Silver Clipboard

The Mess Box

On your desk live a bunch of miscellaneous objects: scissors, coins, a stapler, hole punch, etc. These are not objects you use every day, but you do use them frequently enough that putting them in storage is inconvenient. Slowly they spread across your desk, cluttering the space and annoying you in worst way possible: just below the threshold of doing something about it.

The solution to this desk detritus? The mess box. To reign in my desk clutter I took the lid from an old shoe box, turned it upside-down and decided that all miscellaneous desk stuff would live in there from now on.

The mess box makes a surprisingly profound difference. First, it gives a clear border to the mess — it will never be more than a square foot of space. Instead of slowing creeping across my desk when I’m not looking, the hole punch and its friends are confined to that box. Secondly, the mess box discourages me from carelessly leaving random things on my working space. With undefined stuff on a surface, adding one more item makes little difference. By having a mess box to hold cluttery items, the desk is always clear for whatever needs working on.

Instead of just letting the mess happen without thinking about it, consciously put boundaries around it. This lets you stop repeating the thought: ‘my desk is a mess’. You can let go of that constant, nagging thought because you’ve made a decision about it. I suggest looking over the mess box during your weekly review and decided what objects you want to keep in there.

Go flip over a box top and get your desk mess under control.

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Header photograph by Syntopia

How to Make Your Laptop Battery Last Longer

On Apple’s website there is a page where they go into detail on how their batteries work and how to keep them lasting as long as possible. There are a few useful tips, and they’ll even schedule into your iCal the regular maintenance you should perform.

[Click here to go to Apple’s Battery page]

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Header photograph by Demion

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The Packing Problem

This past summer I helped my parents retire from New York to a Confederate elephant graveyard of suburban development in search of a lower cost of living.

To pack for the move, my parents individually wrapped each of their belongings, placed them in boxes, then wrote on the outside a list of the contents. They didn’t write ‘kitchen supplies’ or ‘books’ as normal people would, instead they listed all the kitchen supplies and the titles of the books. My parents are obsessively neat people.

Near the end of the packing, my mother looked around the house — 80% empty at this point and said: “I’m glad most of this stuff is packed. It shouldn’t take long to finish.”

But it did. Many more hours of work lay ahead — more than had passed already.

In our packing, we forgot an important truth: the 80/20 rule applies to all things, even moving. In this case, the last 20% of stuff takes 80% of the time to pack.

Why is this so? Because people start packing with the easy items: books, dishes, clothes. These things live in clearly defined places and fit snugly into boxes. The last 20% of stuff is widely dispersed throughout the house and is awkwardly shaped. These knickknacks, souvenirs, gifts and other unintentionally accumulated stuff, straddle the line between between ‘throw out’ and ‘keep’. They drag on the mind and require the most decisions.

To help quicken the packing of the last twenty percent of stuff here are two suggestions:

1. Decide your default position. Make a decision, in advance, about what you are going to do with unclear items — things you aren’t immediately sure if you want to keep or ditch. The two options are: ‘when it doubt, throw it out’ or ‘when in doubt, keep it’. It doesn’t matter which option you choose, just decided before you start to save yourself hours of dithering and trips down memory lane. (Alternatively you can also photograph your items, then throw them out.)
2. Get thyself to a Container Store. Buy a big box filled with many smaller boxes. For that last 20% of stuff you keep, don’t try and sort it — that will take forever. Just start packing a small box with the miscellanea and when it’s full, add it to the bigger box. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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Header photograph by Jared

Search With Banana Slug: Productive Mess on the Internet

Ever notice that the first ten hits on google are almost identical, no matter the search term? The first link is wikipedia and the remaining nine are commercial sites. Getting tired of that yet? I know I am.

The book The Perfect Mess suggests a different kind of search engine: Banana Slug. Banana Slug bills itself as the ‘long tail’ search engine. When you type in your search query, Banana Slug adds one random word before scanning its index. Type in ‘Wellington Grey’ and Banana Slug will actually search for ‘Wellington Grey +Foxtrot’. It’s amazing how well adding this bit of noise cuts through the usual search result cruft.

While I still use google for most things, Banana Slug has become an excellent backup and a great assistance when I just can’t quite find something on google.

[Click here to try Banana Slug]

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Header photograph by David Sifry

How and Why to Keep Book and Movie Lists on Your iPod

How many times have you been waiting for a train or plane without a book and looked around a bookstore knowing full well that you’ve been recommended many books, but now can’t think of a single one? Or perhaps you’ve been in a hotel and wanted to rent a movie, but can’t remember the title that your friend suggested.

Well, here’s a little tip to make those situations less frustrating: keep book and movie lists on your iPod. For many, their iPod is one of the devices that is always with them. Why not use it to store useful information?

Here’s how to keep book and movie lists easily on your iPod:

1. If you haven’t already, get your address book synchronized with iTunes. Connect your iPod to iTunes. On the main page, click the ‘contacts’ tab. Then check the box labeled ‘sync address book contacts’
2. In Address Book create new contacts called ‘book list’ and ‘movie list’. Add your books and movies in the ‘notes’ section.
3. Sync your iPod and you’re done. To access the lists on your iPod go to ‘extras’ then ‘contacts’.

As long as you keep the lists updated (don’t forget that ubiquitous capture) you’ll never be lost in a bookstore or video shop again.

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Header photograph by generated