How to Manage your paper action items

Many people who struggle with paper management commit three deadly sins:

1. They fail to file (or scan and shred) the paperwork they have completed any actions on, but need to keep for future reference
2. They fail to prioritize and take action on their action items
3. The keep items they do not need mixed in with their other paperwork

The result – they are drowning in paperwork.

This focuses on solving just one of the deadly sins – what to do with your paper action items.

As with any organizing, there is not just one way to deal with your action items. In any case, the aim of any system to deal with your action items should be simple to implement and maintain. It should capture your action items and ensure they can be processed in a timely manner.

Here are five methods for taking care of your action items.  

1. GTD – getting things done, defined by David Allen
2. 4 quadrants – from Stephen Covey
3. Tickler system
4. Hotel system designed by Dolores Kaytes
5. Simple priority system

Let’s look at each in turn.

 

GTD – Getting Things Done

Popularized by David Allen, this system requires you write all of your action items down and put them in separate folders according to the type of action that is next required to complete the task at hand. For instance, if you need to pay your registration for your car, but you need a smog certificate, the first action might be to call the local garage to make an appointment for a smog check. The piece of paper associated with the car registration could then go in the “to call” folder. Folders are created for all the types of actions you take: to call, errands, to email, etc. Folders are then reviewed daily to find things that should be done today (or weekly for tasks for the coming week – depending on your review schedule.) The GTD system relies on batching like items together, there by completing them more efficiently.

4 quadrants

In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey presented a 4 quadrant model for categorizing our tasks and ensuring that we get the most important things done in our lives. The quadrant is created by considering whether a task is important or unimportant and urgent or non-urgent. The first quadrant is important and urgent tasks – these should be done today. The second quadrant is for important, but not urgent items. This quadrant typically holds our longer term projects – the ones that are easy to continually put off, but never actually get done unless you make the time for them. The third quadrant is for urgent, but not important tasks; a company asking you to respond to a customer satisfaction survey within two days in order to receive a 50 cent discount to somewhere you never shop. This quadrant can be a place where people lose productivity – responding to emails that are not important, spending time getting reports together on a weekly basis that no one actually reads. The fourth quadrant is for unimportant and non-urgent items. This often includes doing activities that could be perfectly fine for leisure time, but should not occupy productive time – aimlessly surfing the web or facebook and other social media sites, playing video games, and the like. Once you have classified your tasks into the quadrants, spend most of your time completing items in quadrants one and two.

The tickler system

The tickler system involves choosing when an item should be completed and then doing it on that day. The system is also known as the 43 folders system as it requires 43 folders to hold the action items – 1-31 for the days of the month and 12 folders for each month of the year. Items are placed in the folders when they will be acted upon. Use the day folders for the current month and the month folders for items that need to be done after the current month. For instance, if the current month is May, then anything that is due in May would be put in the day folders, say a bill is due to be paid on the 15th. The invoice would be put in the folder labeled “15”. If a second bill was due in June, then it would be placed in the June folder. At the beginning of the month, all the items that have been collected for action that month are assigned to their respective day folders. This system requires discipline to carry out the items each day. It can be simplified to 6 folders – one folder for each week of the current month, with one to catch the half week, and one folder for items due the following month.

The hotel system

The hotel system was developed by Dolores Kaytes, a long time member of the National Association of Professional Organizers-Los Angeles Chapter. You take any accordion file and print a sheet with as many rows as there are slots and two columns. In the first column you print the number of the slot and in the second column, you write a short description of the item and place the item in the corresponding slot. It gives you a quick overview of the items you need to complete and a very quick retrieval time for any item.

The simple priority system

Use three folders, one red, one yellow and one blue. Put the items you must complete this week in the red folder. Put the items that need to be done soon in the yellow folder. Put all the other items in the blue folder. Complete the items in the red folder each week. Review the items in the yellow folder weekly to see what needs to be moved into the red folder for the next week. Review the items in the blue folder every two – three weeks checking for items to move to the yellow or red folder and for items that you decide you will not actually do. Items that you decide you will not actually do should be removed from the folders altogether and recycled. Folders can be labeled appropriately; red = “must do” or “do immediately” or “NOW!” or “Chocolate for an empty folder” or whatever will motivate you to complete them.

The most successful systems are ones that the user has tweaked to suit themselves. Take the one that you think most fits your style of operation and tweak it to make it your own. If you need help tweaking, we’re only a phone call or email away.

Happy Actioning!