Spring Cleaning #28: Don’t Clutter Up Expensive Cyberspace

Discovery Exercise:
1. Read about GTD.
I read the Wikipedia article to refresh my memory. I read Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen in August 2007. Although there is a more to the book, what I found most useful was his suggestion on page 14. Get it off your mind and onto paper. To do this, “describe, in a single written sentence, your intended successful outcome for [a] problem or situation. …Now write down the very next physical action required to move the situation forward.”

2. Try one of the online calendars or to-do lists.
I signed up a Ta-da List account when we were planning this module a month or so ago, but I still have been unable to imagine what use I might make of it. I prefer my own ancient (33-year-old) to do list which made its great leap forward in 1995 when it migrated from legal pad to excel spreadsheet. I carry it around with me in my flash drive or print it out for gadget-free MBWA(Management By Walking Around).

3. Write a post about how you can use GTD or what organizational system you already use.

My basic system that I've used for about a decade now is Barbara Hemphill's Taming the paper tiger: organizing the paper in your life (Washington : Kiplinger, 1997), while it says little about computers, the system is not significantly different from Allen's. At a presentation she gave for the Tennessee Library Association in March 1997, Hemphill referred to the in-tray on the desk as a pile of guilty procrastination. It certainly rang true for me. Like Allen she recommended putting everything in a big pile to sort. After this there were only three things to do with each piece of paper in the tray.

1. Toss it in the wastebasket. The art of “wastebasketry” is an essential skill. Put a trash can next to the fax, the meeting room, and the file cabinet.
   
2. Act on it
   
3. File it for future reference
   

Alas, searching the web now for information about Taming the paper tiger only returns the software that Kiplinger is currently peddling. Fortunately, the 2002 edition of Taming the paper tiger at work is available at your local public library.