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Doin' it on paper
ozhuner | May 23 2006
This one goes out to all of you who are keeping it together on paper, hipster, index cards or whatever. My question relates to living in a digital world while using pen and paper to track your tasks and projects. I'd like to know what your experience is like, given that so much of our information comes to us via email or the web. So much of the information related to (my) tasks comes in email, for example. Do you re-write information on your cards or in your pen and paper system, that originated in email? Do you find this a good thing mentally or a pain? If you do use paper and pen to manage your tasks, then do you also use an electronic system? Do you print out electronic stuff and add to it with pen and then enter hand-written tasks? Basically, I'm interested in knowing how people who work with paper and pen deal with their information that arrives electronically. Thanks in advance for your insights! 12 Comments
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 I'd like to know...Submitted by krackeman on May 24, 2006 - 6:51am.
ozhuner wrote:
I'd like to know what your experience is like, given that so much of our information comes to us via email or the web. So much of the information related to (my) tasks comes in email, for example. The harsh truth about my life is that, although my email is in fact a very wide data pipe that does contain a lot of information, the signal to noise ratio is out of whack. My process, quite simply, is to process it as I would a scribbled note from a meeting: What's the next action? 50% of the time, it falls under the 2 minute rule and I am done with it before it hits my system. 45% of the time, it is a simply stated NA that does not need the email as support material. (i.e. Call Bob re: xyz, Burn CD of PPT -> Mary, etc.) for the remaining 5%, when someone has written me an email with vital information, I print the email and put it in a project folder, mark my NAs and move on. I used to keep email folders for "in process" work, but the lines between actionable and reference were gone in minutes. So now, all of my emails get filed in a folder called "The Pile". I also have a folder called "waiting for", so I can fire off a quick quoted reply if needed. That's it really. In. Waiting. Pile. The search feature of my email program is sufficient to retrieve from "The Pile". (True Confession: I DO keep SOME project folders as sub-folders of "the Pile", but these are usually for large (3-6month) projects. ) So, in summary: I should mention that project support folders are a HUGE part of my system. I have a bin dedicated to clear file jackets, labeled with active projects, so printed materials do not tend to get lost in my notebook driven system. Good luck in finding what works for you! » POSTED IN:
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