This may be somewhat of an obvious tip, but since I just thought of this for my personal use, perhaps there are others out there who are missing this productivity tip. I store some documents online, especially on Google Docs and so far I have always navigated to my docs page and then selected the document there.

However, you can link directly to the document in question, which means you can bookmark it as well. This also means that you can create a keyword which lets you jump there in an instant. I am keeping track of my expenses with a detailed sheet and when I type “exp” into the URL bar and press enter, the sheet loads in a jiffy.

In fact, with the nifty extension called Firefly extension you can use Firefox like a file manager and you can create bookmarks to specific folders on your hard drive just like you do on the web, which means you can also navigate there with keywords.

Oh, I almost forgot, you can also use the same method with emails in Gmail. Clicking on an email yields a URL which is static, so you can bookmark it and get to the email fast. I frequently get emails which I check 30 times before I don’t need them any more and this method helps me a lot and saves me a lot of time, making me more productive. One drawback is that URL’s are stored for conversations, which means that if you have a conversation consisting of 50 emails, you are probably better off with the search bar.

Firefox 3 introduces a new bookmarking system which utilizes databases to store your history, favorites and so on, so you have much more power and control over them. Recently I reinstalled my system and decided to go with a fresh (not restored) Firefox, so I can organize myself better.

In fact, the best way I think you can go about organizing your bookmarks in a new install is if you do it the GTD way. When you arrive at a web page, spend 2 seconds and decide if this is worth a bookmark or not. Most likely the first pages you visit will be, since these will be pages you visit often anyway. In this case, just press CTR+D to bring up the bookmark menu.

Keep the name, or modify it to something more easily understandable. Remember, bookmarks are for you, so it’s ok to abbreviate, use acronyms and so on. Choose a folder and choose some tags. Tags are new in Firefox and can be put to great use. SInce I write to a load of blogs I can bring up all the bookmakrs for admin pages easily, while still keeping these in the same folder. When you’ve saved your bookmarks you can also go back and enter a keyword for them. Just right click on the entry, click on properties and enter something easily remembered and short.You can then type that into the url bar to go to the site.

The key to keeping organized is consistently following the rule to decide at each page what to do. Take the time to organize your bookmarks into tags and folders. This will create some extra work now, but after a few days of browsing you will have the most important sites covered and the work you’ll need to do from then on will be minimal while you will be much better organized.