Organizing Your Life

I'm writing an article about organization for ASAE's magazine. One of the resources I looked at that I thought would be of general interest was Georgene Lockwood's Compleat Idiot's Guide to Organizing Your Life. The book goes into lots of detail, from organizing your stuff to balancing your checkbook. It's very general, and I didn't use it much aside from my initial research. However, I want to recap here her "Ten Laws of Stuff":

1. Stuff breeds. The more you have the more you need.
2. The useless stuff crowds out the good stuff.
3. Dust, bugs, rodents and moisture all love stuff.
4. Stuff tends to stay where it lands.
5. Stuff expands to fit the space available.
6. Over time stuff becomes invisible.
7. Stuff costs you money more than once.
8. Stuff has a powerful effect on your state of mind.
9. Stuff takes value only when it is used.
10. Stuff doesn’t make you happy, you do!

These I've found to be true, and thus of general interest!

An Army of Davids

So, I've been spending some time with Glenn Reynold's book (Glenn being of course the seminal and highly influential Instapundit ), and I must say that it gives me lots of language I can use to talk about phenomena that are easily observable right now. I think you could say that Glenn Reynolds has done for technology what Virginia Postrel did with design topics . Which is to say, they beat the drum and say, hey, look at what this democratization of knowledge can do for you! In that vein, the book is really pretty visionary, pointing out the magic of the internet age. And I for one see it as magical. You know how Laura Ingalls Wilder's Pa in Little Town on the Prairie said to Laura that it was an amazing time to be alive (that was in the 1890s)? I've been actively thinking that to myself for the past few years, and An Army of Davids gives me ample evidence to back that up with its talk of citizen empowerment and the "comfy chair revolution." The theme of ...

Public sector information design

Here's an article from the UK's Design Council talking about how information design is important in public-sector efforts. Of course, it's helpful to everyone, but this is a good example of the universal need for better presentation of information--and more design.

Get Out of Your Own Way

This book, by Robert K. Cooper, was on the library's newly arrived shelf. It's pretty good, although if you read biz books a lot, there's a lot you'll want to skim. Still, the principles he talks about are good to think on. The subtitle of the book is "the five keys to surpassing everyone's expectations." These keys are: 1. Direction, not motion 2. Focus, not time 3. Capacity, not conformity 4. Energy, not effort 5. Impact, not intentions Each key has three or four supporting chapters that talk about subprinciples. Some things that I identified with from key one is that a) "good and great are the enemies of possible," a quote Cooper attributes to his grandfather. It's pretty self-explanatory though. The other thing is he talks about "what's automatic, accelerates." Basically, if you can put effort into something until it becomes automatic, you've won the battle. So focus resources on issues and behaviors that will eventually...

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