Week 4- Ch 5 & 6

Chapter five talked about the organizing and collecting your stuff/work all in one place. Since most of my stuff are back home in my room, I will start with organizing my desk, which is completely disorganized. What I found surprising while reading was the fact that I already have a similar style of organizing mentioned in the book. Over the summer, with a large trash bag in hand, I threw away all of the useless paper that had stacked up in my drawers and plastic bags. Allen mentions that we get psychologically tired from the work we don’t finish, which eventually controls our life, which I completely understood. After cleaning my room, I was physically exhausted, but mentally relieved when I was done because my parents had been persistently insisting me to clean my room for a while. The mental burden was gone, and allowed me to put more focus elsewhere.

            Chapter six talked about the steps we need to take to empty out “In” basket. One thing that struck me was never putting anything back into your “in” basket. If I can do something in less than two minutes, why not just quickly finish and go on to the next thing? Visualizing the workflow chart (on pg. 120) is especially helpful with the ordering of the process. This chapter also emphasized on our next actions. What is our next step to complete this task? When we figure out what our next step will be, we have to decide whether we do it, delegate it, or defer it. If we can do it, why not do it now so we don’t have to worry about it later? If not, then put it in your calendar and don’t worry about it until later. Lastly, a useful tip mentioned is processing your stuff top to bottom, meaning to deal with everything on top of the pile first, regardless of importance. I already achieved this step, but I thought this was am important point to mention because following this rule will force you to get through everything in your “In” basket, which leads to less procrastination in the future.