“I bought this thing to put papers in 8 years ago but I never check it” … Good old Andy’s thoughts on junk remind me of improvements in filing and discovery in a post-analog world but simultaneously make me question the value of saving and filing so much stuff anyway and the need, still, for an ability to use the waste basket, even in a digital world where storage is almost free and infinite.
Andy beautifully illustrates how we all seem to want to manage more than is practical, and that the vast majority of the time that management serves no real purpose.
I’ve had more than a dose of that in my own life and I still have remnants of it. However, I toss far more than I once did because, like Andy, I saw the fruit of it.
One takeaway: don’t shepherd your junk drawers. If you’re going to files stuff away, do so in a manner which is comparable to boxing and sending files to the archive in the basement. You can always dig it out when you’re ready to take action and, likely, that day won’t ever come.
Agreed. I really think digital tech has made it even worse because you can store an endless amount of stuff so you think even less about it until you’re overwhelmed and then, additionally, I wonder whether these new tools like Logseq actually help or actually just give us more ways to rearrange the too-much-stuff we have and are trying to tame.
My main strategy has been to focus on shipping. And to use the WIP limits of Kanban. Basically, I try to limit how many big projects I work on with the goal of shipping a major milestone.
I find that if I keep switching my focus to different things, nothing ships. I’ve come to see almost shipping as the cardinal sin because of how much life gets wasted on no discernible outcome.
I guess life being interesting is a good thing, but it can be dizzying trying to maintain focus when you’re having so many ideas. I think every person learns, as he matures, we aspire to far, far more than we’ll ever actually do. Andy made that plain as day by examining his own life.