Book Takeaway Part Two: The Organized Mind

In my last post I wrote a brief recap of some fascinating brain research from Daniel Levitin's book The Organized Mind: Thinking straight in the age of information overload. It is a powerful read and one that I've found myself thinking of often even now that I'm finished. This post will look at a few specific strategies for organizing our physical and digital homes. There's much more to share soon on organizing our social connections, including online social networking, and our time – all through the context of how our brain works. It's truly fascinating stuff.

Organizing our Physical Home

Americans as a whole have too much stuff. "The number of possessions the average person has now is far greater than we had for most of our evolutionary history, easily by a factor of 1,000, and so organizing them is a distinctly modern problem" (Levitin, 78). One home had 2,260 visible items in just the living room, not to mention in closets and drawers and behind closed doors. (Levitin, 78). What do we do with all that stuff? 75% of garages are too full to park a car inside of them. Such clutter causes elevated cortisol levels (aka stress) particularly in women, which can lead to chronic cognitive impairment, fatigue, and suppression of the body's immune system (Levitin, 78).
Bottom line: Have less and organize what we do have better.

Put systems in place

We need "an infrastructure for keeping track of things, sorting them, placing them in locations where they'll be found and not lost. The task of organizational systems is to provide maximum information with the least cognitive effort" (Levitin, 81). For example, our brain's "place memory" has worked for hundreds of thousands of years to keep track of stationary objects like trees, mountains, wells, rivers, etc. It's not so good at keeping track of things that move from place to place. So, if you don't want to lose things, have a designated place for them. Every. Single. Time. Buy duplicates for anything you can (hair scrunchies, nail clippers, pens, scissors, tape, reading glasses) to minimize mobility of items. For things you can't duplicate (computer, phone, daily mail) designate a place and system and rigidly adhere to it. This harnesses the brain's hippocampus rather than try to fight it (Levitin, 86).
Bottom line: Finding things without rummaging saves mental energy for more important creative tasks (Levitin, 87).

Put your keys in the same place every time as soon as you walk in so that you'll never lose them.

Group like things together

Since our brain can only absorb and decipher so much (Levitin, 78) we ought to help it as much as possible. Think like a large hardware store and store things in categories similar to those your brain is already using. For example, utilize the brain's associative function such as "things you need to do laundry" and keep everything from laundry soap to clothespins to ironing spray. These categories should make sense to you and for the state of life you're currently in. 
Bottom line: Group similar things together so that it's easy both to find the item and to remember that you need it (Levitin, 80). 

Here's my "things I need when entertaining" drawer. Opening it reminds me of what I need to do, like put the breadwarmer stones in the oven for fresh rolls.

Design our environment as an extension of our brain

Ours brains are excellent at creating categories, so it helps to construct our home and work environments so that they become an extension of our brains (Levitin, 87). What does that mean? Let the environment itself remind you of as much as possible. Need to remember to mail that letter? Leave it at the front door near your keys. Kids need to remember their swim bag for PE? Leave it with their backpack. Forget to grab a hair tie and brush the girls' hair before catching the bus and don't want to run upstairs? Keep a spare brush and ties next to the front door. Put things where you are most likely to need them. 
Bottom line: Off-load some of your memory function into your physical environment to keep you visually organized and not distract you when you're trying to relax, work, or find things. This will help declutter your crowded mental world.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to be better at taking my daily vitamins, which I can never remember to do. I bought a cheap pill box and now I have a quick visual in the bathroom of what I need to take when. I haven't missed a day since

See what you need, hide what you don't

David Allen advises that in order to maintain control of our environments we should make visible the things we need regularly and hide the things we don't (Levitin, 88). Don't waste prime closet real estate on that Christmas jacket you wear once or twice a year, or the tuxedo. Some items do this automatically, such as the flip remote that covers the buttons you don't need often so you won't push them accidentally. Think about how you use and interact with your possessions so you can design meaningful categories, and avoid putting too many dissimilar items together unless you can come up with a general theme (Levitin, 89). 
Bottom line: Having a junk drawer is OK, but if you find yourself having multiple junk drawers, re-sort and re-group into better categories

Organizing our Digital Home

We use our computers for nearly everything from checking account balances, paying bills, emailing our boss, ordering online, listening to music, editing photos, checking social media, reading the daily news, and so forth. "The brain simply wasn't designed to have so much information in one place" (Levitin, 92). In an ideal world, we should have one work space and computer for work, another for personal pursuits, and perhaps another for creative projects. If that's not in your budget, as it's not in mine, here's a workaround: create a separate user login for each frame of mind. Design different wallpapers and visual cues to reset your brain's place-based, hippocampus functions. Perhaps even sit in a different location if possible when performing different tasks, to cue your brain in and put you in the proper place-memory context (Levitin, 92).
Bottom line: Help our brain switch gears by providing visual and physical cues to the tasks at hand.

We have a lot of devices and chargers so I set up a single space in my room (perfect for nighttime check-ins) where all devices charge. I can instantly see what's there and what's not and I'm no longer tripping over cords all over the place.

Paper sorting: Scanning vs. Filing

Two schools of thought battle over whether to keep paper trails and file things in hard copy or to digitize and scan as much as possible (Levitin, 92). There is value to both so here are a few tips:
SCANNING
Use OCR mode so that PDF files are easily searchable, which makes document text readable rather than just a photo of the document (Levitin, 93). I scan everything and have hard copies of only what I absolutely need (wills, legal documents, and some keepsakes, which I've scanned as well). Everything else I scan and destroy, making sure to keep copies online and on a few hard drives. Our life is too mobile to risk losing everything. Scanners are inexpensive and such files take up so little memory. I like to keep my desktop and files uncluttered so that my computer feels neat and tidy and isn't overloaded with things I don't need. I have copies of all credit cards and passports in case a wallet or bag is stolen. 
FILING
For physical paper, a good filing cabinet and system is a must. Design your categories so that your files contain five to 20 or so separate documents (Levitin, 94). Be sure not to spend more time filing and classifying than you'll reap on searching (Levitin, 95). An organizer I respsect recently recommended a file system called Freedom Filer. I don't have enough paper to warrant such a system and I can't give a personal review, but you may want to check it out if you have a lot of paper and feel your filing system needs an overhaul.
Bottom line: Organization isn't the same for everyone. Find what works for you to free up your mind for more important tasks that really matter.

Password Management
The time is long gone when we only had to remember a couple of passwords. Today, smart password management is critical. We all know the basics: don't use your birthday, phone number, dog's name, firstborn child, etc. Still, we sometimes make the mistake of using the same set of passwords on a variety of sites simply because we can't remember them all. That's dangerous and there's a much better way. Levitin suggests using a key phrase, taking the first letter of each word, throwing in some numbers and symbols, and customizing it with the particular site it's for (p.104). For example, let's say your key phrase is Mary Had a Little Lamb (which I'd advise against...) so your letters are MHALL, which could become MH1ALL4^, which could become MH1ALL4^AZ for Amazon, etc. It might take a little work getting things adjusted but in the long run it will be safer and easier to remember. Then you could keep a list in a safe location with something like, "passphrase minus numbers", or "passphrase plus month" or whatever. Online password management sites such as LastPass keep track of everything and work on in a variety of browsers or devices. Just make sure to change your master password frequently.
Bottom line: Being intentional and strategic with your passwords is safer and conserves cognitive energy.

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NEXT UP: organizing our social connections, social networking, and our time, including some fascinating research on multitasking and electronics addiction.

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Reference
Levitin, Daniel J. 2014. The organized mind: Thinking straight in the age of information overload.  New York, NY: Plume.