One of my primary – and most difficult – goals for 2008 is to increase my productivity and decrease my stress by becoming organized and ceasing the many forms of procrastination I employ on a regular basis. The reason for this move toward cleaning up my activities is that there are a lot of things I want to do and I often feel that, short of staying up until 3:00 AM and getting up at 4:00 AM, I just do not have enough time to accomplish everything.
Not only does this make me feel overwhelmed and stressed, it makes me eliminate things at the last minute. I end up eliminating dinner with friends or grocery shopping – the things that I really should be adding to my schedule rather than subtracting. To eliminate this stressful habit, I started looking into Getting Things Done systems. This week I will be running a series explaining how I went about picking and choosing the pieces of GTD that would work for me.
First, though, I want to tell you about a filing system that is simply killer for staying on top of actionable items. In this article I am going to walk you through setting up your very own 43 Folders filing system.
Items You Will Need
- 43 folders
- Labels for the folders
- A printer or pen to mark the lables
- Knowledge of the Gregorian calendar
Okay, so I’m being a bit facetious here, but I do have a point. The point is that this system is super-easy to set up, but it will really help you keep on top of things.
The first thing you are going to do is label your folders, You will need one folder for each month and then folders labeled 1-31 for each day of the month. You will rotate these folders as days pass, so you just need one set of 31 days.
At the beginning of the month you will have all the days in order. Then, as each day passes, you will move it to the next month so you can reuse it. The key is to capture everything with a deadline and write it down. You either put the note (or concert tickets, invoice, etc.) in the appropriate day’s folder – if it’s within the next 31 days (depending on the month length, of course) – or, if it is farther out than that, you put it in the folder for the month in which it takes place. Then, when it is within 31 days you can move it to the appropriate day folder.
Here’s a quick example in case any of this is confusing:
It is March. I buy concert tickets for June 27th. When the tickets arrive, I place them in the June folder. When June arrives, I review the June folder and the concert tickets are then placed in the day 27 folder.
43 folders is a very easy task-capturing system and the best way I have ever found to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. When it comes to deadlines, I have always had a killer memory. However, my life is so packed right now that I can’t always count on it. Sometimes I think I can and then I realize (usually too late) that I have forgotten something crucial. The 43 folders system insures that all my events and other time-dependent items are documented and I am reminded of them when I need to be.
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