295. The Wire Basket
Always looking for better ways to stay organized, I went out to storage to get the wire basket. I had put it out there because it didn’t work the first time. Now I was sure it would. It could hold items that needed to be done, and I could keep it from overflowing.
It started out fine and held proudly a few things that needed doing. A busy week came along and the few things seemed to give birth to triplets in the basket so that now it was almost full.
I went through it. Some things were now too late to do and were put in recycling. I attached sticky notes to the rest of the things so it was easy to identify exactly what needed to be done. It was still almost full. When there was a heavy mail day, a few things got added to the basket. When there was a meeting, a few more things got added.
And suddenly a light bulb went off in my head. I realized the magical process that I had put in place. I was beginning to believe that if I put a sticky note on something explaining what needed to be done; and if I added those papers to the wire basket; then—I could go on with my life because it actually was as good as done.
All I needed to do was go through it occasionally when it began to get too full and put the things, complete with sticky notes, that were now too late to do, into the recycling bin. With this system, you never have to do the things that need doing. Hooray—the wire basket works!
