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walkitoutSubtitled: Simple Principles for Organizing Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life
Published by McGraw Hill.
Admirably short (just over 200 pages), chatty without wasting your time, and with pithy, relevant quotes from numerous, predominantly women writers, Maggio's book on organization is about as good as these things get. The last entry in this particular self-help genre which I read was Julie Morgenstern's _Organizing from the Inside Out_ (I'm reasonably certain I read the first edition, probably in the late 1990s or early 2000s, altho it has been a while so I don't recall for sure). And Morgenstern's book wasn't this good.
Maggio, as I previously noted, does periodically descend into madness (keeping credit card receipts indefinitely was what triggered the previous post), and quite frequently advocates a level of cleaning/maintenance/etc. that I think is completely uncalled for. However, to each her own. I was here for the tickler file information (which is sort of an unfair demand from a general purpose book, as it is strictly speaking more of a time management issue); she had only a little to say about it, mostly that a linear electronic file is probably all that is necessary. I'll be reading _Getting Things Done_ next, which I suspect will irritate me.
She's got 10 principles and she mostly uses them: "Be Your Own Best Friend", by which she means, pick up after yourself/prep for yourself; Reduce Every Task to Its Smallest Parts; Like Belongs with Like; Cluster Similar Tasks (I actually disagree with this one in some detail); "Start Wide and Then Narrow", which generally means get everything you are working out onto the floor (collect from elsewhere if needed) and then organize it; Sort; Your ? Pile, which I kind of like, because there really are always a few things left over that you're just not sure about, and they can slow you down if you let them; Everything Has a Place, which I am a huge believer in, and which is the closest approach she makes to dealing with workflows outside the Reduce Task rule; The 15 Minute Rule, which is give-it-a-go-and-you'll-either-finish-or-get-momentum; and the 80/20 rule.
Some sections of the book are much, much, much better developed than others -- this is a woman who works in an office environment for the most part and it shows. Also, it's a woman who uses computers in a very 1990s style way -- she _loves_ macros. But that's okay. It's a good book. If you are looking for personal organization tips either because you've never read about organization, or because you're always keeping an eye out for fresh ideas, this will have something for you.
Published by McGraw Hill.
Admirably short (just over 200 pages), chatty without wasting your time, and with pithy, relevant quotes from numerous, predominantly women writers, Maggio's book on organization is about as good as these things get. The last entry in this particular self-help genre which I read was Julie Morgenstern's _Organizing from the Inside Out_ (I'm reasonably certain I read the first edition, probably in the late 1990s or early 2000s, altho it has been a while so I don't recall for sure). And Morgenstern's book wasn't this good.
Maggio, as I previously noted, does periodically descend into madness (keeping credit card receipts indefinitely was what triggered the previous post), and quite frequently advocates a level of cleaning/maintenance/etc. that I think is completely uncalled for. However, to each her own. I was here for the tickler file information (which is sort of an unfair demand from a general purpose book, as it is strictly speaking more of a time management issue); she had only a little to say about it, mostly that a linear electronic file is probably all that is necessary. I'll be reading _Getting Things Done_ next, which I suspect will irritate me.
She's got 10 principles and she mostly uses them: "Be Your Own Best Friend", by which she means, pick up after yourself/prep for yourself; Reduce Every Task to Its Smallest Parts; Like Belongs with Like; Cluster Similar Tasks (I actually disagree with this one in some detail); "Start Wide and Then Narrow", which generally means get everything you are working out onto the floor (collect from elsewhere if needed) and then organize it; Sort; Your ? Pile, which I kind of like, because there really are always a few things left over that you're just not sure about, and they can slow you down if you let them; Everything Has a Place, which I am a huge believer in, and which is the closest approach she makes to dealing with workflows outside the Reduce Task rule; The 15 Minute Rule, which is give-it-a-go-and-you'll-either-finish-or-get-momentum; and the 80/20 rule.
Some sections of the book are much, much, much better developed than others -- this is a woman who works in an office environment for the most part and it shows. Also, it's a woman who uses computers in a very 1990s style way -- she _loves_ macros. But that's okay. It's a good book. If you are looking for personal organization tips either because you've never read about organization, or because you're always keeping an eye out for fresh ideas, this will have something for you.