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Re: [GWL]: managing the mess

There are also a ton of books out there that tell you how to organize your 
office/desk/life in 12 minutes or less. :-)   It's a lot like the books on 
how to write a book in 12 minutes or less - you have to be organized to 
take advantage of the organizational suggestions.

Terminally disorganized folks like myself don't benefit from this kind of 
thing and neither do they use software like "AskSam" that organizes your 
hard drive. (For the record - I couldn't get the AskSam trial version to 
run on my Pentium3 system and the company wanted to charge me the full 
price for a magazine evaluation review. I passed on the price and they 
didn't get the review) (For those of you who want to try - enter asksam at 
google.com and you'll be taken to the website)  Those of us who are that 
badly challenged simply use the "find" feature on the start menu on WinX 
machines to find stuff we've socked away on our hard drives. No idea what 
you mac drivers use but I'm sure you have something to search your hard drives.

One thing I do that some of you might find useful is cut and paste bits of 
electronic information I want to keep into its own email and send it to 
myself.  I use the subject line to define the contents.  I also set up a 
filter so that these messages go into a specific mailbox and then I let the 
computer run the search when I want to find that black flower that only 
blooms at midnight on the small island off the coast of Khabul.  Electronic 
storage is cheap and I don't have to worry about finding it again - that's 
what the FIND command does.

Paperwork - don't ask about paperwork. I just toss it all now. If I don't 
use a press release in the first month or so (it lives on a corner of my 
desk for that month) - it doesn't get kept.  Which is why companies should 
keep a press release corner of their website that will be spidered by the 
search engines for me to find someday.

Why no paper? The web is one huge filing system!  I dare say there's not 
much you can't find on the web if you know where/how to search and that my 
friends is the nub of modern non-fiction writing. :-)

Once you figure out where the best search engines are and how to properly 
use them - whether it is the flora databases or the main search engines 
like google.com or meta-search engines that live on your hard drive - paper 
becomes irrelevant.  I do confess I use the Brain software www.thebrain.com 
to track and organize my thoughts on urls and the relevant notes.

If I'm interviewing someone, I always keep the interview notes as well. One 
never knows about this kind of stuff. Mind you, those interview notes are 
now typing notes directly onto my computer, I no longer hand write them 
while I'm talking.

For the record, I use significantly less paper in my office now than I did 
a year ago and major amounts less than 5 years ago. The only paper I have 
around is that scattered on my office desl waiting to be dealt with.  Once 
it is dealt with - garbage can - UNLESS it is tax related and then it gets 
saved.

Doug
Douglas Green,
Freelance writing: You've got a story to tell - I can write it.
http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com/clips/clipmaster.htm

------------------------------------------------------------
Those lovable scamps, Linky & Dinky, find the
DARNdest Web sites, from brainy, to bizarre, to obtuse!
http://www.linkydinky.com  L&D Rule!

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