Trying to Get Things Done

My desk, after tidying. That’s the neatest it’s been in weeks. I wonder how long I can maintain it like this.

I decided to start using some of my time in the evening to read and perhaps do some writing last night. First I needed to tidy my desk and my study a little bit. I don’t know how, or why, but I have a bad tendency to accumulate vast amounts of paper. No, actually I do know how I accumulate so much paper – I see something interesting online and I print it off. Why? So I can 1) read it in more detail later, and 2) so I have a permanent record of it. This is a complete fallacy, because 90% of the time I don’t read it later, and haphazardly stacked piles of paper are not, in any way, shape or form, permanent records!

I think I should wean myself off this paper dependency and start making a note of things instead – and unless I read something in detail and decide it’s good enough to keep (in which case I can just save a copy electronically!) – that’s all I need to do.

Some of my folders a la Getting Things Done. I need to tidy my filing cabinet next so they can live there…

Last night I chucked out around 50% of the paper that’s been sitting in stacks on my desks. Not only that, but in the spirit of trying to get myself organised a la Getting Things Done, I even got some manila folders and have started filing the papers I want to keep into separate folders. I ought to really get myself properly organised one way or another, though. The book recommends setting aside time to get your working spaces organised. I’d need to do both my study and my office, I think. My office is already halfway there, as I had a blitz a few weeks ago and heaved four years’ worth of paper into a paper recycling bin. I just need to make sure everything is tidied up and filed more elegantly – need to get rid of all those piles!

My study at home is another story. I have boxes of stuff from uni (undergrad and postgrad) that I haven’t looked at in years. Perhaps I need to be brutal and just turf it all out, using the I-haven’t-looked-at-this-in-over-a-year principle. The principle being that I haven’t looked at whatever it is in so long that I have forgotten all about it – so why is so important that I need to keep it? I’ve used this principle once before, many years ago, and it works! I threw a lot of stuff away back then, and it didn’t make any difference to my life that it was all gone.

Obviously if I’m going to keep things in order, I need to be vigilant and regularly chuck things out (not collecting them in the first place would be better, but let’s take this slowly). Last year was The Year of Early Rising, let’s see if this year can be The Year of Getting Things Done.

*This was meant to be an illustrated post – I took a few pictures of the mess! – but Blogger is not cooperating this morning. Edit: Pictures added 5:51am, 29 March.

News flash 7:15am: Check out Open Stacks – for my first ever contribution to a blog carnival! Lots of very interesting posts showcased there, many bloggers reporting on the recent Computers in Libraries conference. I really love the way I can attend all these conferences vicariously through other bloggers. (Will anyone blog Click 06??)

Categories: GettingThingsDone