We now know that the piler brain typically has fantastic creating elements. They bring fun, innovation and beauty to our lives. For years we marginalized pilers because they looked like slackers. In reality, many geniuses were probably pilers: Einstein, Picasso, Beethoven, da Vinci. An educated guess is that many architects, writers, artists, inventors, designers, and entrepreneurs have the Piler gene, which hasn't been identified yet, but I'm sure it's there.

My theories about pilers are:

1. They use multi-tasking, multi-minding and random-order processing to innovate. They can cook breakfast, feed the dog, read the paper and answering email all within the same space of time and in no particular order.

2. They quickly switch from conscious to sub-conscious in order to pack in the data points on the creations they are brewing. Switching gives each idea space to breath.

3. They think in a circular fashion because they see connections everywhere, while linear thinking limits their creativity.

Oftentimes, pilers do not like their work to be put away and buttoned-up. The folks at Pendaflex are getting that point. They've created a product line called PileSmart to help pilers stay organized. The Project Sorter is great for housing beefy projects or task sets. The papers destined for a project sorter can at least land near the sorter until you have a few minutes for sorting, which allows for a mix of creativity and rigidity.

We work tirelessly to customize and create solutions that work with creative piler minds. Sometimes pilers and their minds need help systemizing, simplifying, ordering and producing something out of their creative thoughts. They need flexible and adaptable solutions.

Still our society gets down on Pilers. As a person who helps Pilers be successful, I use creative visualization to stay positive. I imagine that our clients are the next Bill Gates or Georgia O'Keefe.

It's not uncommon to send out dozens of emails each week requesting responses or information. Maybe you are emailing a client to find out if they are ready for service, you need a staff member to email you a document or you want to know where the next staff meeting will be held. Wouldn't it be great if every time you emailed someone they responded back within the hour with the information you needed? We all know it doesn't work that way. Keeping track of these responses can be difficult. With this trick, however, it can be a bit easier to make sure nothing falls through the cracks of responsibility.

Instead of keeping a big list, say in your dayplanner, of the items you need to follow-up on, once a week review your "Sent Items". The most important piece of this trick is to do it weekly, or it will turn into the "Sent Items" job that you'll never want to do!

It works like this, quickly skim each item in your sent file, and then take one of 3 actions:

(1) Delete it if you have received the response and info that you need.

(2) Send the email out again requesting the info, if it has been at least a few days;

(3) Keep it in your sent list and re-check next week.

As long as you keep cleaning up the Sent folder, deleting what has been resolved, you can quickly see what needs a follow-up.