What the Heck was I Thinking!?

I was talking with my wife over morning coffee today. She said, “I’ve got all these piles of things I need to get put away and organized. They’re driving me nuts. I wake up in the night and these worries invite themselves into my mind.” She and I are both horizontally organized, so we have at least one stack of things to organize.

I mentioned the interesting thoughts that Terri, at From the Belly of the Beast among others, about the Ready for Anything notes that Buzz Brugman posted on his blog.

Her eyes lit up when I described the concept that your mind is always working at some level on any unfinished task. That eats up time and attention better spent somewhere else.

She’s decided to implement the concepts David Allen describes in his book “Getting Things Done” in a novel way. She works around the house, either caring for our grand children and caring for three girls (sisters) with special needs, or taking care of the house. She’s decided that the “contexts” that work for her are the rooms. She’s going to put a small spiral notebook in each room with the projects and next actions (she hasn’t digested all the koolaid yet, so she’s not calling them that…yet) listed for that room.

She’s also one of those people who doesn’t like to finish a task/project without having another task/project lined up, and preferrably started. This will give her mind the “tactile feedback” of having proects started all over the house, so that won’t upset her. By the way, for those of you in management school, her type in Myers-Briggs-speak is ISFP. The —P says she likes the idea of doing things, not completing things. —Js like to get done with things.

I found this web site for Envelope and Letter Folding. For many of us, the computer has moved us away from the traditional analog letter. In addition, pre-folded and pre-glued envelops for letters are everywhere.

To quote from their introduction:
“Why the Heck Would You Want to Fold an Envelope?
If you are not into envelope and letter folding you may
wonder why one should go to the trouble of folding up
an envelope when you could just buy one from a stationery
store. Well, first off, it is the very nature of hobbies that
they tend not to be entirely practical. In spite of that,
hand folding letters and envelopes is one of those rare
intersections of decoration and practicality, where paper
folding produces the satisfaction of making something
useful and novel. The folds can be extremely clever in
their attempts to reach a number of basic goals: to make
the largest possible envelope from a given piece of paper,
to latch or remain sealed with out need of adhesive, to
meet postal requirements and to be attractive.”

Now, to find a nice wax seal and some sealing wax…