I can’t stay away. Actually, I’m just taking a blog break while I do a bunch of organization both online and offline.
I figure that since my blog doesn’t have a bunch of content yet, I shouldn’t take a two-week break. I remember when the Fox network started running new shows while all the other networks took the summers off. Granted, they brought us 90210 during that time, but still, I am too new a “network” with too little content to take a break.
For me, anticipating the new year brings an irresistible urge to organize. I like this article, “A Guide to Organizing the Home and Office” and are putting some of the ideas in to action. I’ve found plastic storage boxes at Frye’s that are the same as the ones at The Container Store but with blue lids and for about $3 less each. These boxes stack nicely and are clear so I can see what’s in them.
I’m also working on designing a maintainable address book. I am designing my own address book in Excel. Mostly I have to make my own data store because I have over 60 addresses for sending Christmas cards, and a mail merge makes for easy envelope addressing. I found that the open source database formats for contacts don’t let me do a mail merge with the combinations that I need, because Christmas cards go to families but most address books are used for email which means one person per email address. Snail mail and electronic mail are quite different animals when you start to try to combine the data sources you store. Yep, I’m designing information even while on break.
I’m also re-reading 43folders.com’s “Writing sensible email messages” and I’m going to make it a resolution to write better email messages in the new year. I especially like the tip, “Make it easy to quote – Power email users will quote and respond to specific sections or sentences of your message. You can facilitate this by keeping your paragraphs short, making them easy to slice and dice.”
Easy to quote, making your message memorable and also easy to copy and reuse portions of it. Content reuse, sounds good to me! How about you, any organization tips to share?