Filing vs. Piling
In general, I highly discourage putting information or things you need to act on into piles. Filing is more organized and easier, if done right. But there are some exceptions. Here is a breakdown on when to file and when to pile.
When to Pile
Create piles for things that you are working on at the moment or will be working through in the next few hours. Used in this sense, piling becomes a fairly simple and effective a way of organizing your workflow.
Here is an example. I was just going through my inbox at home yesterday. It included some ideas I had written down on paper (normally I try to put ideas I want to do something about directly into OmniFocus as inbox items electronically, but sometimes it works best to jot them down on paper), receipts that needed to be entered into Quicken, some bank statements to reconcile, various small 4-minute-or-so actions, and various things to file.
I could have deferred most of these actions and put them into the set of pending files that I have for my routine actions. But there was quite a bit of stuff, and I wanted to do all these actions right away to get them over with. So I created a pile for each type of action and sorted the items into those piles as I processed my inbox.
Here are the piles I created: Receipts to enter, notes to process, bank statements to reconcile, bills to pay, things to file, and “other small actions” to take. Then I went through the piles one by one and took care of everything in them (entered all the receipts into Quicken, paid any bills and set up auto payment for the ones I could [we just moved], processed the ideas into projects and actions, and so forth).
Piles are effective in situations like these because they are temporary. It is helpful to have your work laid out and visible before you. Then you go from one pile to the next until you are done.
But piles are ineffective if you keep them longer than a few hours. The key is to get through them right away, not let them sit for days. If you do that, the actions get stale — unless you turn to filing.
When to File
If you are going to defer working on a group of items, then they should go into a file, and the action to complete those items should go on your next action list. I’ve noticed some routine types of actions that recur every time I go through my inbox: receipts to enter, ideas to process, and so forth — basically the piles I listed above. So I have created a set of files that correspond to these types of actions.
I call these “pending files.” They are holding tanks for work I am going to be attending to shortly. In the example above, I wanted to deal with all the actions coming from the processing of my inbox right away. So I created piles and worked through them immediately. But if I had wanted to defer those actions, I would have just put them into the appropriate pending files. To make sure I wouldn’t forget to actually deal with the items in those files, I have a weekly task to empty each of them completely (every Saturday morning).
For stuff that doesn’t fall into a routine pending file, I have a “catch-all” pending file called (creatively), “general.” Whenever there is support material I need for any action not covered by one of my routine pending files, I put the support material into the “general pending” file and then put the action on my next action list (and make note that the support material is in pending).
For example, if I get a long contract I need to review at work before signing, and I don’t have the time to review it right away, I’ll put the contract in my “general pending” file and then create a next action to review the contract. I would not, on the other hand, just leave the contract on my desk as a “reminder.”
It is an important principle that you should manage your actions from a list (with any needed support material in a file), not from piles — with the one exception being when you are going to work through the piles right away.
This discussion has focused on filing vs. piling when it comes to actionable documents. When it comes to storing reference material and project documents, filing without question is the way to go. There is a whole system that can be applied to filing in this sense which I’ll be talking about soon.
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About Matt Perman
Follower of Christ. Husband of one, father of three. Former director of strategy at Desiring God. This blog exists to help equip Christians in good works, because that's what productivity is really about.
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Hey Matt, I’ve been reading your blog for a few weeks now and have really appreciated your productivity tips. You mentioned OmniFocus in this post, which brought up a question I’ve been wondering about: are there any applications you particularly recommend for task management/productivity? Maybe more specifically, since you already mentioned that you use OmniFocus, do you have any thoughts on how it compares to Things (price-wise, things costs about 50% less…)? Thanks!
Bryce: Glad you are enjoying the blog. I would highly recommend OmniFocus as a productivity tool. I have not used Things, but gave it a quick look back when I was deciding what app to use. A friend of mine speaks highly of it, and it looked pretty good to me from a distance.
The main difference between OmniFocus and Things, it appears to me, is that OmniFocus has a bit more horsepower.
Now, that causes some people to prefer Things, actually — they find OmniFocus to be too much. Which is fine.
I create a bunch of different levels in my productivity system — next actions, projects, goals, responsibilities, and someday/maybe. OmniFocus easily enabled me to do that because you can create a folder hierarchy if you desire. I didn’t see a comparable functionality in Things (although I could be wrong), which is why I went with OmniFocus.
Hope that helps.
A free online app I’ve also heard good things about (with less horsepower than Things, though) is Remember the Milk.
There are also larger objects that may need to be piled, surely? Clothes, books; DVDs to return and so on?
Thanks for this post! After applying your post on getting your inbox to zero, I decided to try out the same system with my desk at work (which was so covered with piles that I couldn’t see it anymore!). I created working files that correspond to the working folders in my inbox, plus a few additions. The categories are: Read, Hold, Answer, Projects (for short-term projects), File (for items to be filed – I hate doing this, and so I save it all up for once a day filing) and Action Item (for various papers corresponding to items on my to-do list). It’s worked wonderfully; it allows me to process things as they come across my desk (including mail) without interrupting the task I’m currently working on. And I have no new piles on my desk – it’s so refreshing to come in to work every day with a clean desk! Thanks for your work on this blog, Matt!
Mikey: Yes, absolutely there are other objects that may need to be piled. The same principles can be applied.
For example, all “DVDs to return” can go in a pile until it is time to return them (assuming that’s not a week or such). Clothes that need to be folded. Even a books to read pile. This concept can be extended in many ways.
Angela: Great, great example of the wider application of the principles involved in getting your email inbox to zero! The ideas and concepts work for your desk as well, not only email. Great thinking!
I do something very similar with my desk as well, and it serves me very well.
Glad you’re enjoying the blog!
What productivity tools would you recommend for Windows users? Is the GTD Outlook add-in helpful?
I used Outlook for years and it was very effective for me. I don’t much recommend the GTD add-in; I found it much more useful to customize Outlook myself. That forced me to learn it really well, and I was able to make it flex and adapt to what I needed.
Thus, I recommend the white paper over at David Allen’s site that goes into how to do all of that: http://www.davidco.com/store/catalog/Learning-Tools-and-Whitepapers-p-1-c-263.php.