They had this to say about their belief that not everyone can maintain a filing system.

Many people, otherwise competent and some even brilliant, cannot maintain a filing system. It has nothing to do with intelligence or organization or even self-discipline. I’m convinced it’s just the way they are wired.

I found the idea of a one-box, catch-all, dump box interesting, as I have a somewhat similar though slightly more organized approach. I have a simple Jan-Dec accordian folder and I dump all my receipts, paperwork, etc in each month accordingly. At the end of the year I go through the file month by month, file anything that I need to keep permanently, scan as much as possible and keep digital copies, throw away anything I don’t need, and dump the rest back in the folder, place a rubberband around it, label it for the corresonding year and put it away.

Simple, efficient, and super satisfying in that I feel like I am really organized without being locked into some super filing system that I can’t ever seem to remember how it works.

Flagit! is a plug-in that offers Mail.app users customisable flags of as many different colours as you like, as well as question and exclamation marks.

Unclutterer agrees with me, so I must be right.  At least I am Mostly Organized.

Keeping a clean workspace isn’t the only key to being successful at your job, but it doesn’t hurt. Yes, there are some people with tidy desks who don’t have the best work ethic and there are people with messy desks who are invaluable to their companies. But, as a rule of thumb, it can be more efficient to have a well organized workspace. An organized workspace allows you to focus on the task at hand rather than losing focus while looking for a misplaced paper or file.

You’re likely a productivity hobbyist if:

• You frequently do things like re-purpose shoeholders to organize your gadgets.
• You have a t-shirt that says “David Allen has a posse.”
• You modify your GTD system on a weekly basis.
• You’ve ever emptied your geek bag, taken a picture, and then shared the picture with friends. 
• You seriously can’t wait for the next release of Remember the Milk or Better Gmail.
• You exchange “Moleskine hacks” with your friends over beer.
• You’ve ever spoken of “date hacks,” “marriage hacks,” “diet hacks,” “child hacks,” “food hacks,” “kitchen hacks,” “parents hacks,” “brain hacks,” or “inspiration hacks.”
• Your refer to David Allen as “The David.”
• You own all of the following: a label maker, digital voice recorder, PDA, hipster PDA, a large supply of binder clips, and an ebook reader (like like Amazon Kindle or the Sony Reader.)

Yep, I am a Productivity Hobbyist, but in reality I am Mostly Organized.

My past attempts at removing clutter have consistently bottlenecked at a few common points. Often I wasn’t really committed to the idea of a full purge, so I’d ignore whole boxes of memorabilia. Other times, my goal was primarily aesthetic, so I’d end up shoveling things into pretty boxes and “organizers”. But I finally realized what’s reallybeen stopping me from accomplishing anything substantial. It’s so simple and so dumb that I’m embarrassed to admit it: my garbage can was too small.

I need to do some much needed purging also, but I think I need to buy a dumpster!