Using Smart Collections to improve your Lightroom Workflow

Sometimes life involves some waiting around.  You find yourself waiting for news from hospitals and other such places, not really able to concentrate on anything important yet trying to find something to do to pass the time.

Fairly recently I found myself in such a situation and looking for something to do to pass the time.  Flicking around Lightroom I came across the smart Collection called "Without Keywords".  I thought that most of my image collection was keyworded,  boy was I wrong.  There were 15,000 pictures in that collection!

If you ever need something mind numming and repetitive to do,  I can recommend keywording 15,000 pictures.

So how had this happened?  I have quite a thought out and orderly workflow,  but I must be missing stuff.
Though a lot of the problem stuff was from an older time before I got more disciplined.

It seems that I need a way to check that I am sticking to my processes and the "without Keywords" smar collection got me thinking.  Why not define my entire archive process a series of smart collections.

So,  how do I create a smart collection that lets me know if I have forgotten to put a location against any of my photos.  Well I have my location keywords in a big hierarchical structure based in a root keyword of "Places":



So if I create a smart collection like this:

Any pictures that appear in it have not had a place added on the keywords.

I have created a series of smart collections that allow me to see easily how far I am through my archival process:

Some of the smart collections are simply place holders to remind me to do stuff: