Here’s the secret to how I stay sane, even on the busiest day: Multiple Google Chrome profiles. Right now, I have four. One is tied to my personal Gmail, one is for my school, one is for work here at Lifehacker, and one is for another business I help out with. I even color-coded them so that when I switch back and forth, I get a little visual cue that I’m changing gears. I can’t recommend this method enough for staying organized in all the different parts of your life, and here’s why.

The first and most obvious reason I don’t want to use the same browser profile for everything is that the number of tabs I would have open at once would overwhelm me. In my personal browser, I work on things like my bills, my part-time jobs, my hobbies, my interests, social media, and keeping up with my friends and family. In my school profile, I’m logged into sites that help me create bibliographies, access libraries of journal articles, and check my grades. For work, I use my profile to check my email, research stories, write the stories, and log into our story editor. In fact, I’m not logged into social media on either my school or work profiles, logged into anything school-related on either my personal or work profiles, or logged into anything work-related on either my personal or school profiles. This helps me keep everything separate without having to close tabs for space, plus it helps me stay focused on what I’m working on since I can’t easily pull up social media when I’m writing an essay or respond to a school email when I’m at work. Each profile is tied to a specific Google account, so it includes a unique Gmail inbox as well as access to Google Docs. Not having my personal, work, and school documents all in the same Drive helps me keep them organized much better.

My fourth profile is for a separate business venture I do with other people. We are all logged into the same profile, which makes collaboration very easy. We can update Google Calendar, view important emails and coordinate responses, plus have a shared search history, bookmarks, etc.

I really like this level of separation. Like I said, I even downloaded different colored themes for each profile. When I see the lilac theme, I know it’s time to work. The dark purple theme tells me it’s time to focus on school, and the rainbow theme means I’m taking care of personal stuff. Each of these profiles has its own search history, bookmarks, saved locations, and settings, which also helps keep everything organized and separate. Each of the profiles corresponds to one of my many email addresses, but not all of my Gmail accounts have a profile on my computer. For example, the Gmails I use for spam or to sign up for trial accounts of certain apps are only used on my phone, and if I need to open one on my computer, I just do so in a private window.