There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk • Hacker News Board

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#51

Post by basch » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:01 PM UTC

jacalata wrote: post #49

basch wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

work-inbox-21.5k gmail-inbox-49.5k i cant imagine interacting, sorting, and deleting all those items. search works perfectly every time, never been unable to find a work email. i also cant imagine using email as a todo list over some kind of team/projectmanagement inbox software such as https://www.enchant.com/ , frontapp, intercom, missive, zendeskinbox, streak, trello, asana etc.

So, do you just track read-unread? Every email that is read has been pushed to a task management system? I know a lot of people with horrifically stuffed inboxes and I only consider one of them organized - the rest are prone to miss emails, or forget to do whatever they were asked because they read it and then it was in a giant bucket of unimportant stuff.

if youre in some kind of support, helpdesk, customerservice, projectmanagement, development scenario and you have it set up correctly, emails are mostly notifications that something happened in the tracking system. customers/employees only EVER email the abstraction layer, not personnel directly. you can either reply to the email and it gets automatically sorted by the software, or you can interact directly in the software itself. so in helpdesk software like enchant, a ticket stays open or held until it is closed. closing the ticket removes the entire conversation from visibility. a reply restores its visibility. if i move a normal email to a folder, and a person sends a replies to it, the conversation becomes fragmented. team inboxes delineate conversations and let you move the entire conversation including future replies. they also force standard practice on a team, so each person doesnt project manage differently. this gives you more transparency, and lets you read each others conversations so everyone can stay on the same page regarding trends or events.

talking to the developers, thats not exactly how they intended the software to be used, and internally they close tickets aggressively and move longer term tasks to project management tracking in trello.

on the gmail front, their tabs or whatever are a lifesaver. i only check the primary and update tabs daily, the rest is pseudo-junkmail.

tldr: to answer your question simply. if i get an email asking for something or that i need to act on, and it didnt come FROM some type of tracking/pm/ticketing software, i forward it to the appropriate software so it is added to the todo list. if youre on a team using task software like https://glip.com/ for instance, you add the task directly in the software, you dont email the person.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#52

Post by amelius » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:01 PM UTC

rhapsodic wrote: post #4

I've found the easiest stuff to organize is the stuff I no longer have. I used to feel obligated to file a lot of stuff that came in the mail, like addendums to insurance policies, annual reports for stocks or funds, credit card statements, etc. But it dawned on me long ago that I virtually never need to refer back to that stuff. So it goes straight into the trash. When the bookshelves in my office fill up, I cull th…

It may also be worthwhile to consider maintaining a least-recently-used (LRU) queue. The stuff you haven't touched in, say, 5 years you can safely throw away.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#53

Post by amelius » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:02 PM UTC

thedevil wrote: post #13

vinay427 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually take a photo of documents that there's a small chance I would need in the future. This way, they take up a very small amount of space on my phone but in case I need something again the photo will usually be sufficient and I can search by date to find it.

I do something similar: put in a pile and about once a month I scan the pile (I bought a printer with a paper-feed just for this), upload it to cloud storage, and date it.

The only step missing is OCR, so you can search on contents.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#54

Post by ryukafalz » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #42

douche wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I have ever thrown away a book. Some day, I hope to have one of those Victorian style libraries with a rolling staircase to house all of my books...

>I don't think I have ever thrown away a book. I used to be that guy. Then I got tired of hauling all that stuff every time I moved. Now, if I can reasonably expect my library to have it, I don't keep it (unless it's a reference book I need to consult often). And when I buy new books, I prefer ebooks. They don't take up much clutter.

I can certainly understand the feeling, but if you don't want it, donate it. One man's trash...

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#55

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

mountaineer22 wrote: post #25

chrisbennet wrote: post #7

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” - Albert Einstein

Can't upvote it enough (I am sure there are better links): http://assets3.bigthink.com/system/idea_thumbnails/54803/pri...

[deleted]

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#56

Post by andars » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

chrisbennet wrote: post #7

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” - Albert Einstein

A great quote, but another one that wasn't actually Einstein. Appears to be from Laurence Peter (eponym of the Peter Principle). reply

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#57

Post by Avshalom » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:09 PM UTC

jacalata wrote: post #49

basch wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

work-inbox-21.5k gmail-inbox-49.5k i cant imagine interacting, sorting, and deleting all those items. search works perfectly every time, never been unable to find a work email. i also cant imagine using email as a todo list over some kind of team/projectmanagement inbox software such as https://www.enchant.com/ , frontapp, intercom, missive, zendeskinbox, streak, trello, asana etc.

So, do you just track read-unread? Every email that is read has been pushed to a task management system? I know a lot of people with horrifically stuffed inboxes and I only consider one of them organized - the rest are prone to miss emails, or forget to do whatever they were asked because they read it and then it was in a giant bucket of unimportant stuff.

I don't really track anything. I look at my email and if I don't know what an email is I'll pop it open, though a lot of work related emails are just automated messages or softcopies of something that I printed out at the same time so I don't even bother reading those.

If there's something I need to do I either write a note down on a scrap-of-paper/notepad/sticky-note or just you know, do it.

I am in fact hilariously unorganized but it's pretty unimportant because I'm not sure how having a bunch of folders for stuff is supposed to keep me from forgetting to do things.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#58

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:12 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #28

Jtsummers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could be absolutely gorgeous. A couple options that pop into my head. A column in the center which contains a number of shelves, and so the books. But also, you could have the books stored in the steps themselves. The space under the steps is hollow, so turn that into shelves. The height of the books would be an issue, but paperbacks would do well, I think.

One problem with storing books in the column is that as the staircase rotates, it might hit any books that are jutting out. Although, I guess it doesn't have to rotate, I don't know why I wanted it to rotate.

[deleted]

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#59

Post by Jtsummers » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #28

Jtsummers wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could be absolutely gorgeous. A couple options that pop into my head. A column in the center which contains a number of shelves, and so the books. But also, you could have the books stored in the steps themselves. The space under the steps is hollow, so turn that into shelves. The height of the books would be an issue, but paperbacks would do well, I think.

One problem with storing books in the column is that as the staircase rotates, it might hit any books that are jutting out. Although, I guess it doesn't have to rotate, I don't know why I wanted it to rotate.

I misunderstood you. So don't really want a staircase, you want a platform that moves up and down along a screw mechanism? If the column were big enough, you could have the shelves set deep enough to prevent collisions. The doors could shut automatically (weighted mechanism), and a sensor that would prevent the platform from moving if a door was open.

Edit, I guess it could still be a staircase, several steps up and wrapping around a bit, that becomes the platform you ride up and down on.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#60

Post by pavel_lishin » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #59

pavel_lishin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem with storing books in the column is that as the staircase rotates, it might hit any books that are jutting out. Although, I guess it doesn't have to rotate, I don't know why I wanted it to rotate.

I misunderstood you. So don't really want a staircase, you want a platform that moves up and down along a screw mechanism? If the column were big enough, you could have the shelves set deep enough to prevent collisions. The doors could shut automatically (weighted mechanism), and a sensor that would prevent the platform from moving if a door was open. Edit, I guess it could still be a staircase, several steps up and…

The platform wouldn't move up and down; the staircase would just rotate around the central axis. It's just a spiral staircase, not an elevator, albeit one that rotates.

The more I think about this, the less reasons I can think of for having the damned thing rotate - aside from the possibility of storing books inside the central cylinder, in which case rotation the staircase would give you access to more space.