From Piling to Filing

There is a significant pile on the table that represents my 'IN' box. The pieces will get handled, one at a time, and they don't go back into the 'IN' pile. Some go to 'TRASH' immediately, others have an immediate thing that can be done to move them along, so I stop and do them - two minutes max. Sometimes it's clear what to do but it's going to take more than a couple of minutes, these go into a 'NEXT ACTIONS' folder. A few things go into a 'WAITING FOR' folder...waiting for somebody else to respond or take care of something...their name and a file date are on a sticky note. There a several things that just need to be transferred to a calendar since the date is pretty well set. The rest of the stuff goes into a 'PENDING' pile, to be sorted into 'SOMEDAY / MAYBE' items and 'REFERENCE' filing in an A-Z filing system. So this is where I currently am, both at home and at work. I'm planning to use about a week to bring the 'IN' boxes down to empty, and then another week to handle the 'PENDING' filing, including a way to park items in time over the next couple of months. At that point the system should be reasonably functional.

This is really different from how I've been doing things.

I'm actually getting some things taken care of that would tend to languish in a pile somewhere.

Doubtless there will be things that happen to make it challenging to keep this up.

It's critical to stay on top of the 'NEXT ACTIONS' file since this often has important, time-sensitive items. Flip through it every day, pick out something and do it. Prioritize by intuition.

Another part of the system is a loop including the 'STUFF' being handled, a list of 'PROJECTS', and 'PROJECT PLANS' which gives some context to the 'STUFF.' This will develop and change over a longer time. I think.

It's all about getting things out of my head and into a system. Most of it, anyway. So I can think.