I’m excited to share a new series that I’ll post intermittently on my blog called “Life Pro Tip.” I obviously didn’t create this term, in fact on Reddit, the Life Pro Tip subreddit has around 20,000 people who follow it and enjoy sharing/reading Life Pro Tips.

So, what is a LPT? It’s an idea, way of operating, or perspective that is usually a quick read and offers suggestions for maximizing your potential as a human being. I love LPTs.

In a meeting with my boss last week, we got on the topic of efficiency and organization. While my physical, real-life home is often cluttered and disorganized (much to the horror of my type A, always organized husband), my digital world is immaculately organized. After showing my boss a few of my processes for keeping spreadsheets/websites/workflow organized online, she asked if I could lead an efficiency/productivity training for staff.

This made me think about how much I LOVE efficiency. I love finding ways to make daily tasks, no matter how small or big, serve you better. I have even been known to Google “Tips for efficiency” in my spare time, just for fun. I. Love. Efficiency.

So, today, the LPT series on this blog was born. Sometimes the LPTs will be things from my own brain, but oftentimes, they’ll be ideas that I have read somewhere online and am curating here. They’ll be across all topics of life– health and wellness, work, technology, leisure, relationships, parenting, cooking, and more. Some LPTs may be common sense to you, and some may be groundbreaking. That’s the nature of LPTs, sometimes things you have been doing as your everyday norm are things that would drastically help others, they have just never thought to do it that way. If you have LPTs you’d like to share, feel free to leave them in the comments!

Today’s LPT:

This first LPT is something my boss and I talked about in that meeting the other day. It has been a game changer for me! I saw the idea on Instagram many months ago, so I don’t have the original source for this common-sense-but-why-did-I-never-think-of-this idea.

If you have several websites/bookmarks on your computer that you often go to when working on specific projects or tasks, group them into one folder on your bookmarks toolbar. When you are getting ready to work on that project, you can right click on the folder and hit “Open All.” This will keep you from having to dig through your bookmarks, or type in each webpage separately.

So for example, the main folders I have setup on my Google Chrome browser are “Morning Tabs”, “When working on SFP”, “Reporting”, “Growth and Writing”, and “Bills and Utilities.”

Examples of what I keep in some of these bookmarked folders:

Morning Tabs- Contains links to my work email, work calendar, a Medicaid verification site I use for clients, and web-based spreadsheets I use throughout the day. If I weren’t using my personal computer that already has desktop Spotify enabled, I’d also add a bookmark in this folder for a classical music channel on youtube to have that streaming in the background as I work.

When Working on SFP- SFP is the psychoeducational program I run at work, and several times per week when I’m processing a family’s progress in the program, there are a LOT of websites I need to track and work through. Within that folder, I have 11 websites and spreadsheets that open when I click “open all.” After creating this folder, I suddenly realized why I used to dread working on SFP processing– just getting the task STARTED was tedious. After finding my bookmarks for all 11 sites/spreadsheets, I was ready for a nap. So now, getting started with SFP processing is easy, one click. No procrastinating because it’s a quick start.

Bills and Utilities- I love this folder. When I click “open all”, every single website I use to pay bills online opens, along with the spreadsheet my husband and I use to track our monthly bill payment. The spreadsheet contains login info as well, in case we need that on hand.

To set these folders up, go to the Bookmark manager on whatever browser you use. Create folders. Put the sites/spreadsheets (as long as they are web-based like in Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.) into the folder. Enjoy.