The ‘Holy Trinity’ of personal information management…

One of the most important things thinkers who aspire to thought leadership need to do is to effectively manage the information they need to nurture and nourish their expertise…

I firmly believe the single most important issue in social media is not whether or not it works to generate leads; rather, how can I add social media to my already overflowing plate and still get home for supper. I think the first place where people can find additional time in their day is by more effectively handling e-mail. Conversely, I think it’s pretty difficult to think about the idea of becoming a thought leader if you have thousands of unread e-mails in your inbox especially when e-mail can be so easy to manage…

The first of the holy trio is Gmail. There are a lot of tips and tricks that you can apply to Gmail however I don’t think any one of them is more important than this: using e-mail for what I called just-in-time information — information that affects relationships and revenue. Everything else belongs somewhere else! If your e-mail inbox doesn’t look like this then you’re going to have a hard time adding the extra work that you need to do to establish your thought leadership position…

The second member of the holy trio is feedly. I use feedly to track the sites, searches and sources that nourish my expertise. Instead of chasing information around the Internet I make the things I need to know flow to me. Because feedly is completely cross platform down to the smart phone level I can use it in Mac, Windows or Ubuntu [I prefer Chrome as my primary browser and all three] or on an Android or iOS device. Feedly gives me the ability to create a virtual newspaper jammed with the best content in the world and it’s free! It also allows me to quickly share the good things I find…

Last but by no means least is Evernote. Evernote is a cloud-based app that is completely cross platform down to the smart phone level so I can access the things I save from anywhere…

These three tools together give me everything I need to effectively manage the information I need to continually refresh my expertise. In the following screen cast of show you some of my favorite tips for using all three:

These are just the first three tools in my workflow — you can find more ideas here. If you could use some help managing the information you need to stay on top your game please contact me and ask me about personal digital coaching…