{"id":330,"date":"2007-08-13T22:26:07","date_gmt":"2007-08-13T16:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/13\/over-load\/"},"modified":"2023-04-20T15:18:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T09:48:17","slug":"over-load","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/2007\/08\/over-load\/","title":{"rendered":"Over Load"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not a day goes by when I don\u2019t encounter examples of how this whole \u201cinformation overload\u201d thing is making Life difficult.\u00a0 Whether its the Inbox at work or your digital photographs collection at home, just the task of organizing<\/em> the information that\u2019s relevant to you is becoming a task in itself!<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it.\u00a0 Emails will keep coming.\u00a0 Task lists will keep growing.\u00a0 More music will need to be ripped and more digital photos will need to be stored in the years to come than you and I can imagine.\u00a0 That\u2019s why, I thought I should take the time to share with you some of the things that have helped me<\/em> keep it manageable.<\/p>\n

Inbox on a Diet<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most people I know use Microsoft Outlook at work.\u00a0 And Microsoft, in all its wisdom, believes that one item can and should be archived only in one location – even if it\u2019s just bits and bytes!\u00a0 As a result, most folks create and maintain anywhere between 10 and 30 folders in their Outlook file, based on the assumption that finding it will be easier if its stored in the \u201cright\u201d folder.<\/p>\n

This creates several problems : 1. You need time to figure out which is the right folder for every single mail at the time of receipt.\u00a0 For a busy emailer like me, that\u00a0includes over 100 emails I receive in a single day!\u00a0 2. You also need to remember that same logic when you\u2019re trying to retrieve that message, several weeks later.\u00a0 3. You still believe that one message can only go in one right place!\u00a0 So where is that important mail from the client on the Sales project you were working on – in Sales, Key Projects or the Client folder?<\/p>\n

My solution : Just three folders – One each for Inbox, Saved, Archive.<\/p>\n

\u201cInbox\u201d is all your incoming mail and stuff you haven\u2019t got to yet.\u00a0 At any point in time, this one should have no more than a screenful of items (less than 25 in my case).\u00a0 \u201cSaved\u201d is all the mail that you think you\u2019ll need to refer to in the future.\u00a0 This includes organizational announcements, policy changes, etc.\u00a0 This is the stuff you don\u2019t <\/em>archive.\u00a0 \u201cArchive\u201d is all the rest.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 All <\/em>the rest!<\/p>\n

And, that sub-folder needs to actually be \u201carchived\u201d every single week, so that your Outlook mail store does not show 10,135 mails, slowing it down even more.\u00a0 The archived folder – now in a separate file – can be accessed with just a few clicks, whenever you need to refer to it.\u00a0 This is also where all the Sent mail goes, after the week is through.\u00a0 The advantage?\u00a0 No need to figure out what goes where, while storing or retrieving.\u00a0 And, your Inbox stays clean and manageable, freeing you up to focus on the things that really need your attention.<\/p>\n

Aim, Shoot and Store<\/strong><\/p>\n

A similar problem of data storage and retrieval exists on the home front with your burgeoning collection of digital photographs.\u00a0 Hard disks and digital cameras have become dirt cheap.\u00a0 As a result, shutter-happy enthusiasts find themselves at the wrong end of 3000-odd photographs in a short span of a year!\u00a0 What\u2019s the best way to manage them without spending too much time doing it?<\/p>\n

I believe the solution lies in a simple folder-structure : Home, Away, Arty, Resized, Mobile, Inbox.<\/p>\n

\u201cHome\u201d and \u201cAway\u201d signify where it was shot.\u00a0 That means all vacation shots go into the Away folder, not in separate folders for each destination.\u00a0 \u201cArty\u201d is for all the experimental stuff you shoot, if you do!\u00a0 \u201cResized\u201d is any thing that you have reduced to a smaller size, to post on the Web or email to your family and friends.\u00a0 \u201cMobile\u201d is what you shoot from your mobile phone.\u00a0 \u201cInbox\u201d is what any body else sends you.\u00a0 Make that, what \u201cevery\u201d body else sends you!<\/p>\n

Access any of the photos via the Thumbnail View on Windows XP or a later OS, or use nifty software like Picasa to view them, as needed.\u00a0 If you really shoot a lot, create the same structure in parent folders for each year e.g. 2007_Pics.\u00a0 Lastly, burn a CD of the parent folder every few weeks, as a backup.\u00a0 That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

Since moving to this structure, I have found that the time I spend on storing and retrieving my digital photos has come down by 90%.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019d rather spend that time behind<\/em> the camera!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried to cover these two areas as I thought they would be most relevant to a large variety of readers.\u00a0 If there\u2019s any such thing that\u2019s coming in the way of your work-life that you\u2019d like to make more efficient, I\u2019d love to hear about it.\u00a0 May be, just may be,\u00a0I will be able to offer some help\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s face it. Emails will keep coming. Task lists will keep growing. More music will need to be ripped and more digital photos will need to be stored in the years to come than you and I can imagine. That’s why, I thought I should take the time to share with you some of the things that have helped me keep it manageable…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,20],"tags":[8,26,11],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-personal","tag-photography","tag-resources","tag-technology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4158,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/4158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}