There is an amazing feeling that comes with completing a task. Perhaps it is the rush of marking something off of the list, or it could be the anticipation of beginning the next task. The happiness may just be the result of productivity… if you’ve accomplished one thing, surely you can accomplish others.
These positive feelings (whatever their origins) seem compounded when cleaning is involved. Few things make me as pleased as looking at a newly -cleaned or -organized item and knowing I made it that way.
These positive returns (coupled with a busy schedule) have made me a somewhat obsessive reader of time management, productivity and organization books and blogs. One tip from these texts is the importance of starting at zero.
For example, emptying everything you need to do from your brain onto a list helps you better relax. Processing your email inbox instead of using it as a storage box makes your workflow more proactive than reactive and keeps you from missing important items and deadlines.
The idea of starting at zero is what inspired me to clean out my Instapaper account. For those who don’t use Instapaper, it is a website that allows you to place a “Read It Later” button in your toolbar so you can easily save and store websites for reading later. I use my account to store articles related to courses, research and things I want to blog about. The unfortunate thing is that I don’t go through it enough to actually be able to find the articles I need or really to even know what is stored there.
At first I considered just deleting everything in my account. That certainly would eliminate some stress without spending the time to sort through all of it. The problem was that I’m certain I saved these items for a reason. I hated to just virtually throw them all away.
I decided instead to sort through the articles, liberally throwing items away. I’ve discovered a new problem. Just when I think I’m almost done sorting through the que, it refreshes and fills again. I have no idea how many articles I actually have saved there, but it’s a lot.
Help! How do you manage the vast amounts of information you want to read without creating this article avalanche?
