Productive Parsing

 
Porterfield's Principles of Productive Parsing[1]
Simple organizational principles to help de-clutter life
With a degree in Organizational Management and years of study, I've been to numerous time management, organizational management, and personal development clases and seminars. But the truth is that day-to-day organization skills are not one of my strong points - no one will accuse me of being overly organized - just ask my wife. But I'm better than I once was. Over time I've learned a couple of important principles that help keep me out of utter chaos. So, I give you "Porterfield's Principles of Productive Parsing," or "How not to be burried alive by all the good things you collect in life!"
(parse) - <software development> To arrange elements in a line of code in proper order so that the code functions as planned.
 
(parse) - <life development> To arrange experiences and elements collected in one's life in proper order so that one's life functions as God has planned. <My definition>

Key organizational principles I've learned the hard way:

  1. The most important organizational tool you will ever own is a trash can - get a big one and fill it often.
    • Life is too short to fill with junk (a.k.a. "good stuff") you won't use or "might use someday."
    • If you read something and think, "that was good, I might want to use it some day," you won't. File it in the trash or pass it on. Keep only what is great.
    • Keep a single document or series of documents in a folder on your computer that have the great quotes with proper bibliography rather than keeping whole articles.
    • If you have trouble getting organized, get a bigger trash can.
    • When you leave a job, no one is going to read all the stuff you left behind. They will either box it and put it in storage or toss it to make room for their own collection of junk. So why keep it to begin with?
  2. Friends are a great organizational tool:
    • Select a friend who might be inspired by that "good" article that you don't want to throw away and pass it on to them. Keep the friend, not the article.
    • "Loan" books to friends- You'll never see the book again, but you can still count it toward your 1500 books required for seminary graduation.[2]
    • If you do collect the 1500 books required for seminary graduation, once you graduate, sell, loan or give away 1350 of them - You will only look at about 10% of them ever again in your life. Keep the shelf space for pictures of family and the friends you gave the books to. Friends are far more valuable than books. (Note: You cannot loan a book to a friend - you can only give it - the book may not come back and you don't want a book jeopardizing your friendship.)
  3. Find a method of organization that works for you and use it. Then politely ignore all those people who think they have a better way - their way won't work for you because you won't stick with it.

[1] Parse:

To analyze a document or collection of data by dividing it into its component parts to determine the collective meaning. This is often performed by software algorithms. From http://dmoz.org/erz/glossary.html.
 

To parse means to break something down into units that can be analyzed. To parse a sentence means to break it down into its parts of speech. In computer terms, a compiler must parse source code so that it can be analyzed and then assembled into object code. From http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/glossary/parse.html.

 

[2] 1500 Books!

During my years at seminary, the President repeatedly quipped that each student was required to have collected 1500 books in order to graduate. There was no stated requirement on the nature of the books or that the books had to be read. So, why not check them out of the library, read them and return them? Seminary students tend to have very limited funds that would be better spent on feeding their family than on books they probably will never read or refer to (again). (Do Dr. Seuss and Winnie the Pooh books count? I've got quite a few of those because of my three kids.)

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