Welcome

Read an Excerpt

from Chapter 9, "Information Management Systems" 

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“Personal information management system” (PIMS) is a very intimidating phrase, but a very important concept. It is, basically at its heart, thinking about all the information that comes into your life that you need to retain for some purpose and figuring out where to put that information so you don't lose it and can find it easily. I tend to think about information management systems as applying to both personal and professional buckets, because that's how I tend to divide the stuff of my life for tracking, saving, and execution. Some of the components of a PIMS are fairly standard, and some you might want to customize for yourself. And some of the standard ones might apply to you, but not to others, and vice versa. And that's just fine, and normal.

So some of the typical information inputs in our lives come from verbal conversations with other people, ideas that pop in our heads, email, voicemail, texts, social media notifications, posts from bulletin boards like Pinterest, article clippings (whether digital or physical), and meeting notes and action items. Maybe you take notes on your phone, or record voice memos to yourself. Maybe you write out a lot of Post-it notes and stick them up all over your house in office. Maybe you have a whiteboard on your fridge that you and your family leave messages for each other on. Maybe you have a grocery list on that whiteboard, or on a notepad on your fridge. There are others that I haven't even thought of that are normal for you. So in this section, I'll cover some of the major ones, and then you will be well equipped to figure out how to manage all of those streams of information that are coming into your life.

When I design a PIMS, as with any of my systems, I always try to get to the simplest possible version. It might not start out super simple in my mind, and that's OK, but before I start implementing my system, I keep whittling it down until I get to something very basic. Complex systems are not usually sustainable. And the best systems begin as simple systems, and then are built out from there to respond to changing needs. Two easy ways you can keep this system simple from the get-go is to first reduce what comes in, and second to minimize how much information you decide to save. 

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Action Step: make a list of the typical inputs in your life. Use the paragraphs above for some ideas, and then run through a typical week in your life to see where inputs come from (maybe look at your planner calendar if you need a refresher). 

So now we have the inputs of our information for our system. Now let's look at the common tools that we can use to organize and store that information for action, and also for easy retrieval down the road. Some of the standard tools include a calendar, a to-do list, a contacts list, and files (a place to store paper, and a place to store digital information). Those are really the main tools that you need for this job. Sometimes, you might find that you need something a little more complex, or something more personalized for a particular thing that you are doing. But these are really the simplest common denominators of tools that I want you to keep in mind. The calendar and the to-do list store information just like your paper and digital storage files do, but the calendar and to-do list tend to be much faster moving, with a much faster information flow, than in your files.

And be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that your digital files can store an endless amount of information. The invisible weight of information you have to manage can become really unwieldy, really quickly. Just because this information is not a stack of papers that you have to put into a backpack and carry around doesn't mean that the awareness of all of that information isn't weighty in your head. The mere existence of mental information clutter stresses us out. 

It is also important to know that you don't have to choose between paper or digital tools. In fact, it's completely fine to use both! I love the tactile experience of paper and pens and Post-its and planners , but I don't have the ability to carry really heavy things around with me everywhere. I have some back issues and years ago I had to really lighten the load to reduce my pain level. So that actually forced me to go digital. I turns out I do honestly really like the lightweight feeling of it all. And not just physically what I'm no longer carrying—knowing that I have stored pretty much just the information I need in my digital files lightens my steps too. And with especially since we've gone through Covid-19 and and the remote working revolution, it has been a real blessing to be able to access everything from the cloud and just have one space where everything stays (with back-ups, of course). Now you might be in a situation where you really can't be cloud-based, and that's totally fine. Of course you could just grab a portable hard drive and take that with you wherever you go, and that's not super heavy these days. But as always, the system is completely up to you.

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As you'll see in the chart below, email is not something I really consider a tool. I mean, of course it's a tool that we use, likely every day, but it's a communication tool, not an organizing tool. It is a train station, really, where trains come in, and trains go out again. To stay with the travel metaphor, it's not a hotel. Emails shouldn't become long-term guests in your email account. But don't worry about it for now; I'll talk more about that when we get to the section on email. Meanwhile, I stand by my assertion that email is not truly an information management tool.