Throwing Away Knowledge

I decided to remove all the magazines that I had collected over the last 2.5years at Crows Nest and was going to archive them in a box upstairs. During this time, I came across a website that provided some advice on living a simpler life. It talked of reducing clutter in your house, and making sure things are in the right place.

So I decided to just throw the magazines away. However, as my flatmate succinctly put it, "I can throw away clothes and material things, but I have issues throwing away knowledge". It's the promise that there is some nugget of information that can be found be reading the articles again that will always haunt me.
I had a conflict. I knew that if I archived them, I was 95% sure that I would never read them again.
Luckily my Mandarin teacher wanted to read up on some investing magazines. So now they have a new happy home. I just have to work out what to do with The Economist, Time, Men's Health....

Why do we hold on to things that really have no value to us? Knowledge should reside in the brain, and if it's not there, then there's many other places to store it, is there?

Damn! two cheap calls already:

i'm sorry, but are you calling Men's Health knowledge? wow, that explains a lot :P instead of throwing out, give to charity. that's what i did when i moved, gave majority of my books to st vinnies.
reenie (email) - 29 November '05 - 03:51

Sounds like it's time to join eBay!

I understand the inclination to not throw out knowledge. Knowledge is valuable, but it is everywhere.

I doubt your old Time and Economist mags are going to give you any valid up to date information (knowledge). And you know that the 95% chance of you not reading them again is really 100%.

Perhaps if you had not read the mags yet it would be different. However, you did read them, took what you learned from them and moved on. Nothing wrong with that.

I hope your recycling bin is not full :)
taipan (link) - 01 December '05 - 05:02

The Perfect Organiser

Throughout my short career, I have had the issue of sychronising data from work to home and vice versa. Things events (sorry I double-booked this Sunday Reenie and Bei!), to-do lists and scribbles all lived separate lives within the work computer and the home computer. I was also looking at ways to capture my thoughts from day to day, even when I wasn't near a computer.

Over the last year or so I've been getting quite hooked into reading about productivity, and all the wonderful websites and software that geeky people like myself would toy with because:

• I like to tinker.
• I thought it would help.
• It was cool!

After a while, however, I would think that the system would not satisfy my needs, and move on to some new software. In reality it failed because I didn't take the time to work out what I really needed out of an organiser or PDA.

All this searching for the 'perfect PDA' is a useless exercise. There is no such thing. Quoting from another productivity website, the system should provide you with..."your absolute must-have requirements mixed in with the shortcomings you’re willing to tolerate will determine what’s right for you. (Coincidentally, this is true of jobs, relationships, locations, houses, and cars, too.)".

And so I'm back to square one. What I need from a PDA is:

1. The ability to jot down thoughts when I need to
2. Flexible entry style
3. Captures future events
4. Task oriented
5. Somewhere to hold things I collect during the day.

The new Franklin Covey organiser that I got on my training course is getting some workout, but I need to dedicate some more time to keeping it updated. The beauty is the weekly role piece of paper, which outlines what I have to do for the next week, according to the roles that I have. I think I can live without a lot of the other stuff. A learner and meaner organiser awaits!

Only one cheap call:

That thing looks similar to the Day Timer I use. Is it two pages to a day? Between that, and the month-to-a-view (good for organising social life and big work events, and updating with people's birthdays at the beginning of each month) it had everything I needed to keep relatively organised. And I put all my little projects in the tabbed section.

I think the only thing an electronic organiser wins in is the automatic meeting reminders. Apart from that, paper wins hands down every time.

Flame away, biatchez!!!!!

RC
randomcow - 20 November '05 - 07:13