radiant.matrix

From Neatorama:

Have a Simple Filing System Don’t overthink this: a complex folder with subfolder system is not what you need to remain organized. Obviously, your particular needs will dictate how many folders you have … but in my experience, you rarely, if ever, need subfolders. — Rule the Web (and Rule Your Email Inbox!)

I’ve seen way too many people trying to implement some kind of sensible filing system for their e-mail only to let complexity lead them to utter failure. Complexity and sensibility seem to be conflated on a regular basis. Having just gone through the early stages of implementing the GTD system, I know from personal experience how seductive complexity can be.

The important breakthrough for me came when I realized a few key points:

1. E-mail is either actionable or reference — that is, there’s either something you need to do about it, or you just need to be able to find it later. Any message that doesn’t fit those categories is junk, and needs to be deleted.
2. As a result of #1, you really need two simple filing systems: one for actionable items and one for reference.
3. More folder makes things harder to find, not easier (search is your friend).

At work, where I get the largest volume of e-mail by far, I’ve implemented the following system:

Read more »

The admirable Jeff Atwood has posted Avoiding Walled Gardens on the Internet, wherein he points out the danger of the “walled garden” model, and cites Jason Kottke to compare private social networking sites (like Facebook and LinkedIn) to the “walled garden” model that AOL used before they became an ISP.

The general idea that walled gardens are a bad thing is, I think, a sound one. AOL and CompuServe are excellent examples of organizations that tried — and failed — to create protected and private communities. The open and global nature of the Internet at large was vastly more appealing to people than the tightly-controlled communities originally offered, and so AOL had to shift its model to providing Internet service in order to survive.

It’s pretty easy to draw parallels between the old AOL and private social-networking sites like Facebook — too easy, in fact. There’s a major difference between the AOL-style “walled garden” and sites like Facebook: people don’t join Facebook to the exclusion of participating in the broader network provided by the Internet.

I’m no huge fan of social networking sites — I would rather have seen tools grow up around things like the decentralized XFN. However, I don’t think the “walled garden” metaphor really holds up for private networking sites. These sites simply provide another layer of interface to the Internet — one that provides a level of comfort for people who are a little afraid to network with someone simply because they read their blog.