Today's post is brought to you from the GTD realm. I've seen David Allen (of GTD fame)'s personal work space making the rounds here, and just this evening I began a the huge undertaking of cleaning off my desk.
My desk usually ranges from totally clean to somewhat messy but recently it got pretty bad. Times when it's clean often means that tons of paper has been shoved into a generic folder and dumped into a drawer. Times when its not usually means the paper is sitting on top of it. This evening's project came from last weekend, when I spent an entire afternoon cleaning and rearranging the office and its closet. I was able to successfully reorganize most of my paper files, and also found tons of paper that I want to digitize and then throw away, most of which ended up on my desk.
The project is still going - thank god for long weekends - but I wanted to jot down a few notes for myself and for any one else who might be in the same boat.
I'm taking at least one suggestion from David Allen - get an inbox. Get in the habit of putting all new papers there. Also get in the habit of emptying it out daily. Do, defer, delegate, or drop. I've got a little wire tray that works pretty nicely, and I'm trying to be militant about making sure paper ends up there and only there.
I'm contemplating the tickler file, you know, the one with the 43 folders for Jan-Dec and 1-31.
Also, a bit of inspiration from the video above, the "in progress" folders on the desk. Busted out an old letter sorter that I'm planning to turn into my active files.
Lastly, drawing some inspiration from Mac OS X RAM categories:
Wired - RAM taken by the operating system, can't be used for anything else. This would probably be like brainpower to stay alive, keep breathing, etc. Since that's already delegated to my subconscious, this might be more like the brainpower used for the job that's paying the bills, and making sure the dog gets walked, etc.
Active - Memory used by currently running applications. This can be taken by other applications as long as it gets copied out to virtual memory (the hard drive). This would be that "active" projects file set mentioned above. I can only have a certain number of active projects (3 in the case of this sorter) before things need to get swapped to virtual memory.
Virtual memory - A section of the hard drive dedicated for holding application memory contents that can't fit in memory anymore. This would probably be best represented by the filing cabinet.
Inactive - Memory from recently closed applications. Mac OS X keeps this memory available in case the application is restarted, allowing for a faster startup time. If an active application needs it, it gets reclaimed. Probably best represented by what David Allen calls his personnel files. I guess I don't really have an equivalent.
Free - Totally available memory for whatever the operating system wants. Hm...who has any free time or brainpower?
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