I've long been inspired by the following passage from Confucius: The Unwobbling Pivot, The Great Digest, The Analects by Ezra Pound:
"The men of old wanting to clarify and diffuse throughout the empire that light which comes from looking straight into the heart and then acting, first set up good government in their own states; wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves; desiring self-discipline, they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their hearts, they sought precise verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts [the tones given off by the heart]; wishing to attain precise verbal definitions, they set to extend their knowledge to the utmost. This completion of knowledge is rooted in sorting things into organic categories.”
To me, this excerpt means that establishing order in your immediate environment will yield benefits in every organization, whether it exists in Confucian-era China or today.
Taking Control of Your Work Environment
Managing information comes down to how well you're able to retrieve what you need, and much of that adds up to a single concept: filing.
Filing is a nonglamorous tool that involves organizing information and materials into their best home, for now. What do you need to be a good filer? Clear objectives and the space to put a chair in front of a filing cabinet. If you fear that filing means you're becoming a caretaker, remind yourself that you are taking care of items or information that you deem to be important. If it isn't important, don't save it. If it is important, file it with gusto.
Conditioning your environment is a crucial step in organizing and filing effectively. This means that you arrange, stock, and maintain such spaces in a manner that supports your efforts. Organizing a desk drawer initially takes time and may be slow going. But remember that finding what you want in the desk drawer will be simpler and faster after you do it. If you avoid organizing the drawer altogether, always have things strewn about, and go on a "hunt" each time you need to find something, in little ways, you're hampering your productivity potential rather than devising a system that will support you every time.
Managing the Beforehand
Managing the beforehand, as opposed to the aftermath, involves creating space—mentally or physically—in advance of what comes next. With abundant vacant space, you have now created a clearing for the information that you'll be receiving. These include new policy memos, articles you want to save, meeting notes, and course information that you want to review at a later date. The items may be different for each person.
The important point in a society that’s overloaded with information is to take control in advance—manage the beforehand—rather than dealing with the aftermath of too much information.
Once you develop the habit of clearing space in all the compartments of your life—your desk, car, closets, and so on—you’ll have accomplished something vital: you’ll demonstrate to yourself that you do have enough space to manage your professional and personal lives.
