Getting things done (very soon)

So recently I have been all about getting things done, saying no, and throwing stuff away. It’s a lot of fun. My weapons? My MacBook Pro, Index cards, Smart folders, an external hard drive and a filing cabinet. Let me explain..

Digital World

So how do I keep my computer uncluttered? Its very simple actually. Everything file has a home even if is a catch all folder like, personal. But I also hate extra folders, so what should I do about extra folders? Smart folders. I can delete smart folders and everything stays in place. And I do not store unused doc and apps on my hard drive. Everything gets dumped on my external,.. old notes, songs I never listen to, old pictures I would rather forget and icons. Smart folders and Tags are my new best friends. I wrote an Automator.app workflow that allows me to add tags to spotlight comments on the fly. Tags look like this.. &personal or &work. The beauty of this system is that you don’t need any shareware apps so search,.. all you need is spotlight and or a few smart folders. I also utilize Quicksilver’s tagging plugin. I use smart folders for current projects, after they are complete, they get deleted and I never have to thing about them again. They get dumped on my trusty MyBook Pro. If I need to find them again, I just hook up the external drive and use spotlight.

What about mail? I use the same approach with mail. I recently switched from web based gmail to Mail.app and I have not looked back. Having an archive that can be searched while offline has saved me on several occasions. Everything that gets read or is important gets archived in a DMZ. Current projects get smart folders rather than actual folders, when a project is over i simply delete the smart folder.

What about GTD Apps? No. I tried iGTD and I hated it. Too much work for me. All of my “todo” items (including bills) are added to iCal manually or through Quicksilver.app (transferred from note cards). Complete items go away after they are checked.

Analog World

I’m really bad at life and I am an information junkie but here are a few things I am trying to implement at home.

1. Get rid of temptation (don’t bring stuff home).
2. Throw (almost) everything away.
3. If its important, it gets filed away.
4. Everything has a home, mail in a basket, clothes in a laundry basket, books on a shelf. if it does not have a home it is not important enough to keep.
5. Throw away unneeded cables (most cables) and other cables are stored in a box.
6. “ToDo items are listed on my hpda (i.e. note cards) and if the todo is for a day other than today, it gets put into iCal. When I cross everything off a note card it gets thrown away.

We will see how all of this works out in the next month or so.