Hard Edges: Processing and Organizing

  • Thread starter Thread starter OldCorpse
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I'm just delighted by how informative this thread has gotten! Special thanks to moises - this really clarified a lot... in particular the distinction between the mental act of processing and the physical act of organizing (though if you're brainstorming while processing, and you're mind-mapping on paper - this is physical, no?). This I think is the key - mental vs physical. And the ball analogy is great too, particularly with jknecht's elaboration - catch ball (collect), decide where to throw (process), throw (organize). Brilliant! I think what had me confused is the claim by DA that you can engage in any stage all by itself and in any order - which is true to a degree, but there are qualifications... f.ex., I can't imagine too great a temporal span between certain kind of processing and organizing - I mean, it could be difficult to process 50 items in your mind, and not get down to organizing them for too long... you'll simply forget, or you'll be too burdened for too long with keeping things "in your head" when the whole point of GTD is to get them out of your head. Brief interruptions between processing and organizing (the telephone call example) are fine, but a lengthy processing stage all by itself, without pretty quick followup of organizing, seems trouble.
 
I have to admit that I quite often "forget" to empty my inbox. After a couple of days, it gets quite some work to empty the box. Thus, I sometimes do it in two steps:
Step 1: Decide whether the item is trash or actionable or should be filed (coming up with a file pile and an action pile).
Step 2: then I start to file the items in the file pile and to organise the actionable items into the system.
I think this is an example where you separate processing (step 1) and organising (step 2).

Wolfgang
 
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