Saturday, April 04, 2009

Depression on tidying up

As part of my current regroup, I am trying to tidy up past papers. Our new house may be bigger in some respects, but my personal real space is less. Things have to go.

It's quite depressing.

What do I keep, what should go? Yes, my life has gone in new directions, past things are past. Yet going through my material, what should be kept to allow me to write about past things, what might I want to use in the future?

Take, as an example, my training material. All the training notes, the presentations, the supporting material. What do I do about the cross-cultural material? The articles and course material on the differences between cultures are quite good. But will I use it again. And where will I store it?

Depression.

4 comments:

macAlba said...

Purchase or borrow a decent scanner. Scan the material to your PC. Add appropriate keywords. Do a backup of your PC. Keep the backup elsewhere. Discard paper-based material (or put it into commercial storage space).

It's time consuming (sorry), but everything you have will be on hand and not take up too much space (OK, you may need a larger hard disk).

Jim Belshaw said...

Thanks for the helpful suggestions, Gordon. I am not sure why I don't scan more. Perhaps it's just that I am not used to it

Legal Eagle said...

I have piles of documents everywhere. Plus the house is littered with books, baby toys, you name it. Unfortunately I found half an uneaten sausage under the kitchen table last night (courtesy of my daughter, I suspect). It is such a depressing prospect. I don't even know where to start. We're having our cupboards replaced, so hopefully this will give us proper storage space, and then I can start getting my life in order...

The thing is that I need paper copies of all the articles I read for my thesis. I just can't read things on screen.

Jim Belshaw said...

Hi LE. I can read things on screen, but I am much slower. You - I - can turn a page a lot faster!