GettingThings Done. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

The final success factor for collecting should be obvious: if you don't empty and process the "stuff" you've collected, your buckets aren't serving any function other than the storage of amorphous material. Emptying the bucket does not mean that you have to finish what's in your voice-mail, e-mail, or in-basket; it just means you have to take it out of the container, decide what it is and what should be done with it, and, if it's still unfinished, organize it into your system. You don't put it back into "in"! Not emptying your in-basket is like having garbage cans that nobody ever dumps you just have to keep buying new ones to hold all your trash.

In order for you to get "in" to empty, your total action-management system must be in place. Too much "stuff is left piled in in-baskets because of a lack of effective systems "downstream" from there. It often seems easier to leave things in "in" when you know you have to do something about them but can't do it right then. The in-basket, especially for paper and e-mail, is the best that many people can do in terms of organization—at least they know that somewhere in there is a reminder of something they still have to do. Unfortunately, that safety net is lost when the piles get out of control or the inventory of e-mails gets too extensive to be viewed on one screen.

When you master the next phase and know how to process your incompletes easily and rapidly, "in" can return to its original function. Let's move on to how to get those in-baskets and e-mail systems empty without necessarily having to do the work now.

Process

Teaching them the item-by-item thinking required to get their collection buckets empty is perhaps the most critical improve merit I have made for virtually all the people I've worked with. When the head of a major department in a global corporation had finished processing all her open items with me, she sat back in awe and told me that though she had been able to relax about what meetings to go to thanks to her trust in her calendar, she had never felt that same relief about all the many other aspects of her job, which we had just clarified together. The actions and information she needed to be reminded of were now identified and entrusted to a concrete system.

What do you need to ask yourself (and answer) about each e-mail, voice-mail, memo, or self-generated idea that comes your way? This is the component of action management that forms the basis for your personal organization. Many people try to "get organized" but make the mistake of doing it with incomplete batches of "stuff." You can't organize what's incoming - you can only collect it and process it. Instead, you organize the actions you'll need to take based on the decisions you've made about what needs to be done. The whole deal - both the processing and organizing phases - is captured in the center "trunk" of the decision-tree model shown here.

In later chapters, I'll coach you in significant detail through each element of the process. For now, though, I suggest you select a to-do list or a pile of papers from your in-basket and assess a few items as we take an overview.

What Is It?

This is not a dumb question. We've talked about "stuff." And we've talked about collection buckets. But we haven't discussed what stuff is and what to do about it For example, many of the items that tend to leak out of our personal organizing systems are amorphous forms that we receive from the government or from our company - do we actually need to do something about them? And what about that e-mail from human resources, letting us know that blah-blah about the blah-blah is now the policy of blah-blah? I've unearthed piles of messages in stacks and desk drawers that were tossed there because the client didn't take just a few seconds to figure out what in fact the communication or document was really about. Which is why the next decision is critical.

Is It Actionable?

There are two possible answers for this: YES and NO.

No Action Required

If the answer is NO, there are three possibilities:

1. It's trash, no longer needed.

2. No action is needed now, but something might need to be done later (incubate).

3. The item is potentially useful information that might be needed for something later (reference).

These three categories can themselves be managed; we'll get into that in a later chapter. For now, suffice it to say that you need a trash basket and key for trash, a "tickler" file or calendar for material that's incubating, and a good filing system for reference information.