Let’s face it, your productive work life is finite. You will only be able to work for so many years at such and such a pace, and then one day that will end. When it comes to getting things done, taking control of your immediate environment works wonders. Coordinating the arrangement of the physical as well as psychic spaces in your career in an anticipatory, supportive manner helps propel you into getting things done.
A few terms and concepts are worth introducing here. Practically speaking, much of getting things done comes down to how well you’re able to retrieve what you need, and much of that adds up to a single concept: filing.
Filing is a non-glamorous tool for getting and staying organized. Filing involves allocating information and materials into their best home, for now. What do you need to be a good filer? Clear objectives and the space to put a chair in front of a filing cabinet. If you fear that filing means you're becoming a caretaker, remind yourself you are taking care of items or information that you deem to be important. If it isn't important, don't save it. If it is important, file it with gusto.
Conditioning your environment is a crucial step in organizing and filing effectively. This means that you arrange, stock, and maintain such spaces in a manner that supports your efforts. Organizing a desk drawer initially takes time and may be slow going. Thereafter, finding what you want in the desk drawer is simpler and faster. If you avoid organizing the drawer all together, always have things strewn about, and go on a "hunt" each time you need to find something, in little ways, you're hampering your productivity potential rather than devising a system that will support you every time.
Managing the beforehand, as opposed to the aftermath, involves creating space—mentally or physically—in advance of what comes next.
Managing the Beforehand
With vacant space, you have now created a clearing for the things that you'll be receiving. These include new policy memos, articles you want to save, meeting notes, and course information that you want to review at a later date. The items may be different for each person. The important point in an over-information society is to take control in advance—manage the beforehand—as opposed to dealing with the aftermath of too much information.
Managing the beforehand is a term coined by Jeff Davidson which means to prepare for something in advance of a need, such as to prepare your files in anticipation of new items that are coming. Rather than having files and cabinets filled to their brims with information, strip them of all excess materials so that you have some vacant space.
Once you develop the habit of clearing space in all the compartments of your life: your desk, your car, your closets, etc., you accomplish many things: you demonstrate to yourself that you do have enough space to manage your career and conduct your affairs, and you keep in a ready state to handle what is next rather than trying to figure out where to store things or how to create ad hoc piles.
