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Pick a big project you have going right now and just try to think of nothing else for more than thirty seconds.
Don’t judge, challenge, evaluate, or criticize. Go for quantity, not quality. Put analysis and organization in the background.
The primary criteria must be inclusion and expansion, not constriction and contraction.
The greater the volume of thoughts you have to work with, the better the context you can create for developing options and trusting your choices.
A project plan identifies the smaller outcomes, which can then be naturally planned.
If you’ve done a thorough job of emptying your head of all the things that came up in the brainstorming phase, you’ll notice that a natural organization is emerging.
Organizing usually happens when you identify components and subcomponents, sequences of events, and/or priorities.
Identify the significant pieces Sort
to the required degree
Decide on next actions for each of the current “moving parts” of the project. Decide on the next action in the planning process, if necessary.
project is sufficiently planned for implementation when every next-action step has been decided on every front that can actually be moved on without some other component’s having to be completed first.
The habit of clarifying the next action on projects, no matter what the situation, is fundamental to you staying in relaxed control.
If the next action is not yours, you must nevertheless clarify whose it is (this is a primary use of the Waiting For action list).
The simple answer is, as much as you need to get the project off your mind.
If the project is still on your mind, there’s more thinking required.
The fundamentals remain true—you must be responsible for collecting all your open loops, applying a front-end thought process to each of them, and managing the results with organization, review, and action.
I recommend that you create a block of time to initialize this process and prepare a workstation with the appropriate space, furniture, and tools.
You’ll need to choose a physical location to serve as your central cockpit of control.
If you feel that you don’t have either—you really don’t have any central physical spot you would call home for dealing with your stuff—it’s imperative that you create one.
The basics for a workspace are just a writing surface and room for an in-tray, and probably (for most people) space for core digital tools as well.
It is imperative that you have your own workspace—or at least your own in-tray and a place in which to process paper and physical material.
trays (at least three) A stack of plain letter-size paper A pen/pencil Post-its (3×3"s) Paper clips A stapler and staples Scotch tape Rubber bands An automatic labeler File folders A calendar Wastebasket/recycling bins Current tools being used for data capture, organizing, and to-do lists, including mobile devices, personal computers, and paper-based planners and notebooks (if any)
Your general-reference filing system should just be a simple
Once you know how to process your stuff and what to organize, you really just need to create and manage lists.
Are you already committed to using something for managing lists and at-hand reference information? How do you want to see your reminders of actions, agendas, and projects? Where and how often do you need to review them? Because your head is not the place in which to hold things, you’ll obviously need something to manage your triggers and orient yourself externally.
General-reference files should hold
articles, brochures, pieces of paper, notes, printouts, documents, and even physical things like tickets, keys, buyers-club membership cards, and flash drives—basically anything that you want to keep for its interesting or useful data or purpose and that doesn’t fit into your specialized filing systems and won’t stand up by itself on a shelf (as will large software manuals and seminar binders).
As more and more information is coming to us virtually, the need to have general-reference locations for ad hoc data on your computer or mobile device is critical.
I strongly suggest that you maintain a personal, at-hand filing system—both physical and digital. It should take you less than one minute to pick something up out of your in-tray or print it from e-mail, decide it needs no next action but has some potential future value, and finish storing it in a
trusted system.
Keep Your General-Reference Files Immediately at Hand
Filing has to be instantaneous and easy.
One Alpha System I have one A–Z alphabetical physical filing system for general reference, not multiple ones.
People have a tendency to want to use their files as a personal management system, and therefore they attempt to organize them in groupings by projects or areas of focus.
The biggest issue for digitally oriented people is that the ease of capturing and storing has generated a write-only syndrome: all they’re doing is capturing information—not actually accessing and using it intelligently.
We need to have a way to overview our mass of collected information with some form of effective categorization. Every once in a while someone has such a huge amount of reference material on one topic or project that it should be put in its own discrete drawer, cabinet, or digital directory. But if the physical material is less than half a file drawer’s worth, I recommend including it in the single general alphabetical system. And if it is a digital grouping, it perhaps deserves its own place as a subdirectory. Make It Easy to Create a New Folder
Make Sure You Have Plenty of Space for Easy Storage
At times when I’m on hold on the phone, I’m purging my e-mail folders and old document directories.
Label Your File Folders with an Auto Labeler
Things you name, you own. Collected but unnamed stuff owns you.
Purge Your Files at Least Once a Year
Reference materials need to be contained and organized within their own discrete boundaries—physically and digitally—so that they don’t cloud other categories in your system, are available for a specific purpose, and can be
accessed efficiently.
you’ve decided to commit a certain amount of time to setting up your workflow system, there’s one more thing that you’ll need to do to make it maximally effective: you must clear the decks of any other commitments for the
duration of the session.
You can only feel good about what you’re not doing when you know everything you’re not doing.
The first activity is to search your physical environment for anything that doesn’t permanently belong where it is, the way it is, and put it into your in-tray.
Here
them:
Supplies . . . include anything you need to keep because you use it regularly.
