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Advice pls for 'going through my stuff' 1st time
kenzi | Apr 5 2006
I can't put it off any longer and must go through my stuff. I can't move forward with GTD until I do this, but it still feels like a monumental task to me. I am going to start this weekend, and take Monday off to do it. I would greatly welcome any advice you all can give me to help me through this, especially stuff that the book didn't tell you but you wish you knew before you did it. Here is some background: the place where 95% of my stuff is, is my home office/home. I have a job that pays the rent, but it's not an issue with respect to GTD except as an action item: go to work. I run a small business out of my home (I import handicrafts from Morocco and sell them on my website kenzi.com, plus I am a henna artist taking clients at home but also doing house calls. My home office/store is about 40% of my home; I work on my computer, store my inventory, process orders, welcome clients, etc. all at home. I also work on some creative projects, some of them for the business and some just for pleasure. A lot of my business stuff is mixed in with my home stuff, plus I have boxes that I haven't unpacked since I moved 4 years ago, boxes with work stuff in them. I have mapped out my home showing where there are piles of papers (my main organizational nemesis) and also boxes of stuff to go through. I also plan to deal with the personal/home stuff as well as the work stuff since the overall disorganization of my home/home office is making me crazy. I live in a loft with NO closets (though working on buying armoires) and only open space. I have a lot bookshelves and one filing cabinet. I think that I should buy another filing cabinet. I think that is sufficient background, but feel free to ask me any questions. I really welcome any suggestions you may have. 35 Comments
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 Good luck!Submitted by angelotrivelli on April 7, 2006 - 2:41am.
kenzi wrote:
And another question about the folders.... Folders-- Yes, you do need a lot of them. And as the book says, you should be 100% comfortable with sometimes grabbing _one_ folder, labeling it, and putting _one_ sheet of paper in it. You'll loose all anxiety about the folders the first time you need something and are able to pull it out of your neat and organized file system. As for how to label, it depends on you. I personally like hypenated labelling by subject in the form of " About getting started in general... I found it helpful to initially pile my stuff into loosely categorized piles and then get rid of what was unnecessary, duplicated, or obsolete. I repeated this process multiple times-- for books, magazines, journal articles, widgets, electronics, office supplies, etc. I believe that Dave Allen calls that a "clean and purge" and it is helpful for when stuff gets way beyond the capacity of an "inbox" concept. It took me three weekends of "clean and purge" to get to the point where I could think about processing stuff through a GTD inbox. » POSTED IN:
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