Tools for Thought

Designating a place for everything is necessary for good organization, but not sufficient. Things need to be accessible where they will actually be used, not just where they “should” be used. Organize resources around your activity zones.
If someone frequently reads in a living room chair facing a television, it’s not practical to keep the library […]

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One of the main obstacles to decluttering is the lack of a designated area, other than the wastebasket, to move clutter to. The main difference between a library and a pile of books is that the library imposes order on disorder, making the collection a functional system. The same principle can be applied to virtually […]

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It’s a great feeling to finish a project that has consumed significant time and attention. Taking time to enjoy the benefits of completion is important. It’s equally important, however, not to let satisfaction become a substitute for further action.
A student finishes his math assignment. Relieved, he goes to the nearby cafe to reward himself with […]

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Some things that have our attention come from the outside world. The phone rings, and we discover that a great home just went on the market. Other things that have our attention come from within. Perhaps it’s time to look into going back to school as a grad student. In both cases, determining whether or […]

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Keeping thoughts exclusively in the mind allows them to fester and die. As soon as a potentially significant thought enters your mind, write it down. Build in the habit of collection: the act of spontaneously recording anything that has your attention. The faster new ideas are written down, the faster newer ideas will emerge in […]

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Checklists are mental inventories made physical. Instead of trying to hold your thoughts on a topic entirely in your head, write them down as a list. Experiment with making checklists for anything and everything that has your attention.
Having a list to review reduces the need to rethink what you need to consider about a topic. […]

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Being neat is different from being organized. Neatness is measured by how well conspicuous disarray is minimized. Organization is measured by how well storage and retrieval decisions are minimized. Standardize as many common decisions as possible. A library is a functional tool because society has agreed on a specific classification system for arranging books. Piles […]

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During the month of April I’m going to publish a series of posts of individual best practices for streamlining workflow. I’ll refer to these practices as “patterns,” an allusion to Christopher Alexander’s seminal book, A Pattern Language.
Alexander’s book weaved a rubric of 253 timeless, almost anthropological principles for architectural, urban and community design, in which […]

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