The "Only Once" Rule

A very organized friend once told me about her Only Once rule. When you receive a piece of mail, touch it only once and decide where it should go. It may go immediately in the trash (ask yourself if you will even truly need it again) or into a file. GTD seems to be somewhat similar to this. I pledge to try this process: collect, process, organize, review, & do. A problem with this is that there's such an array of tasks that we deal with each day, from creating a grocery list to work projects. I am curious, however, if this process can be applied to these various situations. This means that I will need to be somewhat ruthless by asking myself with each new email if I think I will ever need to deal with this again. In most cases, the answer will be no.

What I love about libraries

Why do I work here? I love the library for it's sense of order. I relish the way the books are arranged in chronological order, and that they are easy to find using a system. I also appreciate the fact that someone cleans the shelves periodically. This all seems to be lacking in my home with 4 kids, a dog, and a husband who was not given proper organizational skills by his mother. I'm happy to say that all of my computer files, email included, are now in ship-shape. This means that there are files for emails and documents sharing the same subjects, and access to these items will be speedy and efficient. What was the oldest file I found? All the way back to when I started in January, 2007.