In his book about GTD, David Allen has dedicated a full chapter to how to set up the time, space, and tools to [make] things happen at a terrific new level.
Going through it was quite interesting, especially to realize that my desk at home was similar to what he called an emergency workstation.
If I had to set up an emergency workstation in just a few minutes, I would buy an unfinished door, place it on top of two two-drawer filing cabinets (one at each end), place three stack trays on it, and add a paper, pad, and pen.David Allen
As explained in my post about this chapter, the only difference (between my desk and his so-called emergency workstation
) was my use of a wood plank instead of an unfinished door and two cheap, not very practical, wood trestles instead of the two-drawer filing cabinets. At the time (before reading this very chapter), I had just replaced the latter with two three-shelve cabinets – great minds think alike!
After my last digression (see A rabbit trail), I was adding more “stuff” to a new “tower” next to my desk – i.e., continuing my never-ending initial capturing (see Cleaning the Augean stables) – when I realized that I will need more than three stack trays on it
to organize all this mess. Of course, many things do not belong to my desk (e.g., my gardening box), but given my many projects, I will need a lot more storage space if I want to have an at-hand filing system.
If it takes longer than a minute to file something in an easily retrievable format, you’ll likely stack it or stuff it somewhere instead.David Allen
This is how I ended up searching for desktop organizers…
I found my holy grail in IKEA’s IVAR system!