Personal Organiser - or Personal DISorganiser? Beating Information Overload.

PERSONAL ORGANISER
or Personal DISorganiser?

Most calendars, task lists and address books come with a few pre-set categories like Work and Home. If you're like me, you may be tempted, as you add your entries, to assign them to a number of extra personal categories. Dividing aspects of your life into separate boxes can make you feel more organised and in control.

...Until those boxes start to multiply! A new interest doesn't quite belong in one box, so you make another. Before you know where you are, you're tearing your hair out trying to find out where you put that new phone number or the time you were due in an important meeting.

'The magic number seven plus or minus two' is as much as most of us can hold in working memory.

Assigning your tasks, appointments or friends to too many different varieties could end in more confusion than it's worth! A bit of box reduction is an excellent start to beating information overload.

AGENDA CATEGORY TYPES

Here is another nugget of experience you might find useful.

In the various agenda setups I've used, at first I categorised ToDos and Appointments by subject matter . For example, I would class a visit to the bank as Money, or a doctor's appointment as Health.

Later I found this was not nearly as useful for future events as categorising by the kind of action, and where the action took place.

For example, appointments became Go out. I had a little car icon on my old Palm. ---- ----

Home Visit was marked by a house icon ---- ----

This was Work at Computer ---- ----

This was Gardening ---- ----

When the task was done, I would often re-categorise the item to save as a past diary or journal entry. For instance, I re-categorised Go Out appointments to the doctor as Health for my medical record.

A Contacts list of addresses does not refer to actions but to people and places, so I left mine divided by subject,

My PDAs and earlier phones are now gone, but I still do the same on my current smartphone.

Beating Information Overload