GettingThings Done. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Train yourself to notice and collect anything that doesn't belong where it is forever

What Stays Where It Is

The best way to create a clean decision about whether something should go into the in-basket is to understand clearly what shouldn't go in. Here are the four categories of things that can remain where they are, the way they are, with no action tied to them:

• Supplies

• Reference material

• Decoration

• Equipment

Supplies . . . include anything you need to keep because you use it regularly. Stationery, business cards, stamps, staples, Post-it pads, legal pads, paper clips, ballpoint refills, batteries, forms you need to fill out from time to time, rubber bands—all of these qualify. Many people also have a "personal supplies" drawer at work containing dental floss, Kleenex, breath mints, and so on. 

Reference Material ... is anything you simply keep for information as needed, such as manuals for your software, the local take-out deli menu, or your kid's soccer schedule. This category includes your telephone and address information, any material relevant to projects, themes, and topics, and sources such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and almanacs.

Decoration . . . means pictures of family, artwork, and fun and inspiring things pinned to your bulletin board. You also might have plaques, mementos, and/or plants.

Equipment ... is obviously the telephone, computer, fax, printer,wastebasket, furniture, and/or VCR.

You no doubt have a lot of things that fall into these four categories—basically all your tools and your gear, which have no actions tied to them. Everything else goes into "in." But many of the things you might initially interpret as supplies, reference, decoration, or equipment could also have action associated with them because they still aren't exactly the way they need to be.

For instance, most people have, in their desk drawers and on their credenzas and bulletin boards, a lot of reference materials that either are out of date or need to be organized somewhere else. Those should go into "in." Likewise, if your supplies drawer is out of control, full of lots of dead or unorganized stuff, that's an incomplete that needs to be captured. Are the photos of your kids current ones? Is the artwork what you want on the wall? Are the mementos really something you still want to keep? Is the furniture precisely the way it should be? Is the computer set up the way you want it? Are the plants in your office alive? In other words, supplies, reference materials, decoration, and equipment may need to be tossed into the in-basket if they're not just where they should be, the way they should be. 

Issues About Collecting

As you engage in the collecting phase, you may run into one or more of the following:

• you've got a lot more than will fit into one in-basket;

• you're likely to get derailed into purging and organizing;

• you may have some form of stuff already collected and organized; and/or

• you're likely to run across some critical things that you want to keep in front of you.

 What If an Item Is Too Big to Go in the In-Basket? If you can't physically put something in the in-basket, then write a note on a piece of letter-size plain paper to represent it. For instance, if you have a poster or other piece of artwork behind the door to your office, just write "Artwork behind door" on a letter-size piece of paper and put the paper in the in-basket.

Be sure to date it, too. This has a couple of benefits. If your organization system winds up containing some of these pieces of paper representing something else, it'll be useful to know when the note was created. It's also just a great habit to date everything you hand-write, from Post-it notes to your assistant, to voice-mails you download onto a pad, to notes you take on a phone call with a client. The 3 percent of the time that this little piece of information will be extremely useful makes it worth developing the habit.

What If the Pile Is Too Big to Fit into the In-Basket? If you're like 98 percent of my clients, your initial gathering activity will collect much more than can be comfortably stacked in an in-basket. If that's the case, just create stacks around the in-basket, and maybe even on the floor underneath it. Ultimately you'll be emptying the in-stacks, as you process and organize everything. In the mean-time, though, make sure that there's some obvious visual distinction between the stacks that are "in" and everything else. 

Instant Dumping If it's immediately evident that something is trash, go ahead and toss it when you see it. For some of my clients, this marks the first time they have ever cleaned their center desk drawer!