Organizing as a Filter

There’s so much to do, so many places to go, and so much to see.  The problem is, it’s easy to get flustered and paralyzed with so many choices.  Know what I mean?

I look at organizing as a filter.

Organizing is more about deciding what’s important, and filtering out the rest.  It’s really that simple.   How do you organize stuff?  Where do you start?  Here’s one of the most important things I teach clients and audiences at my presentations:

Sort & Edit: aka, FILTER.

When organizing an office, you’ve got to do this first.  What goes and what stays?  Do you like it, do you use it or need it for legal (archival reasons)?  Once you decide and go through your office (some people call it purging, but, eww…) then you know what you have left.

Think of it like draining pasta: filter out the extra.

It takes a LOT of water to cook a small amount of pasta.  In the end, what you really want is the pasta not the hot water.  So, when you’re done cooking it, you dump the pasta in a colander and drain out the water.  What you have left is the pasta.  You filter out the extra and keep what you want (or need).

What sort of filtering do you need to do in your office?