Are you a pack rat, a neat-nic, or something in between? If forced to confess, I’d have to say that I’m probably closer to a pack rat. But I’m a pack rat who goes through several seasonal sessions each year of throwing things out. (My friend Lynda calls me a “binge cleaner”.) So does that put me in the “something in between” category? Who knows? What I find interesting about this train of thought, though, is the notion that in those parts of my house and office where it is a natural part of the room design and process to keep clutter to a minimum, I do reasonably well. Where the design doesn’t support “clutter free”, I end up with piles that need sorting (and re-sorting).

I find that in those areas of my life where I take the time to think ahead, design a process, and establish the tools necessary to support efficiency, I can live a clutter free existence. Of course life changes on us and that means that we periodically need to rethink our process and update our tools. That’s a little easier if we are talking about a shift from carrying football and soccer equipment around in the car with some semblance of order to carrying softball and baseball equipment around, but you get the point. And this has anything to do with managing our information? I think so.

How much of your day is spent looking for the information you need to respond to that email, complete that registration, prepare for your presentation, or answer your colleague’s question? Every year I see studies suggesting that it could be 30-50% of your day. Up to HALF of our time? They’ve got to be kidding. If those statistics have any relevance (and since I see them every year, I guess I have to admit that they do), then wouldn’t we all be better off with less to go through? With better processes that naturally force us to keep less information? But how do we sort the trash from the keepers when our information flow is as fast-paced as it is? There are a lot of product promises about classifying and sorting our information, emails, and documents so that we have less of the transient trash and more of the content we need. But is getting our business and information management practices into the “less is more” space as easy as they say? I’d love to hear what you have to say about that question. Let’s chat.