16 | Bookmarks Bar a Mess? How to Organize Your Bookmarks Bar to Save Time and Reduce Stress

Ready to discover the unexpected joy and productivity sparked by a simple bookmarks bar organization? Follow along as a casual visit to my son’s house leads to a revelation of my online experience.

The twist? It’s not just about saving time and staying focused, but also the unexpected thrill of an organized digital life and visually appealing browser.

Curious to know how this transformation unfolds? Tune in to uncover the details that YOU too can experience that will enhance your online productivity and optimize your work time.

NO more time wasted searching for saved websites or feeling overwhelmed by a cluttered bookmarks bar. Get ready to experience increased productivity.

Listen to the episode and then click here to watch the video showing you everything I mention on the podcast.

00:00:00
It’s funny how things work. I was over at my son’s house and his wife is an esthetician and nail artist. She was doing my nails and my son works from home. He was at his desk talking with us. I don’t even know what exactly he said… something about his bookmark bar. He got his BOOKMARKS bar all organized. I was intrigued.

00:00:21
He is one of the most organized people that I know. When I finished getting my nails done, I went over to his desk and asked him to show me his bookmark bar. He started showing it to me, and I wanted my bookmark bar to look like that. How do you do that? Oh, look at that.

00:00:38
Oh, wow. He was just showing me what he did, and I don’t know if it was that night, but I got my computer and I just played on my BOOKMARKS bar. Now it is SO organized. I am loving it. So I thought, I’ve got to share this. I have to share this with you.

00:00:53
That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Are you ready to work less, feel more organized and productive, streamline repetitive tasks, and implement systems that allow your coaching business to run smoothly even without you? If so, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the Organized Coach Podcast, your go-to source for practical tips and solutions.

00:01:17
I’m your host, Tracy Hoth, a professional organizer, certified life coach, simplifying expert, and most of all, a down-to-earth fellow coach just like you. No matter if you think you’re missing the organizing gene, have ADHD, or just love anything organizing, I’m here to help you become an organized coach with a business that works for you. Pull up a seat and let’s get started. Have you gotten your Idea Tracker and your Client Tracker? Two easy things to get to start getting organized in your business and in your life.

00:01:53
Go get those. The links are in the show notes and to learn to organize your digital files, there is a workshop in there that’s free. You can watch the replay, and the first episode I think of this podcast teaches you how to organize your digital files. That workshop replay shows you visually exactly what to do, and I walk you through that.

00:02:16
So make sure you have those things on your list to do scheduled on your calendar. Okay, I love when I organize in-person. I love it because I help someone and then it motivates me. I mean, I immediately want to go home and do the same thing in my own house.

00:02:33
Seeing my son’s BOOKMARKS bar made me want to go home and do that. Having someone show you little tricks that they use motivates me also… love learning little things like that. The warning before we start is that I don’t want you to do this instead of what you have scheduled on your calendar. I want you to do the thing that will bring you the money in your business and use this as a reward.

00:03:03
Use organizing your Bookmark Bar at the end of the day or do it while you watch a show. Take your laptop on the couch and just do it then. Or schedule it on your calendar, but don’t do it instead of doing the tasks that will bring you money. Okay, to get started, things to think through.

00:03:23
First of all, if you’re not even sure the BOOKMARKS Bar is the bar underneath your URL on your website browser, you look at the browser, you see the URL, and I’m just going to talk through what mine looks like. Yours may look different. You can do a Google search if there’s something I say that teaches you how to do it that doesn’t work, just do a Google Search for your type of computer or for the web browser that you’re using. I have a Mac and I’m using Google Chrome so that’s how I’ll explain it.

00:03:55
Try it. If it doesn’t work or if it looks differently, just do a quick Google search. Okay. Things to think through. What links do you go to regularly?

00:04:03
So the BOOKMARKS Bar is specifically for me. I use it to get to sites that I go to often and to remember. I kind of use it to remember tools or sites that I might need in the future or that I really enjoyed. So those are the ways that I use it. And you can slide around and move things in your BOOKMARKS Bar so that when you look at it, the most used items are showing.

00:04:32
But you could have a whole list of things below that, and that’s what mine looked like. It was so messy. I mean, I had the things I used most across the top, but the names were kind of long. And then there was just this whole list and I’d have to scroll through it. I just had never taken the time.

00:04:50
Having my son show me how he organized his bookmarks was so exciting. Think about what links you go to regularly and then think about categories. The first step to organizing is to sort so you could just make some folders and sort everything into those folders.  I’ll talk about specifics in just a second. Sorting them will then show you what you want to keep in folders.

00:05:15
Do you want to have one less thing to click on and have it outside of a folder so that you could just click on the link immediately without having to go into a folder? I hope that don’t let that overwhelm you. We’re going to talk specific in just a second. The other thing I wanted to talk about first is, why organize this. Like, who cares?

00:05:36
Well, first of all, it shouldn’t take you that long. I mean, in less than an hour. I think you would be able to have yours organized if you’ve never done it before. It might take a little longer if you have to Google and search or watch a video on how to do it, but it’s going to save you time.

00:05:52
It’s going to save you so much time. And then think about clicking, opening a new tab, and typing in the URL that you want to go to. A lot of times it’ll come up if you go to that site often. But clicking and typing four letters or the name takes time. If you go to it often and multiply that times how long it takes, you are going to save so much time.

00:06:19
Plus the other thing, if you save a site that you might use in the future or that you go to, not as often, but you still want to be able to find it, it’s going to save you the time you’re searching for it or looking for it. So that’s one reason it saves you time. The other reason is it looks visually appealing. It’s beautiful. I love looking up at it.

00:06:41
It makes me so happy to look up at it. I’ll share with you a secret that helps with that and keeps you focused. Get to it instead of going to search for this site you were on or you need to find it and then getting distracted. Have you ever done that?

00:06:58
Keeping your bookmarks bar organized keeps you focused. Plus I glance up there and I think, oh yeah, I need to write that email. Maybe I’ve been avoiding it, but the favicon is up there and I can see it. So the favicon, in case you don’t know, is the little icon that is next to the URL in a site. When you go to a site, you’ll see the little picture representing the site.

00:07:20
For those reasons, you should organize. It saves you time, it looks visually appealing and it keeps you focused. Next, think about the links you go to regularly and think about the categories that they might fit into. Now let’s talk specifics.

00:07:36
I always wondered, how do you even get to organize them? You go to the URL and then look all the way to the right and there are three dots that stand on top of each other. If you hover over it, it says customize and control Google Chrome. I scroll down to the word that says BOOKMARKS, and when I hover over that, there’s Bookmark Manager. If you are not using Google Chrome or if you have a different type of computer, you can just search for how to find Bookmark Manager.

00:08:07
Then I click into the BOOKMARKS Manager and it shows on the left your bookmark bar, and then it shows other BOOKMARKS. You might have a whole bunch of things listed and you might have folders in there. I just want to share this. To the right, it says search your BOOKMARKS. That’s the thing at the top and to the right, it has three dots again stacked on top of each other.

00:08:29
If you click that, that’s where you add a new folder. You can add a new bookmark and you can import and export BOOKMARKS. Let’s say you’re transferring to a different computer or you’re transferring to a different web browser, maybe you import or export BOOKMARKS there. But the thing I use right here is the add new folder. What you could do is add your categories, add a folder for each category, remember how I always teach: do a business and a personal, add business and personal folders, and sort all the BOOKMARKS you have into those two categories.

00:09:04
You might also have some categories. For me, I have a podcast folder because I had a lot of things I wanted to remember for my podcast. If I record my podcast on Zoom with a guest, it records as an MP4 and I need to transfer it to an MP3 so I use Zamzar – that’s what I used to convert that to an MP3. I don’t want to have to go look for that. The first two times I had to go look for it and I finally saved the URL in my bookmark, I bookmarked it and then now it’s in my podcast folder.

00:09:35
I also in that folder have a link to my podcast catalog. It’s a Google sheet, I link that in there. I also have a link to the course that I’m in for my podcast. I have an Apple podcast, connects, analytics, Link, and Capsho, which I’ve been playing with. I have that and my podcast SOP.

00:09:57
I just added that to the links that I keep in my podcast folder because I go to them all the time and it’s so fun to have that. I have a podcast folder within my business folder, I have subfolders, so I have courses and tools that I use in my business. I have money – in my money folder, I have my W-9 form, I have my accountant’s portal, and I have Quick Tax, which is our city tax account, which I never remember how to get there. So I’m so excited now.

00:10:35
It’s right there where I need it. And I also have YNAB, which is what I use, and I have a link to that. Anything money-related would go in there. I also have my website, so anything related to my website. I do also have a miscellaneous folder when if I’m looking at these things, I could not think of a category to put them in, I put them in my miscellaneous folder and then I have a personal folder.

00:11:00
You get to decide, make all your folders, and then sort your individual URLs into the folders. That’s pretty easy, you just grab them and drag them and hover over the folder and then unclick and it should go into the folder. So again. The first step to organizing is to sort make the categories and sort them. If something doesn’t fit into a category, as I said, go ahead and have a miscellaneous category.

00:11:29
It’s totally fine. Once you have everything sorted, all the URLs are sorted into your BOOKMARKS. Go ahead and check at the very bottom. Mine has a folder called Other BOOKMARKS. Go ahead and check in there.

00:11:41
I emptied that out. I don’t know how they get in that, but I emptied that out. I sorted all the links that were in there into my folders on my BOOKMARKS bar. So I know there’s probably some of you out here going, she doesn’t even know what she’s doing. My BOOKMARKS bar is way better than that, so please give me more ideas and tell me your secrets because I love it.

00:12:06
Okay, once they’re all sorted into folders, you might want to have some that are not in the folder and especially ones that you go to all the time. And I want to share this coolest secret that my son showed me. And that’s when you have a link and at the right of it, again, there’s those three dots that are stacked on top of each other. It says more actions. You click on that and then click Edit.

00:12:33
So it’ll say edit. Or you could delete a bookmark. That’s how you would delete one. If you don’t want it there anymore, you can cut, copy, paste, or open it to see what it is. When you click Edit, the name of the bookmark is there, and then right under it is the URL, the address.

00:12:51
If you know the favicon, delete the entire name that’s listed there. Just delete the whole line and then push save. Now the only thing up on your BOOKMARKS bar is that favicon. For me, I know the sites that I go to, I know what their favicon is, and so I don’t want the name because it just takes up so much more space if you have the name. I have my website.

00:13:16
When I go in to edit and add a blog post to my website, I have that. I have my Kajabi icon, I have my Google Drive icon. I have the two programs, coaching programs that I’m in and the courses, and their icon. I have the dashboard for where I get my stock photos, videos, and all of that. I have descript I have chat GPT now.

00:13:42
Then I have a couple of other ones. I have all those icons listed first, so they’re all so neat and clean and they don’t have writing after them. Then I have the three business things that I go to most of my Google Sheets. So I have the KPIs that I go to monthly to update. I have my Client Tracker, and then I have my Idea Tracker.

00:14:05
Then I have the folders. So I have a podcast folder that has all the links to sites I want to go to for my podcast and I have my business folder. Now my Business folder has the most things in it, but it’s stuff that I go to only once in a while or that I just don’t need out because I’m not going to it. But remember you could slide something out and put it up on the bar so you can see the icon.

00:14:30
For now, I have them in there. I have courses, like all these courses that I had links to, like the suicide prevention course and the positive intelligence course that I took, my email certification course. I had all these links on my BOOKMARKS bar. Now everything is in the courses and I love having it all there together. I have a Tools folder under Business and this is how to compress a graphic.

00:14:58
It is where I got icons from, it’s a headline analyzer, and it’s a QR code generator. It’s these things that I used once in a while, but I wanted to remember how to find them. All of the tools that I have, how to make a PDF, fillable, all these things, how to map out your funnel, all these links that I have in Tools. I know I can go straight there. I have some other links in there like Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, Acuity, Stripe, Zapier, and several other links in there that have to do with business that I probably go to somewhat regularly.

00:15:44
I also had a folder inside Business called Business Ideas. There were actually only four, but there were four links that I didn’t know where to put and they were kind of for ideas if I wanted to share them with somebody or create something from them at one time.

00:16:09
That is my BOOKMARKS bar. Before only six fit across the top or eight, and then I would click on the arrow to go down and there would just be this endless list. I would have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the most recent one that I bookmarked. Now it’s all up at the top. It’s organized and it’s beautiful because just the favicons show for most of them and then the rest of the things are in four folders.

00:16:38
I am going to record a short video and I will put the link to that video in the show notes, just showing you exactly what I explained because I know especially if you’re a visual learner or if you’re not that familiar with computer stuff, that it might be kind of confusing. I’m going to do a screen recording, show you everything that I just explained, and then put a picture of my BOOKMARKS bar where that video will be. I hope this has inspired you. I hope it’s helpful. Learning the trick of just deleting the name and just having the favicon show is my most exciting secret, and I hope you enjoy that.

00:17:21
If you didn’t already know it, have a great week. Take time to organize your bookmark bar. But remember, don’t do it in place of something you already have on your calendar that will make you money.

00:17:37
Thanks for listening to the episode. Please share this episode with your coaching bestie and tag me on Instagram at @Tracyhoth. And of course, I would be so grateful if you could subscribe and leave a written review on Apple podcasts. It’s the number one way you can thank me. To thank you, go grab the File Naming Formula Cheat Sheet and watch the workshop replay Three Secrets to Organize your Digital Files.

00:18:00
Both are linked in the show notes. Until next time, have a beautiful week.