files

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A Pre-Sort May Be Required When Organizing

There’s a right way to sort things and a wrong way, but doing a pre-sort is generally not the best way.

a pre-sort may be required when organizing

I’ve read books and attended seminars on how to organize one’s life. Most of the information I’ve consumed deals with work – office files and paperwork that come across my desk. There are good systems out there on how to streamline the processing of paper, requests and tasks to maximize your time.

I worked for UPS when they first came to Canada. I was their first part-time employee hired. It has been interesting to watch the company grow from about fourteen vans in one corner of a warehouse to the whole warehouse and a fleet of the large package delivery vans we see on the road today. 

I started by washing those vans and then moved to an office job of processing the drivers’ time cards. I even drove the package delivery vans for a summer when I was in Bible college.

Thousands of packages got picked up every day and needed to be sorted to get on the right delivery truck for the next morning. That was the job of a particular crew. 

They would arrive early in the morning, somewhere around 2:00 am. Their job was to take all the packages and place them in the trucks for delivery later that morning. 

They were called the pre-sort crew. It was a pre-sort because later the drivers would come in and organize their parcels in the precise order they were going to deliver them in. 

But that pre-sort was essential. It provided the driver with all his packages. He didn’t have to go searching or sorting around a big pile of packages for the ones that would be on his route.

A pre-sort may not be the prescribed way to handle office files, paper and requests. But it might be the best for my situation right now. 

The proper way to deal with office mail, paper, phone messages, etc., is to handle it once. When you pick up a piece of mail, you attend to it, file it or trash it. And if something can’t be processed that quickly, you schedule a time when you are going to deal with it and then move on to the next item. … Simple, right? 

Well, I’m in the process of cleaning out my office. It’s a slow process; I’m doing it, bit by bit, over about seven weeks. But I’m realizing, to my wife’s chagrin, that much of what I’m bringing home from my office is only a pre-sort.

I’m not done determining exactly where some of this stuff will go, so there are books that are lining one wall in our basement and boxes of files that are being stacked in a corner. Lots of it is just a pre-sort. I will have to spend more time organizing where it will all specifically end up. 

… It’s not the right way of doing it, but it’s the best way for me right now. 

Here’s the thing: Life is uncertain at the best of times. We don’t know what is around the corner and the end of life is an even greater mystery. That scares people. You can’t know what’s around that corner, but you can pre-sort your life so you get it in the right place. Place your faith in Christ. You may not know what heaven will be like, but you will be sure of your destination. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you have trouble sorting in your life right now? Leave your comments and questions below.

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Tempted With Files On My Desktop

The other day I wrote about cleaning up my computer desktop. Just a few days in, I’m already tempted to leave files on my home screen.

When I cleaned my desktop, it looked so good I just had to admire it for a while. I never wanted to leave another file on the screen again.

But a few days later, I find that my desktop is the natural, easiest place to put files.

For example, I had just downloaded a recording of my sermon from Sunday and it landed on my home screen. The recording needed editing before I could post it on the website. Naturally, I wanted it right in front of me to remind me I needed to do that.

Fortunately I had time right away, did my editing and then posted it to our site.

But then I had two files on my desktop – the unedited version and the one that was posted. I could have trashed the original download, but I thought I’d keep it just in case, while the edited version needed to be uploaded to an external hard drive for storing.

That involved another step which I wasn’t sure I wanted to do right then.

But as I looked at my clean screen, I didn’t want it to be blemished so I quickly put the file where it was to go and trashed the original.

My desktop was pristine again.

But for how long? How long will it be before I’m in a hurry or won’t know where to put a file or folder, defaulting to let it just sit on my desktop?

And when one things sits there, soon there will be more. The more there are, the harder it is to clear that screen.

It’s like the episode of the “I Love Lucy” show where Lucy was working on an assembly line in a chocolate factory. Her job was to move chocolates from a conveyor belt into boxes.

The machine started off slowly, but quickly sped up. The chocolates started coming too fast for Lucy. She was frantic and tried different tactics to keep up.

She first put her arm down on the conveyor belt to pile the chocolates up but that just made a mess. Then she started to dump them into her apron to clear the conveyor belt and catch up.  And then she started to eat the chocolates.

In the end, she was doing everything. She had chocolates backed up, her mouth was full of them, she had chocolate all over her face and her apron was overflowing.

What a mess!

It was an chaotic scene. … But that’s also how my desktop gets filled back up.

I love how it looks right now. But I just know the conveyor belt is going to speed up with all those files.

Here’s the thing: Sin works like that in our lives. When we sin once, it’s easy to confess it before God. But sometimes we sin and are not prepared to confess it, often because we are ashamed or still upset. So the sin remains. Then we sin in another area and let that go as well – more unconfessed sin. Pretty soon we are looking like a scene out of “I love Lucy” but with our sin instead of chocolate. Keep short accounts of your sins; deal with each one right away. Don’t let sin build up in your life and hinder your relationship with God.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you do to keep your desktop clear, or your soul right with God? Leave your comments below.

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How Shredding Makes More Room In Your Life

I think I would really hate to work for a secret service agency with all those redacted documents and shredding that goes on.

shredding

Not that I really know much about what they do, I’m just imagining it all. What’s got me thinking about it is my wife Lily’s new kick on cleaning out our files. I have to agree that we have a serious stockpile of paper.

We have files full of old utility bills, income tax – you name it, we’ve kept it. And it’s all getting shredded. Lil really loves her shredder! It’s a Royal 1212X; apparently it crosscuts the sheets so that even CISIS or the NSA or FBI couldn’t piece the confetti together.

I’m thinking she might burn the motor out (which wouldn’t be a bad thing), her shredder’s been humming for days. We have bags and bags of shredded paper.

It’s not all going to fit in the garbage/recycling this week. We have an old bean bag chair that’s a little flat … maybe we could puff it up with a few bags of shredded paper.

If anyone knows of a wedding coming up soon, I’m sure Lily would sell some of her shredding to throw at the happy couple.

It’s not just saying goodbye to the paper during her Watergate-style purification of files, it’s the noise. Someone should seriously come up with a muffler for these machines.

While it’s destroying any evidence of my name and address on Union gas bills, it keeps me from hearing the TV or concentrating on reading, or focussing on writing things like this blog.

Lily likes it when we do things in the same place, even if we are doing different things. Generally that’s a good thing and I agree. But in this case, I’d consider me in the family room and her in the garage with her precious shredder close enough to being in the same place. At least it’s under the same roof.

What concerns me most is that we have a large filing cabinet, about four feet wide, with four draws. I could be in for a noisy spring and summer. She just better not take it on vacation this year.

I understand what’s at the heart of all this paper mutilation. Lily doesn’t want our personal information ending up in some recycling plant or land fill. She can’t handle the thought of someone digging through garbage to find info to steal our identity.

But I can’t see the seagulls in our neighbourhood being able to lift our credit info and charge some vacation to our card like the penguin on the CIBC Visa commercials might do (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9BIsrSPRFY).

Lil is not one to take chances. So I guess I should be grateful that she is making room in the filing cabinet for the next twenty years.

Oh wait, I think she’s saying something … I think she said she’s nearly finished … though I may not have heard her correctly over the racket of that blasted shredder!

Here’s the thing: It’s not easy when you recognize that you need to get rid of something in your life that is causing you harm. It takes some work, and it’s going to mean a disruption and annoyance to your old way of life. But when you come through it, the benefit is a life that has more room for the Holy Spirit to work in.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How often do you do a life-clearing to make more room for God in your life?

I would really love to hear from you. You can leave your comment below.