Slashdot Mirror
How Do You Organize Your Data?
kpellegr asks: "After returning from a well deserved holiday, I was faced with an exploding inbox. While organizing and deleting my mail, I realised I was having trouble classifying each mail into one specific folder. I had the feeling I should be able to link to one email from several folders (e.g. product information should be linked to from the 'vendor' folder, as well as from a specific project folder where this product is used). The more I thought about this, the more I realised that trees (such as the Windows filesystems) are not really ideally suited for organizing data. On UNIX-like filesystems, symbolic links allow the creation of simple graphs for organising data, but I have the feeling data could be organized more efficiently. How does the Slashdot crowd organize their data? How do you manage files, email, contacts, meetings and all the relationships that might exist between them?"
Magic prioritization:
Step 1: Reply to the email ASAP with a question. Emails are (at best) only half thought out to begin with, so this is typically necessary anyway. It is best if it is something the person will have to look up or follow up on, rather than something they will know right away.
Step 2: Delete the email.
If it takes the person two weeks to get back to you, you know that it is not important AND you just bought yourself two weeks.
If your phone rings 30 seconds after sending the email, it is urgent.
Everything else falls in the middle somewhere, but you get the idea. In my case, probably close to 5% of these never get a response (or get a quick reply that they will look into it, but no final answer), or having been forced to think about their request, they send a response that they need to work on the details of the request before I begin working on it.