The Travel Agents Guide to Organization

There are some universal truths in the life of a travel agent. The only time you tell your best client to check his luggage, it will be lost. His connecting gate will be the farthest from the one he arrives at. And the BEST travel agents have the messiest desks. It's universal. They have stacks and stacks of brochures, but can find anything at the drop of a dime. In all my years of training travel agents, in the hundreds of offices I've been in, it is the same everywhere I go.

One thing that I am constantly asked, however, is how they can better manage their time. My suggestion has always been to try and find a tool to help them work within their system, rather than try and change the way they do things. I've never been able to make even one keep their desk clean, and I think that's really what started this whole "home-based" phenomena in the first place - great travel agents were tired of getting nagged for messy desks.

So, rather than try and re-wire the brains of great agents, here's a great tool that I've found called Backpack. I use it every day to keep track of practically my whole life. I love the fact that its simple - no extra, unneeded bells and whistles. You create a page, and within that page you've got to-do lists, notes, attached files, pictures, a "writeboard" to collaborate with others, or your split personalities and links. You can even share it if you like. I use it for both business and personal, since in this day and age there really isn't a boundary between the two, and I bet most people would say the same thing.

Here's a couple of ways I use it. I have one page for each daughter's volleyball team, and I share it with all the other parents. We keep track of practice changes, links to buy socks or other gear and general info. I have another page that has every software license and keys for everything I've purchased and could possibly need to reinstall. I've got another page with marketing ideas, article ideas, outlines for books, that day's goals and my favorite page, "The Honey-Do". I create checklists for the hubby, and he checks them off as he does them - no more, "You didn't tell me!"

It essentially takes everything out of my head and gets it into a "bucket" which doesn't have to be pretty or especially organized but I like the fact that it is web-based, so I can get to it from anywhere. I used to keep everything like that in a spreadsheet and when my laptop died, the spreadsheet was gone because on one of my bazillion paper to do lists was... you guessed it... backup my hard drive! I like the fact that it integrates with my Palm Treo 650 very seamlessly, sends reminders to my e-mail and as a text message to my phone and stays synchronized automatically with my Gmail calendar. I'm all about simplicity, and it doesn't get much simpler than this. The best part? The basic plan is absolutely FREE!

And I can STILL have my insanely messy desk and feel good about it.