Making It All Work

David Allen has a new book - and while I much prefer his original Getting Things Done, I'm still enjoying reading this new one. Here are a few choice quotes:

You never know how much of your attention is being held captive by a physical space until you do a thorough job of purging it and notice how different you feel. I have a saying - "When in doubt, clean a drawer" - a sentiment that is also true for your car, your gold bag, your clothes closet, your toolshed, your desk drawers, your garden - whatever. ...

We accumulate all kinds of things that are functional when we obtain them, but they lose that functionality over time. When they reach that state, though, they don't throw themselves away. ... Your center desk drawer was the perfect place to keep ballpoint pen refills, as long as you had that pen, but you haven't had that pen for two years. ...

As strange as it may sound, if someone has a big pile of stuff in the corner of his office that he himself has defined as "stuff I don't want to deal with until some undetermined time in the future" and that's exactly where he's decided that kind of material belongs, he's organized. ...

The steady growth of the organizational gear industry only reflects the hunger for gaining control of the huge volume of miscellany that people are collecting in their lives. All the plastic, wire, and wood boxes; all the trays, notebooks, folders, and desk accessories at least provide defining boundaries that help contain and separate stuff. But without a good underlying model for how and why to contain and separate what stuff, and for what purpose, shoppers still wander glassy-eyed down the aisles of the office supply and organizing stores, rather clueless as to what they really need.