Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Thoughts on Paper
Sometimes it is helpful to refine our goals. We want to live life, to experience it, to continue to learn and enrich ourselves, but sometimes our very hunger for all that interests us is actually what is keeping us from realizing our goals. If you are spending your days clipping and filing articles and write-ups from newspapers and magazines then you aren’t reading them, and you aren’t seeing the plays and exhibitions that you are interested in. It isn’t that you shouldn’t keep anything; it is about the balance of acquisition and digestion versus action.
Think of paper as food. If you go to Paris and you try and eat at every fabulous restaurant in three days you will probably be sick, not to mention broke. However, if you choose one or two really exceptional restaurants, and have really exceptional meals, you will savor the experience more.
We have so many opportunities and while it is great to try and take advantage of them, we must accept that we cannot do it all. By letting go of the idea of doing everything, we are actually able to experience and enjoy what we do more.
As some of you have no doubt realized by now, I am really not a type-A person. In fact, when I listen to some of you a little voice of doubt goes off in my head, “Wow, what a brilliant system. I never would have thought of that. They should be the organizer, not me.” But then I have to take a moment to reflect on why this person has chosen me to help them sort their papers, and why they have trouble filing their taxes and health insurance claims.
And here is what I think: Their systems might be great if they had a full time secretary to implement them, but they don’t.
My systems might not be as elaborate or as foolproof – but my systems are simple enough that one person with a modicum of discipline can maintain them. Often my clients will poke holes in my systems: “But if I put this receipt in…” True enough, when you keep your systems simple you can miss something, but my guess is that when you’ve been letting receipts pile up so you can do your triple-entry system, you have been missing more. Not to mention spending more time, having a messier desk and more backlogs at tax time.
If everything is in place at tax time, you will be able to catch some of the missed items as you add up your columns.
Bits O’ Paper
In yoga, the teacher always says: Be conscious of your breath. I would like to propose the same for the discipline of organization. I realize that since I have become a “professional organizer” I am always conscious of being organized. As I am going through my day a little part of me is constantly aware of making choices that are more efficient.
A lot of you end up with pieces of paper in your purses, shopping bags, jeans and in little piles around your house. We all collect pieces of paper in a day, the trick is to keep them in one place, and then to handle them on a daily basis.
For example, I put all receipts into my wallet. At the end of the day I spend five minutes, often while I am on the phone or checking my email, to go through the receipts. If they are tax-deductions I put them in the appropriate place, if they should be shredded, I do that.
Sometimes I end up with phone numbers, or things I need to enter into my computer. If I have time, I do it then, if not I put them under the “rock” which is the TO DO area of my desk.
It is also important to throw out anything you can. For example, ATM receipts are meaningless. They are a record for you so that you can remember to enter the transaction in your checkbook, but they actually have no legal status. So once you have entered them in the checkbook, get rid of them! The same is true of non-tax deductible receipts. If you save receipts to check against a credit card statement, keep them in one place.
I always try to avoid any middleman steps if I can. If I am at the doctor and make another appointment, I enter it right into my Filofax instead of taking another business card with an appointment time on it.
I try to keep all my lists within my Filofax, that way I always know where to look. For those who need more space, here are some list-wrangling ideas I have come up with for different clients:
- For a client who likes to make lists on index cards, we bought a clear plastic index-card size envelope, so she could keep all the lists together.
- Several clients have begun to use spiral -bound notebooks to keep lists or even tape scraps of paper that they have acquired while out and about. Again, it is about trying to eliminate stashes of bits of paper.
- For a client who has several different jobs, a five-subject spiral notebook that he keeps with him at all times has helped him to separate the different jobs, but also have a place to put ideas whenever they might occur.
Use time well: I often use down-time, like waiting for the subway to do things like empty my pockets of tissue and gum wrappers. After all, the one thing subway platforms have are garbage cans; you may as well make use of them On the ride itself, I might go over my day, cross off what I have accomplished on my to-do list, and contemplate when I might accomplish some of what is left. Since I work all over the city I can often take care of chores when I am in a particular neighborhood– but this only works if I keep my Staples and Zabar’s lists in my Filofax, so when I land near them- I am ready!