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Advice to an Organized Person Can you give some advise for advanced organizers (fine-tuning and things most people who are already organized could improve upon), as I consider myself to already be quite well organized. I use these: FIFO (First In First Out), OHIO (Only Handle It Once) and FTF (First Things First). Also, I like the statistics on your site - looking forward to more :-) Greatz,
Sir S.F.P.Koopmans, MMS Thanks for sharing the organizing acronyms you live by. I have a few comments, and I hope they will be helpful to you and others. FIFO (First In, First Out): I do not subscribe to this way of working, because the order in which things come into an office usually has nothing to do with level of importance. Here's the rule I live by: What is important to me gets my attention. What is not important to me is either delegated to someone else or is not done. OHIO (Only Handle It Once): I have revised this rule, as follows: Handle it as many times as is necessary to be most effective. I follow this acronym: Trim the FAT (visit my tip sheet on this at http://www.orgcoach.net/trimthefat.html). You have three choices with paper: FILE, ACT, or TOSS. If you want to FILE it, I recommend putting it in a To File bin and doing all your filing at one time -- at least once a week, maybe more often -- depending on volume. If it requires ACTion (to pay, to read, etc.), put it in an action file, as described on my tip sheet mentioned above, and handle it when you have reserved some time to do your reading, paying, etc. TOSS means to get it out of your office -- either throw away or give to someone else. If you tell yourself you can only handle things once, you are boxing yourself
into handling things right at that moment, and at that moment the task
of filing or acting on something may not be the
most important one. The "only handle it once" philosophy can get you derailed from whatever
is most important. I do, however, recommend that you only handle it once between your inbox and
the FAT system. NEVER place something back into your inbox once you take it out. Once
mail leaves your inbox, your only choices are File, Act, Toss -- NOT "I'll just set it here
for now."
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