Web Worker Daily

So, you’ve been relentlessly getting things done, and your inbox is cleaned out entirely. Is that the end of your goal to reach organizational nirvana? Quite possibly not. The important question is not whether you’ve removed one disorganized pile of items - call it a “heap” - only to ignore others. For many of us, achieving organization in one spot only leads to an outbreak of disorganization in another.

To move beyond this state, you need to do two things: identify your heaps and develop a plan to dispose of them. Rather than thinking of personal organization solely in terms of keeping your inbox under control and knowing when your next appointment is, it’s time to take a more holistic look at your worklife.The easier part of the job is identifying the heaps. Even if you’re a web worker, don’t make the mistake of focusing solely online here. Take a look at everywhere that you can stash things in a mess, and consider whether you’re using it as a dumping ground:

• To-do lists
• Papers on your desk
• Stuff crammed into your wallet or purse
• Flagged messages in your email reader
• Stuff piled on your car dashboard
• …and so on

What you need to locate is heaps that are being used to avoid work. A well-organized tickler file of bills to be paid on specific dates is fine; a pile of disorganized bills on your desk is a danger sign.

Now for the tough part: getting rid of the heaps. Here you can take a lesson from software development: the important thing is not to avoid making mistakes, but to figure out where mistakes come from and to prevent them from happening repeatedly.

The easiest question is whether you really need the stuff in the heap. Are you just hanging on to those CDs of software because you’re a packrat, not because you’ll ever reinstall them? Are half of those flagged messages from two years ago, when you thought you might someday follow-up? Get rid of ‘em. A heap that is just a “someday that will never come” collection just gets in your way.

The next question is whether the heap got that way because you just let little things slip. Entering expenses on a daily basis is easy; converting an entire month’s worth of expenses to a report all at once is a daunting task. Remember the old saw: the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. If you’ve let something pile up because you didn’t deal with items as they came in, take two bites at a time for a while to reduce the pile, then try not to let it get out of hand again.

The hardest heaps to get rid of are those that accumulate because they’re full of things that are both important and distasteful. Into this category go things like working on tax returns, answering complex help requests from annoying users, and filing things. If you have such a heap, you may want to play reward games with yourself: “If I deal with back correspondence for one hour, I can have an ice cream sundae.” Or you may want to look on this as an opportunity to hire a virtual assistant to deal with the jobs that you don’t want to do yourself.

Have you made a successful transition away from heap-based (dis)organization? How did you do it?