Pare Down the Piles

Into every career and life some rain must fall and, apparently, some piles will accumulate be they stacks of mail, reports, survey forms, seminar announcements, catalogs, etc. A basic step in managing information overload is to confront the piles head-on with a take-no-prisoners attitude. If you haven't noticed already, such piles can accumulate in a hurry. A couple of file folders, issues of a magazine, some office memos, something you clipped from the newspaper, a single day's worth of mail, some fliers left by your door, and POOF, you've got a pile!

Beware of Killer Piles – Piles, by their nature, tend to represent complexity and unfinished
business. Each pile in your visual field, i.e., that you encounter in any given day, registers in your brain, if only for a pico second at a time, as more stuff that you haven't really dealt with. Fortunately, there are ways to handle the ad hoc piles materializing a little too frequently in your life:

* Dismantle piles with relative grace. Have available a pen, some file folders, paper clips, rubber bands and a stapler. Now you're ready to collect everything on your desk or table or elsewhere that needs, or you suspect may need, attention. Stack all of it in front of you in a temporary pile. If the pile is high, your incentive to do so may be that much greater. In 30 minutes or less, you're going to dismantle and reallocate this simplicity-threatening pile. Allocate each item to one of four locations – an important pile, an urgent pile, an interesting pile, or the recycling bin, where most items will go.

* Allocate to the best of your knowledge. If an item is urgent and important, place it in the important pile near the top. If it's simply urgent, place it in the appropriate pile. If you are unsure of any particular item, place it at the bottom of the large stack, but only do so once for each item. On the second encounter, you have to classify it. In thirty minutes or less, the voluminous pile should be gone, and you're left with three semi-neat tiny piles. Rank the items and then re-arrange them in each pile. Downgrade or toss anything you can. You're left with three smaller, more precisely arranged piles, important, urgent, and interesting.

* Get meaner and leaner. What else can you chuck? What can be combined, ignored, delayed, delegated, done in multiples, armed-out, automated, systemized, or used for kindling? The more items you can downgrade to interesting, the farther ahead you'll be because you can deal with these items when you feel like it.

* With what's left, tackle items one by one. After you've identified the most important project or task at the top of the important folder, begin working on it. If you can't complete it, proceed with it as far as you can go. Then place it back in the folder, either on top or where you determine it now belongs. Similarly, begin on the next most important item and proceed
as far as you can go.

Reduce the Volume of Items

When you continually seek to reduce the volume of items you’ve retained, you have a better chance of managing information overload:

Rather than keeping a five-page report, retain only the single page that you actually need. Rather than retaining an entire page, clip the paragraph, address and phone number, or key item of information that you actually need, and chuck the rest of the page. With the small clipping or subsection of page you've retained, tape it to a single page, perhaps one that contains other relevant retained tidbits. Always strive to retain only the bare minimum information that you believe is necessary. Strive to reduce the size/weight/volume of the pile.

Reexamine everything in the pile once again. Even after you've pared down a particular pile to a smaller, more concise pile, review it with the notion "what am I continuing to retain that adds to little or nothing?" Perhaps you are already familiar with the issue an item represents and don't need to retain printed information relating to it.

Fasten together like items. When you've pared down your piles to the lowest possible volume and gotten them into mean, lean, slim, trim shape, keep like items together, using a stapler, paper clip, or rubber band. A paper clip assembling a packet of papers works best for temporary assemblage.

In general, the more like items you can fasten together, the easier it will be for you to find any particular item that you need!