Get Organized with Bookmark Folders 🗃

A Step-by-Step Tutorial For Set-up and Optimization

The amount of information we encounter on a daily basis can be overwhelming.

It’s not a small amount — a study conducted in 2007 (so, like, before we even had smartphones!) showed that the average person consumes 174 newspapers worth of information each and every day — more than 5x the average consumption in the 1980s.

We have access to more information than ever, but the methods most of us are using to organize and manage it can’t necessarily keep up. It leaves us feeling overwhelmed and exhausted rather than empowered and informed.

But we don’t have to get fancy or complicated in order to organize the massive amounts of data we’re consuming — some of the best methods are really simple.

One of my favorites is Bookmark Folders. Predictable and boring, I know! But I bet you aren’t using Bookmark Folders quite like this.

You’re probably accustomed to seeing Bookmark Folders used to save various websites. I use them in this way, too (recipes I love! Books that sound interesting! Vacations I’m planning!) but knowing how to have Bookmark Folders set up to streamline your workflows is where the magic is at ✨

Here’s an example: let’s say that each month, you have to pull the same performance report and send it to stakeholders at your company. You could be one of two people:

😫Person A) You sit down to work on the report and try to remember where you pull the monthly account engagement numbers from, navigate to the website, try to remember your password, finally get logged in, and then navigate through the site’s interface for 5 minutes before you find the page with the monthly engagement stats. Once you export that CSV file you open the next site, where you grab your ad spend and performance metrics, but that interface is complex, too, and you spend a lot of time clicking around various tabs and menus trying to remember the steps to export the monthly statement. Finally, you go to Google Drive, navigate to the folder with past reports, create a new Google Sheet for this month, and start plugging the information in so you can export the report.

🤗Person B) You sit down to work on the report. You right-click on your Bookmark Folder titled “📊 Monthly Performance Report” and select “Open all 9 in New Window”. Within 2 seconds a new browser window appears with all the pages you need.

I think we’d all prefer to be Person B, right? Most of us perform dozens of tasks like this each day, and taking a couple of minutes to set up a Bookmark Folder to support the task saves so much time and energy in the long run.

Not sure what type of Bookmark Folders you’d create? Here are some ideas:

🎤Podcasting: A Bookmark Folder that contains the sites and services you use for recording, editing, publishing, and promoting new podcast episodes.
👠 Shopping: A Bookmark Folder with the 5-10 sites you use the most often for online shopping, opened to the specific page (ex. Women’s clothes > filtered to your size. Or the sales page for your favorite brand so it’s easy to take a peek).
💌 Newsletter: A Bookmark Folder that contains the sites and services you use for writing, creating graphics, proofreading, and sending your weekly newsletter.
📁 Report: A bookmark Folder with the sites and services you use for creating specific reports.
👩🏻‍⚕️ Health: A Bookmark folder with information related to you + your family’s health needs — the nurse hotline/chat, scheduling appts with your doctor, a Google Drive folder with relevant info/files, etc.
📞 Clients: A Bookmark Folder you can access right before you jump on a call with a client. It opens up your Zoom account + your Google Folder that has docs for notes you take during each client call.

When you’re ready to give ‘em a try, the video below will walk you through how to set up a Bookmark Bar and create Bookmark Folders, and helpful tips like right-clicking the folder to open all the bookmarks in a new window or separate tabs. See below for step-by-step directions:

These directions are all for Google Chrome using a Windows laptop, but the steps are similar in most browsers.

Add a Bookmark Bar to your browser:

1. Click on the three dots in the top right of your browser window.

2. Hover over "Bookmarks and Lists"

   

3. Choose "Show Bookmarks Bar" from the menu.

4. The Bookmarks Bar will then appear below the address bar in your browser and may be empty to start with.

Add a Bookmark Folder to the Bookmark Bar:

1. Right-click anywhere in the Bookmark Bar and choose "Add Folder."

   

2. Name the new folder and ensure it is located in the right spot (not nested in a folder unnecessarily), and click Save. I like to put an emoji in the folder name so it’s easy to identify.

Bookmark a Website to a Folder:

1. Go to the website you want to bookmark and navigate to the specific page you want to access. You can sign in and choose “remember password” if you’d like to be logged in automatically.

2. Click the star icon in the far right of the address bar.

3. Adjust the name of the Bookmark if necessary. I like to keep them short and specific.

   

4. Confirm that the correct folder is selected, or click the dropdown to choose a different one.

5. Click "Done”.

Note: When a website is bookmarked, the star icon in the address bar will be solid in color.

Open All + other Time-Saving Tips:

1. Right-click on any of the Bookmark Folders you’ve set up in the Bookmarks Bar.

2. You can then choose to open all the Bookmarks in the folder in “New Tabs” “A New Window” or “A Browser Group”. I usually chose “In a New Window” so that I get a separate window and no distractions and can easily close out when the task is completed.

   

3. To easily manage all of your Bookmarks and Folders, right-click in your browser bar and choose "Bookmark Manager”. Here you can quickly edit or delete your Bookmarks.

4. View your bookmarks in a side panel in Google Chrome by clicking the "Expansion" icon in the top right of your browser window (usually to the left of your profile/user photo). This will open a side panel. Choose "bookmarks" from the dropdown.

Note: Google Chrome also has a built-in feature called Tab Groups, which can function in a similar way. I still prefer Bookmark Folders, but this option can also be worth exploring.

Two quick additional tips before I go! 1. Make it part of your Monthly Review Day (or a seasonal habit) to clean out your bookmarks. I use the bookmark manager (tip #3 above) to quickly move or delete things so my folders don’t get cluttered with random websites. 2. Bookmarks are also accessible if you’re using the same browser and user profile on your phone. I love this for my “🥗 Recipes” bookmark which makes it easy for me to pull up recipes in the grocery store.

If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy these tutorials:

Organize Your Work With User Profiles 👨🏻
How to Designate Browser Start-Up Tabs 💻

Did you find this helpful? What Bookmark folders do you plan to set up? Are there other ways you’ve found Bookmark Folders helpful? Share below (click the 💬 icon if you’re in email).