, and kindly pointed me to the right place to get it fixed.

Tools every blogger should know about:

• VaultPress — “Complete website backup and security that’s as simple as WordPress itself”
• Arq — “Online back-up for Mac” that syncs files on your desktop to the cloud. Connects directly with…
• Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) — Fast, super cheap storage for the Internet. I’m using this to back-up all my files (not just blog related). Storing about 40GB is currently costing me $8/month. Amazing. Some alternatives: Drop Box, SugarSync, and now iCloud. I use CyberDuck as my FTP client when I want to manually move files to/from S3.
• Sucuri Security — Annual service that protects your blog from malware and preforms a clean-up within four hours.

Any other awesome security or storage-related tools we should all know about? Share them in the comments por favor.

That’s it for now…wish us luck getting this train back on track! And stay tuned…an exciting redesign is in the works by the lovely Nina Cross — my rockstar girl addition to the team

***

Last book tour stop — join us in Los Angeles if you can!

If you’re in the LA area, click here to RSVP for the event at 7pm on Tuesday, June 14 put on by Scott Asai of Growing Forward — we’d love to see you there!

***

Support the Kidney Raffle

Speaking of Cath (one of my very favorite coaches and writers), her inspiring week-long Kidney Raffle begins today with some killer prizes (14 total packages from your favorite personal development bloggers and coaches). Cath has put her heart and soul into this project, and Robert (mentioned above) did an amazing job with the website and technical side of everything.

About the raffle in Cath’s own words:

Last year, Cath and Andy Duncan’s one and only daughter (who they named Juggernaut) died at 5 months gestation because of Cath’s hereditary kidney condition. As part of Cath’s journey back to hope and strength, she committed to raising funds for kidney research and a dedicated team of friends has joined her campaign. Now you can also do your part to help fund this critical research and also get some wonderful inspiration in return.

Get some inspiration & join us to BE AN INSPIRATION…

Your favorite teachers, coaches and authors have generously donated their best work for you to stand a chance to win in our 14 free raffle draws.  We’re not talking about cheap E-Books or low-value give-aways… We’re talking high-value, “inner-circle” prizes, annual memberships, premium 1-on-1 coaching with people like Jonathan Fields, Adam Baker and Fabeku Fatunmise, and even some prizes that you can no longer buy even if you wanted to pay top dollar for it!

Extreme generosity, contribution and teamwork that makes a difference is inspiring, isn’t it? We’re asking you to join their ranks and be an inspiration by making a donation of your own. 100% of your donation will go to the Kidney Foundation.

Click here to donate.

Note from Jenny: When my friend and fellow Googler Gopi Kallayil first told me he outsources his life to over a dozen people, my jaw dropped in awe. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to outsource to one! (An unpaid intern if anyone is looking for a cool gig. And by cool, I mean I need your help to even figure out how to help).

So I asked Gopi how he does it, and he replied with an email summary of his outsourcing tactics. I was absolutely blown away! Talk about priorities – Gopi has figured out how to employ dozens of people to make his life easier – and let me tell you – it works. Gopi is one of the kindest, happiest, most generous, and energetic people I know! His enthusiasm for life is contagious, which you can see for yourself in his award-winning Toastmasters speech, My Cup Runneth Over.

Even if we are all at varying places in our lives to afford this kind of outsourcing (though some would argue we can’t afford NOT to), I hope you’ll get a kick out of seeing how Gopi manages his life.

How I Outsourced My Life Away (by Gopi Kallayil)

There are some things that are perfectly egalitarian on this planet. Birth and death for one. And the fact that in between we all have 24 hours each day of our life. President Obama gets 24 and I get 24. But as our lives get busier and there are more choices for us it becomes difficult to do everything we want to in 24 hours. So we lead frenzied, busy lives, lurching from one commitment to another under the tyranny of schedules.

That is when I stumbled upon a concept that shifted my paradigm. You can BUY time in a free market capitalist economy and as a result have 28 or 32 or 36 hours in a day. I first read about it when A.J. Jacobs tried personal outsourcing and wrote an article in Esquire titled “My Outsourced life” which has done its rounds around the Internet. His point was that corporations were outsourcing so individuals could do likewise. Rock stars and Hollywood celebrities have assistants. So can regular folk like me.

My inspiration came from Timothy Ferriss, author of the best seller “The 4-Hour Work week“  when he spoke at Google (video). His compelling logic is as follows: Take your annual salary and divide it by 2,000 hours which is the number of hours people in America work on average. The resulting number is the economic value of an hour of your time based on your current compensation. Let us say that number is $40 for example. If there is something you need to get done but it is not your passion and someone else can do it for you for less than your hourly cost ($40 in this example) then you should give it to them and use that hour to focus on your passion and joy.

Simple! So I read his book, followed through and did much of the outsourcing he does, plus some more I have invented. It is likely, you may assume, that this is the lifestyle of the rich and the famous. I am discovering it is not and that you could get help as little as $4 an hour or even $0.

Here is what I have done to outsource my life:

• Personal Assistant — I have a personal assistant in India through Getfriday. Her name is Nancy. Nancy sits in Bangalore but can handle anything that can be done on the phone or web. For example, if I am going on vacation she will stop my mail and all my subscriptions. Once my car got broken into and my navigator was stolen and she arranged for a repair shop to come in to my office in the San Francisco bay area and replace the glass before ordering a new navigator on the web. She saved me so much money by calling around and finding the best provider that with one transaction she paid for her fees for the next two months. In addition it may have taken 45 minutes of my time which would be difficult to find on a work day. So the problem would not have been resolved for several weeks.
• Personal Organizer — There is stuff that accumulates around my house – books, mail, photos, CDs, bills, etc. Stuff that keeps piling up on my desk and kitchen counter and dining table. Erinne is my personal organizer and she comes in for a few hours on some weekends. We work together around my home office and in two hours my study is clutter-free and all my to-do items are in two small folders labeled “Urgent” and “Medium Priority.” The psychic energy of having a clutter-free office is tremendous.We execute as a team for a few hours and I am done with home office work for another two weeks till things pile up again. But thanks to this system I can find find things when I need them such as a favorite CD, book, that picture from my reunion or the receipt for the music system I bought two years ago and need for warranty repairs.
• Webmaster — I have my own website where I am interested in writing content but not in dealing with the technicalities. So I found Viggie in Madurai, India to maintain my personal website.
• Housekeeper — Alma my housekeeper comes in a couple of times a month to tidy up, She is fantastic and does a terrific job. Thanks to her expertise and my own effort to keep it so in between her visits my house feels like a home. It is a haven for me.
• Personal Chefs — I like entertaining but lack extensive gourmet culinary skills. Through Craig’s List I found a few excellent personal chefs. When I host a dinner party we do menu planning together; one of us does the shopping, and we cook and get the place ready as a team. In this case I am not technically outsourcing to a caterer; however, since entertaining is something I enjoy (but don’t have all the expertise) I am using an expert to complement my meager skills in this area.
• Interior Decorator — As I mentioned before my home is my haven and sanctuary. I want it to look and feel that way. Kulvi my designer and I work closely together on the aesthetics. It is primarily my self-expression but Kulvi layers on her ideas. Other advantages including getting furniture from some show rooms that are open only during business hours (so hard for me to go) and open only to designers. And special prices only available to designers.
• Editor — I love writing but need a skilled editor to polish my articles. My friend Nicky in the UK does a fantastic job like she did here.
• Speech Coaching — I am a competitive public speaker and very active with Toastmasters. There are experienced toastmasters like my coach Henry who take me under their wing and provide the coaching when I am in competitions.
• Graphics Artist — When I need very sophisticated graphics for my presentations I reach out to my long time graphics artist Kathy who I know from my McKinsey days. She takes my rudimentary designs and magically transforms them.
• Bike, Run, Swim Coaching — I am a member of the Silicon Valley Triathlon Club which costs me around $5 a month. For that nominal fee I get free biking, running, and swimming coaching by some extraordinary athletes.
• Handyman — Scott the handyman takes care of all the stuff around the house that need fixing and does a much more professional job than I could if were installing garden lights on my own.
• Gardener — I have only indoor plants as the property association takes care of the ones outside, but historically there has been cultural herbicide at my place. Plants readily shrivel and die under my care. So Louis helps me pick the right plants from nurseries and keep them alive despite my efforts. I have him come over about once every three months.
• Wardrobe consultant — Now you are all laughing real hard. So I will stop here. But I do I get some help from a friend and from a professional; both of them have a good taste in styles and labels, which saves me the trouble of dealing with the bewildering experience that clothes shopping is for me. Jenny doubts if it has made a difference. (Note from Jenny: Not true – Gopi always looks amazing!)

But don’t you need a fortune to live this way?

Now I am sure you must be wondering how one affords all this if you are not a rock star or the Sultan of Brunei, which I am not. The well keep secret that I learned from Timothy Ferriss is that you can take advantage of free market capitalism, labor market arbitrage, and currency exchange rates and get all this for some relatively inexpensive rates.

For example, my website designer is $4 an hour and spends about 5 hours a month on my website, so that is a $20 bill. The triathlon club fees are about $5 a month and for that you get free coaching in three sports 2-3 times a week. Toastmasters dues are $3 a month and experienced members are always happy to be mentors. A personal assistant can be as low as $10 a month and for a 5 to 10 hours of their time you pay a nominal fee but get lots done.

More importantly, what do I do with the time that I’ve freed up? Focus quite exclusively on five things that are important to me and I want to spend most of my time on. Those five are:

• Personal growth and spiritual practice
• Family and friends
• Physical, mental, emotional, financial health
• Professional passions, which currently is my work at Google doing marketing
• Personal passions, which includes global travel, yoga, public speaking and live music

Here is an example of the kind of trade-off I am making: I teach free yoga lessons and have done so ever since I trained to be a yoga instructor in India. This is my gift to the world. I am consciously choosing to pay someone to take care of tasks that are not my passion so that it frees up two hours a week when I can teach yoga for free.

How successful am I with this concept? Modestly successful, although this is still a work in progress.

Good luck if you choose to go down this path.

***

About Gopi: During the day, Gopi Kallayil works as a marketer at Google. He also teaches yoga, travels the world, speaks, writes, sings, lives freely and joyously. At other times he espouses radical ideas like outsourcing your life and can be a general threat to orderly, civil society. Visit his website or follow him on Twitter.

Today my friend Colin Wright of Exile Lifestyle launches his mega ebook – Networking Awesomely – and I’m excited to be a guest contributor! My excerpt is below (and includes the latest addition to my template family, the Networking Tracker).

More about the ebook in Colin’s own words:

“I propose a new kind of game, one that involves creating much stronger bonds, better social habits, a more fulfilling approach to life and a more valuable network. I’ll give you tips, tricks, philosophies and stories that will help you become a better networker.

Networking Awesomely is an ebook with over 250 pages and the cajones to get the job done – for the teensy-weensy price of $20.”

To get your copy of Networking Awesomely, click here.
Note: this is an affiliate link. All proceeds will benefit the Life After College cupcake consumption fund.

Excerpt (My Networking Tip): Get the Right Systems in Place

Networking is most fun when you can connect with people naturally, but it can help tremendously to have effective systems in place to support those connections. After I attend an event (skip to step 3 for people I meet online), I usually go through the following five steps:

1. File business cards - Rolodex Schmolodex. I store my business cards in a regular-sized binder that has special sheet protectors with individual slots for each card. I suggest writing the context in which you met the person on the back of their card, and one or two physical descriptors.
2. Identify people to follow-up with – At any given event, there are usually 2-3 people I want to get to know better. I plug their names into my networking spreadsheet (template here) – which tracks people I want have follow-up conversations with. That way I don’t have to refer back to their business card any more – their information is easily accessible online (and stored in one place).
3. Add follow-up names to my to-do list – One of my categories on my to-do list (I use Todoist.com) is called “Networking.” I add tasks with the names and email addresses of people I want to schedule for a follow-up call. It may sound mechanical, but it really does help me remember who I want to reach out to.
4. Schedule a call (via phone or Skype). This is the fun part!
5. Send a follow-up email to say thank you (and make a note on my spreadsheet if we mentioned talking again at some point)

A final note on the networking spreadsheet: I don’t add names of friends and acquaintances – it’s more for business contacts and professionals in fields that I am interested in; in other words, people I wouldn’t otherwise be in contact with on Twitter or Facebook. The nice thing about using it to track networking activities is that I can skim through it later and drop people a note if I haven’t talked to them in a while.

Let me know what you think of the new template, and happy networking!

***

The Book of Awesome Giveaway Results

Thank you all so much for the AMAZING comments on The Book of Awesome giveaway post – 60 people chimed in with some seriously awesome things! I had a huge smile plastered on my face as I read and replied to all of your great comments – they were are all brilliant. And big congrats to Eve (in South Korea) who won the autographed copy.

As my friend J-Money (okay, we’ve never met in person but he cracks me up and I love his blog) would tell you, Budgets Are Sexy. But not all of them. Some are just straight-up Debbie Downers. Before I get into my budgeting secret and awesome template (pretty sexy if I don’t say so myself), let me welcome all of J’s readers from his post featuring my paycheck distribution graphic today – thanks for stopping by!

J-Money: Earmuffs. Everyone else: I hate budgets. Especially ones that break spending down into micro-micro-micro categories like “Beauty –> Hair –> Highlights.” Don’t get me wrong – I love the idea of retroactively seeing exactly how I’ve spent my money, especially by sub-category.  That is useful. Trying to project spending in $20 increments on a monthly basis across 25 categories is not.

Enter my Four-Step Budget (I really should think of a sexier name)

As far as I’m concerned, your budget should include four numbers:

1. Total Monthly Income
   1. This includes: paychecks, side jobs, anything that brings money into your bank account
2. Total Monthly Must-Have Expenses
   1. This includes: Rent, utilities, cell phone bills, anything that will incur late fees; groceries
   2. This should also include automatic savings deductions. Saving is a must!
3. Total Monthly Nice-to-Have Expenses
   1. This is more variable, but try to estimate. Are there things that you KNOW you spend money on every month like going out to eat? My “nice to haves” are things like getting my nails done, going out to eat, and my addictions: Starbucks and Amazon books.
   2. This does not include: one-off purchases (like a TV), major shopping trips or major travel (unless you take frequent weekend trips).
4. Allowance (The Leftovers)
   
   1. This is where your math skills (or my handy template) come in. Subtract your total expenses from your income to get your allowance. This is the money left-over each month for you to spend as you’d like – shopping, weekend travel, etc. For bigger purchases, you may want to start a separate savings account and add that deduction to your “must have” column. Check-out my earlier post on Creating a Weekend Budget.

The 4-Step Budget Template

To make this four-step budget even better, I’ve created a detailed template (in Google Spreadsheets) for you to copy and fill-in each of the four sections. This is not a one-shot deal (although even going through the exercise once will give you a great head-start) – this is something you should continue revising over time as you monitor your spending. I’d love to hear how the template works for you if you give it a try. If you really like it, do me a favor and give me a rating on Google’s Template Gallery:

Need Some Help Getting Started?

Let me also take this opportunity to make a shameless plug for my coaching services! I’m not a financial planner and won’t be giving you specific advice, but I will help you address major problem areas, make sure your spending is in line with your values, set goals around money management and implement practical systems that will help you feel like you’re in charge of your money (not the other way around). Click here to sign-up for a free 30-minute session.

Not sold on my template? J-Money has a great list of Best Free Budget Templates & Sites.