Interview: Managing Physical Media

What is your single most important tip for keeping your books, magazines, software and other physical media organized? (549)

The key to keeping your physical media organized is to have as little as possible. Only keep the absolute essentials and either trash or convert to a digital file what you want to keep.

For example, I don’t purchase any fiction books– the library is perfect for that. I only keep books that I will either read again or reference in the future.

CD’s and DVD’s are easy to convert to digital files and centralize on an external hard drive (be sure to back it up!)

Basically, if you drastically reduce the amount of physical media in your life the problem of organizing it will resolve itself.

Sam from Sam I Am (rss)

Sam’s answer was the highest rated from this question. Using the library is something I often overlook. I have converted almost all of my CDs to digital and I now store them in a large box in a barn.

Purge! You can’t organize clutter…and clutter is stuff that you don’t use or love.

If you haven’t read a magazine in three months, throw it (and consider your total amount of subscriptions).

If you clean out your computer, purge the software.

Give yourself permission to never read the stacks of books that have piled up and get rid of them. If you decide you really want to read it in the future, you can get it from the library or buy it again.

LJ from simpleproductivityblog (rss)

With the second most popular answer, LJ encourages us to get rid of stuff we don’t need. With the cost of books being so low (especially getting things used on Amazon) it can make sense to get rid of something and just buy it again when it is needed.

My secret trick to keeping physical media organized is to have as little of it as possible.

I don’t buy books very often–I check them out from the library, so I don’t have to worry about storing books. I used to get a number of magazines, but this year I unsubscribed from all of them. I’ve kept my old magazines (they’re on a shelf in my closet), and I still enjoy looking through them sometimes, but I don’t have to deal with a constant influx of reading material.

Just streamlining possessions really helps cut down on clutter.

Sharon Sarmiento from eSoup

A related tip is to only buy something when you are going to use it immediately. If a book looks interesting, but you won’t have time to read it right away, just write the title down and keep it in a list of things to read later. When you have time to read it you can purchase or borrow the book.

Get the digital versions if possible. If they are not available, using magazine holders and having lots of book cases are what works for me.

Oh and… when in doubt… throw it out…

John Richardson from Success Begins Today (rss)

I don’t mind digital versions of magazines, newspapers, and fiction on my Sony Reader, but I tend to want hard copy of books that I might use again or loan to someone else. On bookshelves, I bought a bunch of folding wooden bookshelves when they were on sale for half price. They fold up so they are easy to move and they are real wood (not particle board) so they tend to outlast other shelves.

Digitize it. If you can get it in a digital format, you’re off to the races.

If you can’t, the traditional old bookshelf or filing cabinets are a great start, as long don’t give yourself too much room to expand. This sounds counter-intuitive, but if there’s a space, something will fill it, and you’ll end up with more clutter. Having just enough room to contain your essential physical media without much room for growth forces you to get as much done or acquired digitally as you can.

http://www.joelfalconer.com from Joel Falconer (rss)

If you have a bookshelf with extra space, consider putting a plant or picture in the extra space. You can remove it when you need the room, but it will help keep you from just throwing something else in the space because it is empty.

I think the best way you can keep your books and magazines organized is by arranging them according to topics and subjects and then keeping them in order of their priority. Like , if you read any particular book or magazine frequently, keep it on top of the pack or in front portion of the shelf. This way you won’t need to disturb the pile of books when you want that particualr book.

The same goes with softwares and physical media. Here you may also consider sticking small labels onto them which can help you identify them easily when you need them.

Abhijeet from Jeet Blog (rss)

Topical organization for books is a great idea. If you have a house with bookshelves in various places you can arrange topics based on location. Cooking books near the kitchen. Business books near the office. Picture books near the den.

For me, my biggest struggle with physical media is the sheer amount of information contained in the books I read that needs to be used in my blog. I use sticky notes and mark pages with the info I want. When finished reading a book, I record all those notes into a spreadsheet.

Later, when I’m creating a blog post and I’m trying to remember where I read something, I search the spreadsheet, locate the page number, and have the full reference in front of me. It has saved me tons of time.

Jason from World Fitness Network (rss)

Jason has a great method for keeping track of information. I’ve heard some other people say that they read a book with a voice recorder handy and note the page number and any thoughts they have as they go. They then send the audio file off to have it transcribed.

The biggest tip would relate to books. I like reading books a lot, but don’t have a lot of space, so I check books out of the library. I take notes on the books I read online, so I can refer back to them later.

Anne from Writers Cabal Blog(rss)

Another vote for making better use of the library.

Don’t have too much of it! Set limits on how much of this stuff you have and then it’s easy to organize.

Ariane Benefit from Neat & Simple Living (rss)

Getting rid of things that you don’t need any more can be very valuable. That book on photoshop might be worth $7 now, but will be worth nothing in two years. Selling the extra items on Amazon helps move things out and gives you some cash as well

Forget about alphabetizing. It can drive an obsessive person crazy, and alienate everyone in your home and office. If you have an extensive collection of “things”, I would recommend software called “Paper Tiger.” It’s an all-inclusive product with multiple licenses where you just place your media/books/magazines in a row, enter the location and place a number on the item. When you are looking for something, you simply check the program. Our company has implemented it for a Sony design library and a Natural Foods Bakery accounting office. Does away with the need to alphabetize and you can check things in/out which works well for architectural and interior design firms with extensive collections of drawings and samples. http://thepapertiger.com/

John Trosko from OrganizingLA Blog (rss)

I haven’t ever used The Paper Tiger, but the idea sounds interesting. Unfortunately all I can find is a PC version.

Purge your media! I use the library and SimplyAudiobooks.com as much as possible, taking notes and then returning the books in order to keep clutter to a minimum.

Eva Holtz from College Admissions Secrets (rss)

I use to use Audible back when they had a really good subscription plan. I could get all the books I could listen to for about $20 per month. This worked great until they changed their plans.

I use a relatively unconventional method. I have 3 stacks (literal stacks) of books. If it’s on or under my nightstand, it needs to be read. That is my primary stack. If it’s something that I’ve read and I think it has great information that I think I will reference frequently, it’s in a stack nearest my desk. The third stack are those books that don’t fit on my bookshelf

Nathan Snell from The Technopian(rss)

This is a new method I haven’t heard of. I’m afraid my stack of things to read would topple.

Contests

Just a reminder about two current contests.  First we have the Belkin Concealed Powerstrip giveaway.  When we get to 1250 email subscribers of them will get the powerstrip.  (We are currently at 1088.  It has been slow because many people have been switching over to feedreaders.) Second we have the Bento software giveaway. The last person to comment on the post gets the software.

Past Post: Paradox of Powerful Tools

Paradox of Powerful Tools - Simple is often better.

Younger Look for Resume

Thursday’s WSJ has an example of how a 49 year old woman was able to get more attention for jobs by adding a photo to her resume where she was dressed to look younger and trendy.  She also tried to minimize the length of her experience by removing her graduation date and some of the earlier jobs. What do you think of adding a photo to  your resume?

Review of Shoeboxed.com

At times, the amount of paperwork that one person has do deal with can become extremely overwhelming. Many people find that a pile of unorganized paper can have drastic effects on the amount of work that they accomplish. For many of us, the motivation to organize the chaos is sometimes too much to even contemplate. However, an enterprising business has found a way to make the lives of the ordinary person much simpler.

Shoeboxed.com is an organization that provides a service that categorizes and organizes your receipts in a hassle-free manner. There are several levels of service that the company provides. One is the free version, in which you must scan in or direct your online order receipts into the account and organize them yourself. They also offer Basic, Classic or Express accounts.

The Basic account offers international service for customers with a relatively small volume of receipts to process for a price of $9.95 per month.

With this option, Shoeboxed will scan in and organize your receipts for you and shred them to protect your privacy.

The Classic account is their most popular account that is suited to one’s personal or business use at $19.95 per month. With this account type, Shoeboxed processes and organizes your receipts, scans them, and sends them back to you in an envelope.

The account level with the most options and fastest service processing is the Express account. For a fee of $59.95 per month, Shoeboxed provides even more efficient service to a client, with tasks being processed in 1 business day. The Express offers the same options and processing capacity as the Classic version, but the Express completes processing the task in a shorter amount of time.

Because so much of a person’s time can be taken up by frustration and disorganization, the service that this business provides would be very helpful to anyone that either does not possess that knack of organization or simply does not have the time to organize and keep track of their own receipts. The system is straightforward and fairly easy to understand, and also provides the option to export the scanned-in receipt information into Excel spreadsheets and other programs that work with large amounts of financial data. Someone who does not have a substantial number of receipts to keep track of would most likely not benefit from this program. However, for those that are searching for a way to keep control of their purchase records, this tool could become indispensable.

Boston Magazine

Productivity501 got a nice little mention on page three of the Boston Magazine on an article about American Express Concierge services. This explains the surge in comments from people doing “damage control”.

Virtual vs. Inperson Assistants

It is hard to beat having someone you can send to the store with your grocery list or wait in line for you at city hall.  Maybe I just lucked out, but my non-virtual assistant is really cutting down on the amount of running around I have to do.

Past Posts: Personal Productivity From Management

Personal Productivity From Management Theory - How academic management theories can be used to help improve your self management.

Bill Gates on XP

This email is a pretty interesting account of Bill Gates trying to install Movie Maker.

DevonTHINK’s Classify Feature

As part of my paperless office experiment I’m finding that scanning is actually easiest part of the whole setup. A lot of what is difficult is finding a workflow that makes sense.  For example, if your assistant scans in 250 documents from your file cabinet, you need some way to classify and organize those into your system.  Obviously you can look at each one and figure out where it goes, but this is very slow.

DevonTHINK has a feature that helps with this.  It looks at the text in the document you want to classify and then looks at the text of documents already in the system. Then it suggests a location that puts it with similar documents.  This is extremely useful–especially when dealing with bills.

In this video I do a brief demo of how this classification system works.  I’m trying to make the videos a bit more usable, so let me know if this is an improvement over the others or not.

The video is a bit on the rough side, but I wanted to go ahead and get it put up to get some feedback from readers. I’m planning on doing some more with a better camera and in a better controlled environment. (I’m not sure if you can see me trying to shoo the dog away that is trying to rest his wet nose on my leg.)

Next Page »