Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 1: used by the world's most successful people to get so
Speaker 1: much out of their day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Invera.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work day.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is a mini episode, and specifically it is
Speaker 1: answering another listener question. So if you're a regular listener,
Speaker 1: you'll know I've been putting out a call for listeners
Speaker 1: such as yourself, to send in any questions you would
Speaker 1: like me to answer or tackle on the show. So
Speaker 1: if you have a question, please send it through to
Speaker 1: Amantha at Inventium dot com dot au and my email
Speaker 1: is always in the show notes as well. So this
Speaker 1: listener question is what is the most productive way to
Speaker 1: store articles, reference materials, videos, images, and all sorts of
Speaker 1: things relating to particular topics. So I've brought at this
Speaker 1: question a little bit because I want to talk through
Speaker 1: my filing system and how I think about things in
Speaker 1: terms of all the different I guess documents and inputs
Speaker 1: that I have. So to start with email, So how
Speaker 1: I organize my inbox, and I use Superhuman that is
Speaker 1: my email client for all things. Inbox is that I
Speaker 1: have my inbox where everything comes into. I then have
Speaker 1: a to do folder where everything that requires an action
Speaker 1: from me, so me plus time, goes into the to
Speaker 1: do folder. I have a read later folder, so anything
Speaker 1: that I can read but is non urgent, I put
Speaker 1: in the read later folder. And then there's also a
Speaker 1: folder that's just various non urgent things that actually Superhuman
Speaker 1: files things into. So I adapted this system from my
Speaker 1: interview with Google's executive productivity advisor Laura may Martin, who
Speaker 1: was on the show previously. In terms of having a
Speaker 1: better workflow for my email, then when I've dealt with things,
Speaker 1: I pretty much just archive everything. I don't have too
Speaker 1: many folders. I find that I don't find folders particularly
Speaker 1: useful because I think that the search function in either
Speaker 1: Gmail or Superhuman is incredibly good and allows me to
Speaker 1: find anything that I'm looking for, So that is email.
Speaker 1: In terms of articles and reference materials, I use Pocket
Speaker 1: is an app. I think if you google Pocket app,
Speaker 1: you will find that. And it means that when I'm
Speaker 1: trying to focus on a task, but I risk going
Speaker 1: down a rabbit hole of interesting articles. I can simply
Speaker 1: on my Chrome browser there's a pocket has a plug in,
Speaker 1: and I can save articles to Pocket. I can also
Speaker 1: create tags for those articles as well, and I find
Speaker 1: that a really useful way of storing any reference materials
Speaker 1: or articles that I want to read later. I all
Speaker 1: also for longer documents like PDFs of journal papers, I
Speaker 1: would file them in the Inventium drop box, where we
Speaker 1: do have a filing system for research, and that's simply
Speaker 1: filed under the topic that it is most relevant too.
Speaker 1: Then when it comes to notes, I use Evernote for
Speaker 1: note taking. Again, I don't actually use tags or the
Speaker 1: notebook function in ever Note. Everything pretty much just sits
Speaker 1: in my inbox, so I have I've tried experimenting with
Speaker 1: different filing systems, but to be honest, I find them
Speaker 1: a bit of a waste of time. Again, because the
Speaker 1: search function is super powerful in ever Note, I find
Speaker 1: that that is absolutely satisfactory, and I can ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of the time find anything I'm looking for within
Speaker 1: about five or ten seconds. Something else I do is
Speaker 1: I use things so Things is to do list software.
Speaker 1: I used to use wonder List until I think Microsoft
Speaker 1: bought it and did some stuff with it. So I
Speaker 1: use Things, and I tried out a lot of to
Speaker 1: do list software, but I like Things because you can
Speaker 1: have projects and then categories and then subcategories, and for
Speaker 1: anything that is a list. So I use things for
Speaker 1: my deep work and shallow work to do list, but
Speaker 1: I also use things to store things that are lists.
Speaker 1: So for example, books that I want to read, I
Speaker 1: have a book list, Podcasts that people recommend to me.
Speaker 1: I have a podcast list. TV shows that people think
Speaker 1: I should be binging on. I have a TV show list,
Speaker 1: listener questions for the podcast. I have a listener question list.
Speaker 1: So I find that it's really useful to organize anything
Speaker 1: that is a list into things. Now. In terms of photos,
Speaker 1: I have not invested any time in having a filing
Speaker 1: system for photos, which is slightly annoyed, but at least
Speaker 1: if I have a rough idea when I took a
Speaker 1: photo of something, I can generally find it in my
Speaker 1: phone or in the cloud. And finally, for images, like
Speaker 1: images that I might need for a presentation invent teams,
Speaker 1: Dropbox has an image folder, and generally I find where
Speaker 1: I source images from is generally Adobe Images, and I
Speaker 1: think they have inbuilt tags, so I find that that
Speaker 1: makes images easily searchable when I'm trying to find something
Speaker 1: appropriate for let's say, a slide on a presentation. The
Speaker 1: other thing that I do that I find quite helpful
Speaker 1: is I use Finder because I'm a Mac user, so
Speaker 1: I think is Internet Explorer the PC equivalent? I should
Speaker 1: know this, but anyway, I use a shortcut menu on
Speaker 1: the sidebar because there are folders that I need to
Speaker 1: access when I'm finding files very frequently, so there are
Speaker 1: about ten folders that I have shortcuts to, which is
Speaker 1: just another thing that I find saves me time. That is,
Speaker 1: in a nutshell, how I think about storing and filing
Speaker 1: and saving things. I hope that has answered this listener
Speaker 1: question and that you found it useful. So that is
Speaker 1: it for today's show. If you are enjoying how I work,
Speaker 1: why not leave a review in Apple Podcasts or share
Speaker 1: the episode with someone else that maybe needs some tips
Speaker 1: around filing and organizing things. So that's it for today
Speaker 1: and I will see you next time.