Here, it’s 1 degree fahrenheit. The wind chill’s minus-19. I would put the metric equivalent for my Canadian readers, but you’re both used to snow and temperature conversions. 🙂
Snow blows.
It’s a perfect day to shovel all your s…now … ‘snow’ here being not particularly witty code for tasks, emails, and other mental clutter drifting through your life:
- Designate one inbox.
- Go through your email – collect tasks from the last three months that have been drifting around in there. Either type them in a text file or write them on slips of paper.
- When listing them, start each with a verb. Specificity’s important. “Email Bill about blah.” “Clean out inactive file folders.” “Learn Portuguese.”
- Throw them in the inbox.
- Think about personal projects. Stuff you want to get down with your kids or around the house. Type them in a text file or write them on slips of paper. Throw them in the inbox.
- Do you have one of them someday maybe folders that David Allen talks about? Review all those. Throw ‘em away or into the inbox.
- Have an overstuffed @action folder in your inbox that needs shoveling? Today’s the day, bub.
- Have a list of books you’ve been planning to read. Get ‘em out of your head and into your inbox?
- E-books you bought? Online class materials you purchased? Inbox.
What else?
Shovel it all into your inbox. Do it today.
Eliminate psychological accumulation that causes you to drift.
It’s cluttering up valuable corners of your mind you could use for other stuff.
Purge it. Shovel it out of your mind and into one collection area.
You’ll feel twenty pounds lighter heading into the weekend, and you can toast your clean metaphysical driveway with a big cup of Tim Horton’s coffee.
(That’s a not particularly witty way of coming full circle with the Canadian references …)
So true. Great post, Tim. Aside from that INBOX, 43 Folders help too: distributes the to-do’s along a time horizon. Each day you start by opening the folder for that day. My goal: empty inbox, empty daily folder. I’m taking your advice this afternoon. But, may need bigger shovel.
Too true, Tim,
Whenever I actually complete projects and unclutter, I get a fresh wave of energy and optimism. So why don’t I do this all the time a la GTD?
That’s the real question isn’t it?
– Jeff
Well, I think what helped me turn a corner was:
A) Realizing I hated GTD. I felt like I spent all my time classifying and no time actually doing.
B) Shaping my own meatloafy mutt of a system that combined the thises and thats of the various methodologies and then sticking to it.
C) Sticking with it some more. I tried more than a dozen different apps and systems. A friend, Michele Miller, shook me out of it and said, “Just pick one.” I did. Now, it’s become habit.
For example, Charlie’s aforementioned 43 folders scares the whoopinstuffs out of me. I’d get buried underneath the taxonomy. I have to have something I perceive as leaner and simpler. Charlie’s very smart. I have a wee brain that struggles to remember to put on pants sometimes much less parse more than 40 folders.
Just pick one. Give it 30 hard days to overcome the toxicity of resistance, old habits, and whimsy.
Once I’ve shoveled all my “snow” into a big pile/inbox, how do go about getting it “plowed away” without being overwhelmed?