Tools for Thought

The human mind is brilliant, but also brilliantly inefficient. We often get our best ideas where we can’t implement them. The classic example is in the shower, but it happens everywhere, anytime. You’re shopping in the produce section of the supermarket, and all of a sudden, you realize you need to add an important topic to next week’s meeting agenda. Or you see your spouse’s picture on your desk at the office, and suddenly you get an impulse to plan a romantic escapade.

One way to cope with the brain’s lack of discipline is to keep your life compartmentalized. If a personal issue occurs to you at work, just ignore it, and if it’s important, you’ll think about it when it’s relevant. That’s a big risk to take (forgetting the odd anniversary) in the name of simplifying your life. And it’s totally unnecessary.

All you really need is a good collection and transfer protocol. If you’ve been reading Tools for Thought for a while, you probably know the drill by now: write it down, throw it in your in-basket and process it into your calendar or lists.

By what if the source material from work needs to go home, or vice versa? What about the articles you printed out for your Read/Review stack that you could chip away at in between errands? What if you’re a road warrior whose primary office is a laptop?

Using plastic travel folders

The simple solution is to create a set of semipermanent folders for collecting things on the run, schlepping things between work and home, or keeping things on you for supporting certain tasks. You can buy them preprinted from the David Allen Company, but they’re much cheaper to make if you have the labeler that no serious GTD user would be caught dead without.

Since these folders will get a lot more handling the general reference files you keep in your file cabinet, it’s better to use plastic folders rather than generic manila ones. The standard set consists of the following labels:

• In: This folder acts as your portable in-basket when you’re not deskbound, keeping any new documents, notes and receipts you collect from randomly spreading throughout your go bag. If you make your own set, it’s a good idea to make this one a different color than the rest (traditionally, red), since it will probably be the most frequently accessed
• To Home: If you’d rather not process personal items at work, or if they simply need to be stored at home, this is their temporary holding area
• To Office: Same concept, opposite direction
• Action Support: It’s usually more practical to have a single folder for any paperwork that you need to reference on all your errands than carrying separate project support folders, unless you have a lot of them
• Waiting For Support: Not one I’ve ever used personally. I just use Action Support for any actions I’m taking myself or expecting from others
• Read/Review: Technically not a travel folder, but you’ll probably make at least as much use of it in transit as you would in the office. Standing in lines is a great time to get through some of your reading material

Naturally, you can customize folders to your preference. You might want a separate “Receipts” folder instead of throwing your receipts in your In folder.

Storing and labeling

Before I started working at home, I used a three-tray setup at work: one for In, one for read/review material, and one for action support. The Read/Review folder would go, of course, in the read/review tray; the Action Support and To Home travel folders would go in my action support tray; the other folders would stay in my bag.

It’s a good idea to not only label each folder at the tab, but also toward the bottom edge in the center. Insert the folders so that the bottom edge face towards you. That allows you to see the labels clearly without getting obscured by the papers inside — you don’t have to lift the papers to see the labels. Apply some clear tape over each label to keep them from peeling away from the surface. If you really want to make the folders more aesthetic, use clear label tape with white lettering, but for me that’s overkill.

If you have any travel folder categories that you’ve found to come in handy, please mention them in the comments.

(Photo credit: The David Allen Company)

Technorati Tags: GTD, Productivity