Here’s a story from the early nineties, a time when much information in the workplace was stored and moved on sheets of mashed tree pulp.
Back then I was doing research into Artificial Neural Networks, and my coworkers at Intel got into the habit of mailing me (in an inter-office envelope) a copy of any article on the subject that they came across. And I got into the habit of piling the articles at the corner of my desk, so that I might read them one day when I had the time. After all, they were articles in my field of interest, so it made sense that I should read them and become wiser.
Unfortunately, the day when I’d have time never came, and the pile of papers kept growing higher, and my morale went lower in proportion… Still, what could I do but keep the papers? They were in my field of interest, right?! I couldn’t risk missing out on any of them!
Then one day I had an epiphany. I dumped the whole pile in the trashcan and resolved that when that auspicious day finally came, I would buy the best book on ANN out there and read it instead. After all, the papers were pushed at me without much selection, so the best book was guaranteed to be better. The pile was gone, my morale went up again, and guess what… the day has yet to arrive.
I’m sharing this story because of its clear analogy to today’s information overload. Many people have overflowing Inboxes because they feel they need to receive and keep mailings that are related to their field, even if they lack the time to read them in real time so they just accumulate. They’re afraid to miss out on the wisdom. Yet in reality life is too short to read it all, and one is far better off deleting many FYI messages, however enlightening; if you’re left with bandwidth to spare (yeah, right) you can always put it to better use when it’s you deciding how to apply it. Give it a try and see!
This goes specifically for GTD users, regarding the ‘Read Later’ category. ‘Later’ never comes, and if it’s that good – you’d be able to search and find it in another way.
Still, with practically-endless storage space in Gmail, it doesn’t hurt to throw things in that category.
@someday (or read later category) is somewhat a weakness in GTD
what (kinda) works for me is this :
1. go over the someday list (quickly) on weekly checkouts and see if u want to push a @someday issue to @action
2. Use @someday to really far fetched issues, to those u might wanna tackle later give a 3 months due date
When I worked for DEC in the early 1990s, I used to amaze my colleagues when they came to my office to ask a question about a technological trend or a size of a specific market–I would stick my hand into the huge pile of papers on my desk and pull out the piece of paper with the answer to their questions.
Fifteen years alter, when I moved from my office at EMC to work full time at home, I spent a week or more going through the piles of papers and throwing about 50% out. I didn’t touch what was neatly filed in my file cabinets and EMC shipped every single file and (unorganized) paper to my home. There the files joined in the basement the files from my DEC period. Every summer I plan to go through all of these files, find out what’s in them, and through away what I really really don’t need to keep.
That hasn’t happened yet. But I’m happy to report breaking news regarding some recent progress. For the last five years I’ve been piling up papers (and magazines and books) on the floor of my finished attic. This past week I finally forced myself to filter and purge–my wife was out of town teaching in Hong Kong for a month and I planned to surprise her with a clean attic when she comes back today.
I got rid of some 300 to 400 pounds of papers and magazines. What I couldn’t part with (hey, quitting cold is not that easy, you know?) is being moved to the basement. I still have a little pile (very little, I promise) that I pledged to myself to file in all the right folders very very soon.
Question is, what’s better: having an unorganized pile of paper right next to you or have everything neatly filed in file cabinets never to see the light of day again?
–paper addict