Stacks of stuff

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” (A.A. Milne), from the Jack's Winning Words blog today.


OK, so I know that I'm a bit of a messy hoarder. I have stacks all over my desk at home and every now and then I have to just stop and go through them to get them back down to a less intrusive size. I'm just one of those people who saves everything. I've never been good at the management principal that says "read it once and either file it or throw it away." I tend towards, read it once and put it in a stack on the desk. Later I either file it (seldom) or throw it away.


Sometimes this comes in handy, when I suddenly find that I need the name or phone number of someone that I dealt with months ago. They are likely on a piece of paper somewhere in one of my stacks. But, where? That does consume a bit of time that could likely be better spent on other things.



I also have virtual piles of paper all over my computer, many of them duplicates of the physical piles on my desk. I do 6-8 Market Analyses per week for potential clients. I print out a copy of each one and put it in a box next to my desk AND I keep a copy in a file on my computer. Why? Well, because I use the pile in the box to help me remember whom to add to my newsletter mailing list, plus I just feel better about being able to reach into that box and retrieve a specific client's Market Analysis to reference, should they call. (Hoarders always can conjure up some logical sounding reason for why they keep everything).

So, this is likely another thing I should work on as I get older (in addition to being more positive about things). I do find that I need less and less of the stuff that I save, so just not saving it in the first place is the next step. But what if I needed to find...


Oh, well. time to go through the stacks and throws some stuff out. Now, if I can just make a new stack over here to put stuff in that I should keep and anotrher stack over there for stuff that I should really sort through...