Today is the Day: A Major Overhaul

Today is the BIG day I've been waiting for. My house is like a giant inbox with piles of papers and books absoulutely everywhere. After almost two years of following David Allen's GTD and implementing as much as I seemed able to implement, I decided to take four dedicated days to go through all the piles, put post-its on everything as soon as I lay eyes on it, then sort and throw away or put in appropriate piles for labeling and filing. I have four wonderful Research Assistants (RAs) coming over on and off for the whole four days (they are free undergraduate labor from UCB, and the pay off for them is they will be knee high in research papers and they can sit down and read any time they want to --Its my job to be sure they are learning as they are in the act of helping me. I also have four new wooden file cabinets arriving tomorrow morning. Last summer I consolidated all of my offices here, into my home office, and there was an influx of stuff that is only now going to be dealt with. I get wooden files becasue they are essentially home furniture and metal would look way too cold. I have my fingers crossed that I can throw out enough such that the file cabinets already in the house, combined with the new ones, will be able to accomadate my papers. Some things we may have to put into storage. For example any data I have collected over the years that is in hard copy (now we use the Internet as our data collection device) has to be kept for at least 10 years, and I get worried about throwing it out before we hit 12 years. Suffice it to say there is way too many banker boxes holding years of studies, pre-Internet.

I think, following David Seah's plan of action (he is doing an experiment of trying to develop the habit of going to bed earlier and waking up at 6:30AM, and I've been doing the same --for two weeks now, and for the most part I've been successful and it is helping me get more done, much to my amazment. Well Seah's been doing it and he has developed a ritual of going to a coffee shop every morning and planning his day in a "morning notebook." I think I will imitate this, as I am so poor at planning and maybe it would teach me to become a better planner.

So I'm off to planning the four days of "collection" and "clarification."