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Happy new year everyone!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s summer here in Australia, where we take a long break. I want to talk about Tidying in this post, but first \u2013 some news:<\/p>\n
So \u2013 back to Tidying.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve long been a fan of Marie Kondo\u2019s\u00a0\u2018Life changing magic of Tidying Up\u2019<\/a>. I keep a Tidy house along loose\u00a0Konbari principles<\/a>, where there is not too much \u2018stuff\u2019 and everything has its place. Of course, I often fall short of the ideal,\u00a0as does Marie herself,\u00a0<\/a>but in trying to live by Konbari principles, things do not get too far out of hand. Academic life can also benefit from the Konbari Tidy approach, so I\u2019ve been working on ways to extend my Tidy Home life into my work life.<\/p>\n Stop reading now if the whole Tidy Thing is not for you!<\/p>\n I know a lot of people feel judged by other people\u2019s Tidy. It\u2019s not my intention to shame anyone, or suggest you should be like me. If you are happy how you are now, live free and prosper friend! If, however, you are finding yourself frustrated by your own disorganisation, especially if you think it\u2019s affecting your academic work, then read on.<\/p>\n The Tidy Desk<\/strong><\/p>\n As I have written about before, there are two types of people in the world:\u00a0Pilers and Filers.<\/a>\u00a0I used to be a piler, where the papers on my desk served as a physical reminder of the work I was doing, but going paperless changed me to a filer, where information is stored for later retrieval. I find I think better if my desk is uncluttered because I\u2019m no longer being distracted by piles of things to do.<\/p>\n (I\u2019m an imperfect, but slowly improving, filer \u2013 I\u2019ll get to that soon).<\/p>\n To keep my physical desk tidy I have a lovely, big antique wooden in-tray from the 1960s. I use this to hold paperwork, forms, receipts, stuff that people give me, stuff I pick up from events and so on (not just paper). I simply chuck everything that doesn\u2019t have a home yet into my intray until it is full, then I empty it completely. Here\u2019s a snap of my desk at work, with the wooden tray in the foreground:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t use filing cabinets or keep any paper records at work (although I do keep paper records at home). Your mileage may vary on this, but most universities simply don\u2019t require paper copies of receipts or contracts anymore and will provide secure digital infrastructure to house them. So every piece of paper in my work in-tray eventually gets digitised and filed in Sharepoint\/Teams, then recycled or shredded.<\/p>\n Going fully paperless has taken about 10 years. I made the final step when I started at ANU by simply not connecting to a printer at work. I was then forced to read on the screen. People tell me all the time they can\u2019t do this, and I get it: I didn\u2019t love it at first either.\u00a0The advantages of physical reading are numerous.\u00a0<\/a>While I won\u2019t ever give up paper books, there is no need to use paper for other types of academic reading. Printing journal articles, then losing or misfiling them, and printing them out again is both wasteful and inefficient.<\/p>\n Most people can adjust to reading on a screen \u2013 and technology exists for the computer to read things to you as well. Distributing is not the problem it used to be either.<\/p>\n I used to have to ask people to print my class handouts or files for committees, so I was only mostly paperless. But the pandemic revival of QR codes means I can fully live the paperless dream. Services like Google Drive or Dropbox provide free options for you to house material for downloads. There are\u00a0free QR code generators<\/a>, or you can use a service like\u00a0Canva<\/a>\u00a0(which also has nice hand out templates). I like\u00a0Linktree<\/a>\u00a0as a fall back option, which gives you one, easy to remember URL which you can use to distribute links. Create a Linktree account if you\u2019re worried that people won\u2019t have phones (they will though). You may not even need to go this far: most of my team have moved to\u00a0Mentimeter<\/a>, which enables people to see and interact with the presentation on their phones.<\/p>\n My point is: we have the technology. If you are willing to try and eliminate printouts entirely, you can.<\/p>\n If you take going paperless seriously, you need to really get your nerd on about how to store research and reading material \u2013 and take notes (I teach a whole class on this at ANU<\/a>). Everyone needs a range of strategies for managing information. I firmly believe in PKM (personal knowledge management) needs to be individualised, so you have to work out a system to suit yourself. The best way to do this is get interested in other people\u2019s systems (read about my digital reading system\u00a0here)<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can start designing a PKM by drawing your information handling \u2018technology stack\u2019. This is an exercise I do in my classes and it really helps people realise where the gaps might be \u2013 here\u2019s a rough sketch to get you started:<\/p>\n The Tidy Computer<\/strong><\/p>\n So I solved my Piling problem on my desk, which forced me to become a Filer inside my computer. I was really crappy at this until just recently.<\/p>\n When I fist attempted to be paperless, I wanted to reduce the amount of time I spent filing things digitally, so I kept a very flat file structure. Everything work related just got chucked in a folder called \u2018ANU\u2019, which I cleared out once a year by simply moving everything into a sub-folder with the year number as the title. Similarly, project files got chucked in a folder with the project name and everything else went in a big folder called \u2018life stuff\u2019. I simply relied on search to find things again.<\/p>\n This dilettante filing approach worked ok, but I was treating the inside of my computer like a large laundry basket. As it filled with more and more stuff, the searching became more and more tedious. Last year I read the\u00a0new book by Tiago Forte called PARA<\/a>, which is a system for organising your digital files. It\u2019s an excellent system, but like with the Konbari method, being hard core about it is not sustainable. Instead, I try to abide by the general principles rather than stick to it rigourously.<\/p>\n I find that even this minimal effort to be Tidy inside my computer has yielded significant results so, if you are finding the inside of your computer to be full of dirty socks mixed with clean, I encourage you to explore his system for yourself. I talked about it at great length on the On The Reg podcast last year in an episode called\u00a0\u2018Is productivity the new Veganism?\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n By the way \u2013 I still stand by not bothering to file email. The only things I have folders for is receipts and nice feedback. I actually went to a class on using Outlook and now have mad skills of search \u2013 a worthwhile investment of time I promise!<\/p>\n The Tidy Office<\/strong><\/p>\n The main \u2018mess\u2019 in my office is books. Like many academics, I have hundreds and hundreds of them.<\/p>\n Last summer I paid my niece, Abi, to arrange them alphabetically. She did a great job, but I still couldn\u2019t find anything! Alphabetising doesn\u2019t work for me, largely because I often know the contents of the book and forget the author, or I remember the cover and forget everything else. The human brain is not a computer \u2013 we remember things relationally and often by feeling, which is why we invented libraries in the first place.<\/p>\n So I turned to libraries for inspiration and started to think about how to implement the\u00a0Dewey Decimal Classification<\/a>\u00a0system in my office. As it turns out, there is an app for that:\u00a0LibraryThing.<\/a>\u00a0I went mad for this app when it first appeared some 15 years ago, catalogued all my home books, then\u2026 promptly forgot about it. I\u2019m not sure why I never bothered cataloguing my work books \u2013 I guess it just seemed like a huge job that never fit into a working week. I don\u2019t want to spend my down time organising my work books, but that\u2019s where nerdy nieces willing to work for minimum wage come in handy (thanks Abi!).<\/p>\n Although I don\u2019t love outsouring important information to other people\u2019s servers, LibraryThing has stood the test of time. It still looks a bit clunky, but it\u2019s free and works like a dream. Simply enter some details \u2013 whole or part of the title, the author or the ISBN and Library Thing creates a full record. You can then see and sort your library by author, title or \u2013 bliss! \u2013 cover. You can enter in digital books as well, so you have a complete record of everything you own and their details:<\/p>\n Even better \u2013 Library Thing auto-magically generates a Dewey Decimal number, add a label maker and you have personal library heaven on a stick! Here\u2019s a pile of my books, with their labels on ready to be filed:<\/p>\n So owning your own library is within reach friends! Also can be a good little summer earner for your favourite smart young person (side note: Abi was amused\/annoyed by the academic habit of not removing price tags and says : \u201cit takes less than a minute \u2013 just do it!\u201d).<\/p>\n I could go on and on as Tidying is a bit of a fetish of mine, but I\u2019ll stop here. Happy tidying everyone! Love to hear about your tips and techniques by email or on the Socials. I\u2019m mostly hanging out on Threads, but can be found on BlueSky and Mastodon as well. Search @thesiswhisperer and you\u2019ll find me. See you next month<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/inputs-outputs.jpg\")
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