David Allen is fond of saying that “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” As a knowledge worker, your ability to generate and implement ideas is crucial to your success. The challenge is that we can never know for certain what will turn out to be a good idea and what will end up as a discarded thought. However, it is guaranteed that a forgotten idea will never be implemented. Therefore, it is important to have a method to capture ideas as they appear.
In a recent blog post, David Allen addresses this topic.
“How many thoughts and ideas do you have daily which represent useful things to do or potentially enhance or improve projects, situations, and life in general? How many have you had and forgotten, and forgotten that you’ve forgotten? …
“Most people have (or could have) many more of these kinds of thoughts than they realize, during the course of any 24-hour period. Most people don’t get value from many of them, because they lack both the habit and the tools to collect those thoughts when they occur. If they aren’t captured, they are useless, and even worse can add to the gnawing sense of anxiety most people feel about things “out there” they know they’ve told themselves they should or would like to do, but don’t remember consciously what they are.”
Read the rest of this post at www.gettingthingsdone.com.
In January 2018, I had a short article published in the American Library Association 
Are you traveling to Philadelphia this month for the 
An Efficient Librarian creates clean edges to her work. It all starts with an organized desk and a clearly defined physical inbox to identify new input. One habit-changing practice is to empty the inbox regularly and use it only to place new items that have yet to be processed. An Efficient Librarian pays attention to how time is spent and looks for ways to declutter surroundings and simplify systems. For me, mastering workflow and creating systems that were tight, clean, and quick was a key to my transition. I believe that the application of these principles saves me weeks of time every year to focus on creative and exciting work that takes me along new innovative paths. This unleashing of energy is needed to revitalize our profession in the face of changing times.
The pursuit of efficiency often requires a cleanup of our physical spaces. While clearing out clutter should be easy to do, in practice it is hard to throw away objects we own. For example, maybe you got a mug at a conference six years ago. The conference was unmemorable and the mug is an awful yellow color. As you are considering parting with it, a colleague asks if they can have it. You quickly decline and put it back on the shelf. This is a direct experience of the Endowment Effect.
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At the low tech end is the humble sticky note. Once something crosses your mind, immediately write it down on the note. This has to be done quickly, as the next shiny object that passes in front of your eyes can cause this thought to be forgotten. The catch with this system is in the management of the physical notes. Lose the sticky note and the thought it captured is gone. For this system to work, the note must go straight into your inbox at the first opportunity for later processing.
I am proud to announce that my second article for Public Libraries magazine was published in the Nov/Dec 2017 issue. Efficient Librarianship: A New Path for the Profession is an article that explores and expands on the ideas discussed in this blog. Below is a key except from the article:
What is the value in setting a goal for yourself or your organization? Many cynics discount goals as artificial creations that don’t translate into actual results. They argue that we are going to do the work anyway, so why set up a fake expectation?
