My new filing technique is unstoppable

That's not just a reference to this reliable chestnut of Internet humor.

It's also the awesome truth. Or the sad truth if you consider how long it took me to get here.

I'm not terribly organized as a rule. I'm lucky to be smart enough to fake it most of the time, but there's a limit. I passed that limit, if we're going to be honest, in college some time. That's (carry the twelve . . .) a billion years ago now.

So, during my recent ample free time I decided to get my goddamn act together. I picked up a copy of a book recommended by the good folks over at boingboing.net called "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. I'm universally leery of self-help and/or business books - they're all written at the 3rd to 4th grade reading level and tend to be littered with advice that insults most peoples' intelligence - but so far boingboing hasn't steered me wrong.

In tandem with the "Finish Rich Workbook", Getting Things Done provided a context for filing. It sounds daft even as I write it, but let's be honest, the actual process of filing is not that tough if you have a good (or frankly even just consistent) grasp of the alphabet. There are two difficult bits:

1. Creating a place for everything to go;
2. Understanding why you should put things in their places rather than say, on the floor, under the bed, or most usually, in a pile next to (or, good grief, under) other piles.

Once you have a place for everything (Finish Rich Workbook), and an understanding of why things go there (Gettting Things Done), the act of filing is simple. And, and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this because let's face it I'm geeky enough as is, empowering? I understand now why my stepfather gets so excited about "wizardizing". You feel as though you're getting stuff done.

Unless you've already got your own system of filing, you probably don't understand this post at all. Actually, it may be that you had to be a total disaster like myself to really appreciate the transformation. Some people just seem fantastically organized all the time.

I file those people under "bastard".