i have bad organizational skills

A. All personal information goes in the folder. The folder is mobile, but only inhabits three places for any period longer than a few hours:

1. Inside the bag.
2. On the desk.
3. In the bottom drawer.

B. Bills and other official correspondence are not kept in the folder except for very brief periods when there is nowhere else to put them.

C. Whenever the folder is used, it is cleaned. Outdated documentation or any records that have become obsolete are placed in an archival envelope in the bottom drawer, or they are destroyed.

II. WORK-RELATED MATERIALS: Those items required for the efficient execution of my professional tasks, excluding reference texts.

A. For work-related items, a large alligator clip serves to hold together a sheaf of documents and a notepad which is kept in the cabinet. The sheaf is mobile, but only inhabits two places for any significant lengths of time:

1. On the desk.
2. In the top cabinet.

B. Whenever the sheaf is used, it is cleaned. Obsolete materials are fed to the shredder.

III. MISCELLANY: Insurance paperwork, reference texts, manuals, guides, warranties, and other documentation not specifically dealt with above.

A. Miscellany should be place in an evelope or drawer with items of a similar nature. There are several clearly defined respositories for certain types of materials already in use:

1. The foreign language dictionary and textbook pile.
2. The synthesizer manual drawer.
3. The kitchen appliance manual heap.
4. The warranty card stack.
5. The insurance policy envelope.

B. As new forms of miscellany are encountered they are grouped together and put somewhere that is clearly delineated from the places with other miscellany is already being put.

C. When a collection of miscellany is used, it is cleaned, and if the miscellany appears to be exceeding the space allowed by its current location, new locations are evaluated. If no suitable locations exist, the miscellany is made to fit by use of force. Obsolete miscellany or completely worthless documents go down the trash chute.

IV. PORTABLE DOCUMENTS. The Passport, items shaped like a credit card, and the Checkbook.

A. The Passport is portable but only used for foreign travel. If there is no foreign travel imminent, the Passport is kept in the top drawer at all times.

B. Items shaped like a credit card are kept in the wallet. The wallet is portable but only occupies two locations for any significant length of time:

1. The pants pocket.
2. The shelf.

C. The Checkbook is portable but is only moved in rare circumstances. It occupies one of only two places at nearly all times:

1. The desk.
2. The top drawer.

D. The condition of portable documents is reviewed when they are used. If a portable document has lost its usefulness (expired), a new one is acquired with all due haste.

V. CRAP: Materials that serve no purpose by their continued existence, to include catalogs, old magazines, and unsolicited correspondence, among other items.

A. Crap is mobile, but only occupies one of two places for any significant length of time:

1. The desk
2. The floor

B. When crap is identified, it goes in the trash.

Contents of top draw to my left:

* Earache sampler tape from around 1991/2 featuring - Morbid Angel, Entombed, Bolt Thrower, Napalm Deat, Massacre and Godflesh (oh, I think I might listen to this)
* Random bits of lego
* Icicle & bells - X-mas decorations
* Matchsticks from the Taj Mahal restaurant in Ealing W5
* 1995 diary, given up on after 2 weeks
* 6 notebooks - dating back to the mid '90's - mainly containing rubbishy song lyrics, doodles and tablature
* Book of blank postcards
* School reports dating back to the late 1980's
* Random bank statements, random university letters
* Wrapping paper
* TV instruction book
* Various postcards and cards
* 6 spiral bound notebooks - mainly film scripts
* Large amount of novelty key rings (seal, musket, frog, Isle of Wight, Nirvana etc)
* Easter Egg thing
* PENS
* Broken compass
* Screw drivers
* Toy car
* This weird ball that lights and flashes when you throw it against something.
* Sewing kit from a Christmas cracker...

And I had a sort out the other week...

You are right Tombot!

I need a skip.

did you ever get this aha sorted

i am working on this too. believe it or not, i've improved. just not very much.

maybe use a hoonja-doonja for this?? idk

i never really did.

as luck would have it i stayed late at work yesterday creating a "Trello board". i'm much better organized at work than in the rest of my life.

i have a theory that all human culture is essentially an effort to make up for the fact that people are terrible at remembering anything

ppl operate at about 30% efficiency and yknow thank fuck for that

So you never got that palm pilot?

I have fantastic organizational skills which, unfortunately, are not recognizable as such by pretty much anyone else in the world. C'est la vie!

Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To them came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them. He enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Thamus otm.

It used to drive my study partners nuts that I doodled instead of taking notes in class but I was always able to recall the details of some illuminated manuscript the professor had been droning on about while I had been busily drawing the leg erupting from this comical fellow's mouth.

Likewise, what may appear to you an indiscriminate pile is in fact an intentional construct whose every sedimentary layer I would be happy to detail 4 u.

i have better organizational skills than like 99% of everyone I know, and I'm actually a shitty person, so these things must correlate, so don't feel bad

Other ppl trying to impose THEIR organization system on ME is not cool. My program manager (who is not exactly my boss but is my client/overlord) is trying to make me use MS OneNote and I'm like lady I'm forty five fucking years old and have well honed workplace organizational skills, I never lose or forget anything work related ever, gtfo outta here with this "OneNote"

^^^ I heard my last department head was very critical of people who had nothing on their desks because of optics. My desk and inbox were always completely clear, but I put an empty notebook and a stack of policies on it to satisfy onlookers that I was doing work.

Likewise, what may appear to you an indiscriminate pile is in fact an intentional construct whose every sedimentary layer I would be happy to detail 4 u.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP4hYtwGFlI