43 Folders

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”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Getting Started

At home today so decided to make a start. First of all I walked around & made individual notes of all the areas that I want to tackle eventually. Set up a permanent inbox on my desk & chucked those in [& misc straggly stuff that I'd gathered on my travels] for later processing. Cleared another area to be used as a temporary 'in/processing' space, grabbed a big stack of empty folders and started on one of the major spaces that needed doing first [one shelf in a cupboard with bank statements & paper junk going back to at least 1988] - piled it high & got stuck in. In all it took around 6+ hours to process that. Fairly heavy going but very therapeutic in the process. Ended up with a ream of scrap paper that's now sitting on my desk for further use, two bin bags of general rubbish & a foot high pile of material to be shredded. Made a start on the shredding but managed to be a bit too enthusiastic & burnt the shredder out! Needless to say, 'get new shredder' [as well as 'get more folders'] are now firmly on my NA list. Early days but so far I'm pleased with the way things are going and the way my thinking is starting to gel into this methodology. The 'my god it's too daunting' thoughts have drifted away a bit, it's just a matter of getting started & seeing where things lead from there. My mind is also a little clearer - I still know that there are lots of areas to be tackled but I also know that they're 'in my system' so I don't have to think about them all just now & they're not bothering me in the same way as before. All in all, a good day & a good start.

direwolf's picture

Forgot to mention - used/needed...

Forgot to mention - used/needed more folders than I expected but that previously disorganised shelf of garbage is now home to my general filing system, a nice neat row of labelled folders :)

 
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