Hugh’s Blog

Give your Orphans a Home

The only way you can deal with all the miscellaneous papers that litter your  desk, cabinets, shelves and office floor is to have a new system. If you don’t have a better system they will continue to migrate into your work area, cover available flat spaces and distract you. (remember, if you can see it you will be experiencing a form of multitasking all day).

Most of these reports, papers, mail and notes don’t have a home in your typical filing systems – they are orphans – and they need a new home.

The system described on this page is potentially the greatest technique for getting control of your papers, reducing ‘mental multitasking’, feeling more in control and creative and feeling less anxious about all the incomplete tasks. Sound like a bold claim? Invest 10 minutes to create this system, try it for one week and you will find out why this is so successful for our clients that use it.

First, stand up, have a look around your workspace and make a quick mental inventory of all the paper orphans that are living there. These will include: mail, reports to be read, minutes from meetings, conferences to attend, bills to pay, files to review, etc.

Next, create a simple A-Z action filing system. This could be a simple accordion file or hanging files in a desk drawer with hanging folders.
Now take all the orphans that don’t belong in the normal files in the office and one-by-one put them in one of the A-Z files.

Each time you do this record it in your day-timer system (such as Tasks in Microsoft Outlook ). Make a note of what the task is and add the locator “AF” (for Action File) and the letter you chose for the orphan (it actually doesn’t matter what letter you choose as long as you record the location). For example the task of making calls to research pricing for printed order forms could be recorded as “Make calls to research pricing on forms AF-F”.

Finally choose the date that you want to deal with the item.

Now you have a very simple system for temporarily storing all the orphans, your flat spaces are clear and you can focus on one task at a time.

Use this system for one week and then review how well it is working for you. Are you noticing a change? How difficult is it to maintain? How can you modify the system to best work for you?

Note: remember that if you are using Outlook Tasks you can select the Category you want to record the task reminder in by selecting a category in the window in the bottom-right corner of the Task Window. Next go your main Outlook Window and set up your Tasks to display by Category: Select Task View: View>Arrange by>Categories. This is a neat way to quickly see what your Boulders are, your plan for the Week, etc.