Friday, April 18, 2008

Spring Cleaning #30: Take a Load Off Our Drives

Since I do not have a personal computer at work -we all share workstations to check our emails and do our timesheets - I do not save files in the P: or S: drives. I went and checked the P: drive to make sure I haven't saved anything and then I created a test file and deleted it. It was very easy. I didn't have any personal files or photos in the S: drive.

In the Z: drive where I have to log into my personal profile I had saved some old timesheets which I deleted and kept a couple of the recent ones. The oldest thing that I found and I was surprised that it was still there was an old picture of me when I worked at Freeman in the old building checkin books. I had completely forgotten about it. I sent it to my personal email and I am planning to save it as momento.

I was more organized than I realized and after this exercise I learned some new ways and I am planning to stay organized specially with my email in the future!

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Spring CLeaning #29 Email

I went through my work email and I really "cleaned it". I had some very old emails some useful and some junk. I deleted all the junk emails from my inbox and spam and empty all the trash.
I created a file and I move all my work related emails that might be useful in the future to that folder. I sent any personal emails that I had to my personal email and deleted them from trash. I also organized my personal email by creating folders and organizing the different emails. I use the computer for emails most of the time so it really helped me get organized there and cleaning up some cyberspace.
I have a personal email with AT & T Yahoo which has a simple way of staying organized with my email. I just have to drag-and-drop messages into my email folders and keeps my inbox clean.
Both my work and personal emails look very clean and organized now and I intend to keep them this way in the future by keeping them up to date and clutter free.

Spring Cleaning #28 Don't Clutter Up Expensive Cyberspace

I went and read the Wikipedia article about the GTD and it is very interesting but I am not a computer person so it seems kind of complicated to me. It is very helpful for people that are not well organized, it gives very helpful tips and ideas how to get your computer files organized. While reading about the GTD I found this article that talks about it and I found it interested:
So how does GTD work?
This is a really summarized version, but here it is, PowerPoint-style:
1. Identify all the stuff in your life that isn’t in the right place (close all open loops)
2. Get rid of the stuff that isn’t yours or you don’t need right now
3. Create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values
4. Put your stuff in the right place, consistently
5. Do your stuff in a way that honors your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment
6. Iterate and refactor mercilessly

ALSO:
Getting Things Done appeals to geeks for a lot of reasons. Overgeneralizing for effect:
geeks are often disorganized or have a twisted skein of attention-deficit issues
geeks love assessing, classifying, and defining the objects in their world
geeks crave actionable items and roll their eyes at “mission statements” and lofty management patois
geeks like things that work with technology-agnostic and lofi tools
geeks like frameworks but tend to ignore rules
geeks are unusually open to change (if it can be demonstrated to work better than what they’re currently using)
geeks like fixing things on their own terms
geeks have too many projects and lots and lots of stuff

Since I do not use the computer a lot I do not have many things to organize there.
I also checked tha online calendars like the Google calendar and the Ta-da and Bla-bla lists which are interesting but I like to write things down on a calendar which I can carry with me all the time.
Also at work I do not have a personal computer, a have to use a workstation in which I do not have personal files and a personal calendar on the computer.
I have a personal calendar a notebook and a lot of scrap paper and I always make a list of things to do and what to remember. I guess I am old fashioned person. If it works why change it!

Helpful website:

The Ultimate Getting Things Done Index : Getting Things Done
I’ve recently created some handy GTD worksheets that are perfectly suited for creating or enhancing your own paper-based or hybrid GTD system. ...
gtd.marvelz.com/blog/gtd-index - 237k -