James says:
When you feel a little overloaded from having ‘too much’ information in too many places try this. I call it ‘coal from diamonds’ and it is part of my ‘power cut’ process for reducing clutter.
Step 1 – locate resources
Make a list of where all you information is stored. Typically you will have stored information in these places:
- business cards
- journal notes
- email
- folders on the computer
- excel
- notepads
- text files
- blog posts
- workbooks
- project management tools
- mindmaps
- post it notes
- whiteboard
- scraps of paper
My preferred notes storage device!
Step 2 – collate resources
Now you gather up all of these sources and commit to one pace to wrangle the ‘diamonds’ from these notes (the coal). I use a mac software product called things. Things takes notes from emails, excel word and other places and does not even require ’save’. Cut and paste and you are done! The search feature is mighty powerful. Not a mac user? Sorry – just do yourself a favor and get one. You may use something else but whatever you decide, have ONE place to store things. Now start reviewing your material and summarize the BEST notes into one place. We will call this ‘notes central’.
Step 3 – delete and purge
If possible destroy (shred or delete) or chuck out any raw notes you will no longer require (or are out of date etc..). This will make you feel great. Clear whiteboards, remove junk and trash papers!! Now you have the good stuff.
Step 4 – create
Now you have the diamonds you can use them wherever you like. Guess where my best powerpoint slides start from? My webinars? My PDF’s ? My courses? They all started from a few notes in things. The diamonds are set however you like! This blog post came from a things note called – items to blog about!
Step 5 – future storage
Now that you have a system try where possible to put information DIRECTLY into your idea notes central place!
Notes:
In ‘things’ you can use labels. I recommend you use labels to easily and quickly find stuff. They are laid down by entering then with commas.
Dean says:
This is great advice.
As someone who is very unorganised and messy, I think there is a lot of value in this strategy.
However, one area I have struggled with in the past though, is remembering to organise the clutter, and, regularly checking the base.
You see, James is a tidy, organised and structured guy… so this is like breathing to him… whereas I can setup all these systems, but I still have to remember to follow the system regularly. (easier said than done)
For example, I once decided to get a premium account with Evernote, which is a service to collate all your notes… the problem was that I forgot to go and check it regularly, and now it hasn’t been updated for over a year.
I also recently took James’ advice and signed up with Basecamp, (highly recommended), and it has helped a lot, but again, you have to get into the habit to add things to it regularly, check it, tidy it etc…
I think “habit” is the key word… you have to train yourself to get into these habits, and it can help greatly.
As for having coal and clutter…
One area that you have to be careful with is becoming a business card collector… I personally don’t use business cards anymore, but I used to have a huge pile of them sat on my desk for months… so ask yourself, “what other clutter can I get rid of, collate, purge, delete etc?”.
Note taking
As for taking notes, I have found that the modern phones are perfect for this… I just use the basic notes feature of my iPhone, and occasionally I take a photo if something inspires me… I have created many blog posts and even trainings based on a photo from my phone.
That said, my most recent photos show my friend with a traffic cone on his head, so make of that what you will 
Your Turn
Do you have any systems or techniques for collating data, keeping notes, staying organised etc? Leave your comments below.
Dean & James
PS: This blog post is a great example of the two different styles… James’ info is neatly structured and layed-out in a set way.. mine jumps from idea to idea in a much looser style.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post guys. It inspired me to spend my Saturday afternoon organizing my gmail in box (gotta love the new sub categories feature) and adding to do items to my newly downloaded “Things” app.
This is great. I already use an online organisational system, but I’ve never thought about using it as part of my creative process before – thanks!
Top suggestions. I am also completely unorganized and messy. I use the principle that if I can’t find it, it wasn’t worth keeping in the first place.
Sometimes it works, sometimes I tear the place apart looking for that scribbled piece of paper, only to find it used as a bookmark two years later!
I wish I had James discipline for organization!
My mind is constantly going and I have taken time for years to put my thoughts down quickly. Used to use little pocket notebooks, now I am much more organized since I have started using smart phones.
I email my ideas from my phone to an ideas email address.
I also love to whiteboard. I take a photo of the whiteboard once it is full or need to move on and save the photo (with a description) to the appropriate folder for the topic.
This helps immensely with tweets, updates and articles.
wOw. You know I have been meaning to sort through my digital clutter for ages… and now I read this post. Talk about synchronicity.
I am a bit warey of just sticking stuff straight into Things tho, because then my neatly organised diamond mine will turn into the tar pit and I will back at square one.
Maybe I need a folder or program called the sieve. Where I can stick stuff and then quickly sort it out – and put whats good and true into Things (or whatever).
Miri, In things you can dump the stuff with general labels then you can make new folders for your diamonds – just preface them with a tag that indicates to you they are sorted and filtered.