Processing- need advice for best practices...

G

gtderik

0
After listening to the recent DA Podcast on Collecting, I had some thoughts on how to improve my system and how to clean up some bad habits... I usually work from a desk. Next to me is a stack of letter sized blank paper (from the recycling bin, of course). I love to collect and throw in to my in-basket. My PROBLEM comes when I see the stack of stuff collecting during the day, subtly I feel like I should go through them- even though I know its more productive to batch and process them all together.

Does anyone have any advice/best practices for a paper based in-tray setup regarding collecting and processing?

I am interested in hearing what others do.
 
gtderik;68281 said:
After listening to the recent DA Podcast on Collecting, I had some thoughts on how to improve my system and how to clean up some bad habits... I usually work from a desk. Next to me is a stack of letter sized blank paper (from the recycling bin, of course). I love to collect and throw in to my in-basket. My PROBLEM comes when I see the stack of stuff collecting during the day, subtly I feel like I should go through them- even though I know its more productive to batch and process them all together.
Click to expand...

The feeling that you should be processing as soon as there are items in the inbox may come from a variety of possible reasons: 1) You don't yet have a regular daily processing habit so you don't know when it will be processed, 2) You might have a really urgent item put there which should have been acted upon immediately rather than going to inbox, or 3) neither of the two, but you just need to habitually convince yourself that those things will be processed!

In fact the true function of inbox is to hold stuff till you think it right to get back to it, so that the stuff does not bother you. The exact opposite of perpetually attracting your attention at the cost of those things you are trying to focus on.
 
End-of-Day / End-of-Night

What abhay says and I would only add with respect to (1), I find it a good practice to empty the inbox at the end of the day; and (2) One can do an "emergency scan" through the inbox for things one needs to fast-track into the active system for that extra peace-of-mind.

Hope that helps.
 
For what it's worth, there's nothing wrong with emptying your inbox several times in a given day. That sounds to me more like a virtue than a vice, provided it doesn't hurt the rest of your work.
 
Regular, but maybe too regular

For a while I was actually using a version of Mark Forsters DIT, by using 2 in-trays. The process basically has a person batch a day's worth of work in inbox A and then once a day transfer the contents over to inbox B for processing. The idea (as I understand it) creates the DIT "Closed List" in a physical paper form.

That helped for a while. I enjoyed the routine nature of it. It gave control and rules to the processing piece.

I think I might try processing at the beginning of the day and the end of the day approach. That tip seems do-able to me!

Thanks for the comments.
 
As David put it in the Ready for Anything: "Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up". It means you could process as soon as you recieve stuff. Concider that, how do you know that you can put that stuff into your inbox and not start acting on it immediatelly?

It means you already pre-processed that stuff and made a decision that it didn't require you immediate attention. For me the inbox is a kind of a "deferred pre-processed stuff that requires later processing" holder.

So I do processing of those pre-processed items daily in the morning (those items are mostly asap and not so urgent so you could batch them). Please let me know what you think about that?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top