In the new book Getting Organized in the Google Era, former Google CIO Douglas Merrill and his co-author James Martin attempt to share ideas for better organizing information, frequently incorporating technology.

In general I thought the content was decent. Most of the content was either questioning obsolete paradigms (why do we have a 9-5 workday?) or applying common principles (don’t multitask or have frequent context-switches, so check e-mail at a break rather than having it interrupt you). I appreciated the emphasis on goals. I also think it had some reasonable information on skills that aren’t commonly communicated but should be: like how to use tagging and do better searches.

Read more...

I’ve often been frustrated about the amount of misguided spirituality in organizational books (mostly from Eastern mysticism), and was asking "Why can’t they just leave the junk out of these books?" I recently realized it was because these authors know that clutter is a spiritual issue. Now I’m not about to recommend that you start looking into how your stuff channels or blocks energies in your room (quite the contrary I say run away from such mystical ideas that are at best meaningless and at worst demonic). I do want you to think about how the stuff in your life makes a difference in your worship.

When I say clutter is a spiritual issue, I do not mean that having less stuff makes a person spiritually superior, nor do I mean having an abundance of stuff shows that God favors us more than those with few, if any, possessions. Our stuff displays what is in our hearts, and items can either help or hinder our relationship with God and others.

Read more...

I started reading The Clutter Cure by Judi Culbertson. In her three step process of "Identify," "Assess," and "Take Action," I didn’t even finish Identify. It was easy to read and mildly humorous, but I did not find enough value in it to finish.

Culbertson’s approach did not seem useful. For example, green dots are to be put on items to give to charity rather than just putting the items in a bag. The dots just make extra work (someone will need to remove it), and going out to buy dots doesn’t work toward the goal of cutting clutter.

Read more...