I would argue that these people are not truly organized at all, for the goal of organization is the greatest goal there is: freedom.

What does freedom look like?

It’s tomorrow morning, and you’ve just woken up. You’re really craving a croissant from a sidewalk cafe — in Paris. Fifty-six minutes later, you’re in your car, on the way to the airport.

Your initial reaction to this was probably: “Impossible! Only a rich person who didn’t work could do that.” But you’re wrong. If they’re not organized, even a billionaire couldn’t make it out the door that fast.

However, if they are truly organized, someone with just a small amount of money in the bank can be out the door within the hour, and more importantly, they’ll be able to enjoy an entirely stress-free trip.

Consider the aforementioned scenario through the eye of organization:

6:00AM - Your computer starts playing your favorite motivational song while displaying a random inspirational quotation on the screen. This encourages you to jump right out of bed and conquer the day. Of course, since you got to bed at a reasonable time last night, and since you’ve been exercising regularly and eating healthy, you were wide-awake, anyway.

6:02AM - As you sip the coffee that your timed coffee pot just finished brewing, you decide you want a real Parisian croissant.

6:04AM - You pop open Google Calendar and check your obligations for the week. You see that Aunt Bertha is coming to town Friday night at 6pm.

6:05AM - You pop open del.icio.us and click your “travel +compare” tag, which pulls up the three best travel comparison sites. You search for roundtrip tickets to Paris, along with a rental car and a hotel. Each travel site already has your preferences, frequent flyer numbers, and credit card number saved. While those pages load, you click your “travel + coupons” tag and find the coupon for $100 off an international fight you received in an email last Wednesday. You also click your “paris” tag and remember that you’ve been meaning to visit the Rodin Museum ever since you saw Frank Wildhorn’s “Camille Claudel” musical.

6:08AM - You find and book a round-trip flight that leaves in three hours, and returns Friday morning, leaving you ample time to unpack and pick up Aunt Bertha at the airport. You check the weather in Paris and see it’s going to be chilly enough for a light jacket.

6:10AM - You hop in the shower and run through your AM scaffold. As you complete each step in your hygiene routine (brush your teeth, moisturize, etc.), you put the necessary items in your travel bag, which sits at the ready under the sink. It already contains travel-sized samples of most necessities, like shampoo, toothpaste, and shaving cream, along with a small comb and a spare manual toothbrush (so you can leave your Sonicare at home).

6:40AM - You’ll be gone for three days and three nights, so you grab three of each type of clothing. Since your color-coded wardrobe only contains clean, in-season clothes that fit you well, and since your regular exercise habit means you don’t have to try anything on to make sure it fits, packing is effortless.

6:43AM - You check your tickler files for the next few days. It’s your cousin John’s birthday on Saturday, so you’d planned to drop his card in the mail on Thursday. You decide you’d rather it arrive early than late, so you put it on your suitcase to remember to drop it in the mail on the way out to your car. (It was already filled out, addressed, and stamped.) Your electric bill is due on Wednesday, but that’s on auto bill-pay — no problem.

6:45AM - You activate your “travel” Gmail filter that forwards email from your main two clients to your Blackberry world phone, and leave a note on your website that you’re in Paris and will respond to email when you get back. You update your Facebook status for good measure (and of course, you Twitter it, too).

6:47AM - You check your trusty “Travel Checklist.” It reminds you to make sure you have no liquids in your carry-on (a quick rummage through your bag reveals a bottle of sunscreen, which you leave out); to bring a snack (you grab a few pre-measured bags of oat bran from the pantry); and to get your passport (which you quickly grab from your fireproof box). You text your best friend, who has your spare apartment key, and let him know you’ll be gone, and change your personal voicemail message to let callers know you’re out of the country.

6:53AM - You leave a voicemail for your boss, faking a stuffy nose.

6:55AM - You grab a stack of magazines from your “Read/Review” pile (so you can throw them out as you read them and won’t have to lug already-consumed material back home) and your [fully-charged] iPod.

6:56AM - You leave for the airport — early.

Let’s not forget the things you didn’t even have to think about:

• Your will and power of attorney paperwork is in order, in case you eat a bad croissant;
• Your wallet has everything you need in it, and nothing more;
• Your car has a full tank, so you don’t need to stop on the way to the airport;
• Your iPod is synced with the latest music, movies, podcasts, and audiobooks, so you can learn French on-the-go;
• Your Moleskine is already in your bag, along with a handful of pens;
• Your finances are in good enough shape that you have the financial ability to afford this trip.

How “restrictive” do you think a strong organizational system is now?

(Update: Many people have asked if I’ve actually done this. Yes and no. I haven’t felt like going to Paris yet, but I have gone to Japan and Germany on 56 minutes’ notice. I also make a point of not preparing for any trip more than 56 minutes before leaving.)

Getting my attention with a bulk email is exceptionally hard, especially when your generic newsletter is right below an email from a close friend detailing her upcoming trip to Lithuania and right above an email from a new client with an exciting, challenging new efficiency conundrum for me to solve.

Ryan Lee is a long-time fitness professional with an impressive portfolio of membership services and sites geared to people who want to get in [better] shape. All that said, Ryan is doing something very, very right, and if you are trying to reach a large audience, you should do what he does:

1. His emails are short, like a Seth Godin post.
2. He’s honest. If you’re not in shape, it’s because you’ve been lazy, not because McDonald’s hides secret hypnotic messages in its radio commercials. However, at the same time, he’s encouraging — after all, you can choose to *not* be lazy any more and get in great shape.
3. He makes sense. I have a fitness background, and whenever I hear people talk about their new low-carb diet or how they’re taking a new weight loss supplement, I want to scream and hit them a book on Nutrition and Weight Loss 101. Most people hawking fitness products do it by playing on weaknesses, lying, and furthering myths. From what I’ve seen, Ryan makes a serious effort to dispel these myths and builds his programs on what really works.
4. He’s not always selling something. Sometimes he’ll send a quick note about an experience he had on an airline, or to share a story about something one of his daughters did. Over time, I have found myself caring just as much about what Ryan is up to as I do about my favorite bloggers in other fields.
5. He’s human. Ryan has been doing a lot of videos lately, and it’s clear he isn’t reading from a professionally-written script. I love this. It makes him approachable and makes his videos more interesting to watch, and it follows, to learn from.
6. He stands by his guarantees. I’ve been working on my own information products and was curious to see what Ryan’s physical materials were like, so I signed up for his “Millionaire Workout” program. The information was great for someone unfamiliar with the Internet, but far too basic for me (as I expected), so I canceled (as I had planned). No hassle, and I even got a nice personal note back. That makes me confident in any future purchases I may make.

This post was inspired by Chris Brogan’s “Example of a Great PR Pitch.” If you know someone who’s “doing it right,” give them some credit!

Google really needs to work on its support documentation and sales copy, as I wouldn’t be writing this blog post if their services and their limitations had been expressed clearly. (Hey Google — I know a great writer you can hire!)

You can port all of your existing POP/IMAP accounts into your free GMail account. You can also send from any email address, provided you have access to it in order to click the link in their confirmation notice. Great. What they don’t tell you is that every header on every outgoing message will then include this line:

From: yourusername@gmail.com On Behalf Of Your Name (theemailyouthoughtyousentfrom@yourdomain.com)

This isn’t hiding in the extended headers somewhere… this is right there for everyone using Outlook and other mail programs to see. It’s to protect against spammers using the service, but mostly, it’s annoying. It’s also not mentioned anywhere, except in user forums where fellow GMailers explained that you can avoid this by paying $50/year to signup for Google Apps for your Domain.

I finally fork over my $50, only to discover mid-process that they limit the number of domain aliases you can use. (I have 24 separate domains + misspellings of some of those domains.) I think I got to #13 when I was greeted by a mean little red sentence informing me I surpassed this undisclosed limit. Obnoxious!

I also kept getting a mysterious “temporary 502″ error when I tried to access various pages:

Temporary Error (502)

We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won’t be able to use your account while these errors last, but don’t worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.

Please try accessing your account again in a few minutes.

Mind you this error persisted for three days, not a few minutes.

Two emails back and forth with support later, I got zero help. They kept reminding me to change my MX records. Yea, that’s what I’m going to do, send my MX records your way when you can’t explain why half my clicks result in an error message.

I’m sure I could pay $50/year/per domain to avoid this problem, and then port those 24 accounts into another GMail account, but I don’t feel like paying $1200/year for the privilege.

In the end, I deleted my Google Apps account, ported all my domains through a single Fusemail.com account (on the suggestion of my new hero, PickledOnion), and continue to check via free GMail via POP. I also continue to get the annoying “On behalf of” header line, which will continue to piss me off.

Google, you’re doing something wrong if I cancel my paid account for your free service. Something to chew on.

This means we’re on the hunt for simple, attractive, easy-to-read ebook designs for inspiration. I thought I’d share my favorites below.

(I don’t know how long the links are going to be live, so I included a screenshot to use as general idea.)

Do you have an ebook to suggest? Please share in the comments!

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