Organizing Information

Fundamental to making progress is to get organized. A critical element to getting organized is to have a process for handling the wide range of material you'll get as a Crew leader. I presume you are like me and have been overwhelmed by the stacks of "helpful" material at Roundtables, Scouting Universities, the local outdoor outfitters, National Parks with a youth outreach program, and so forth. How times have we gotten home, and discovered our day packs were now filled with unorganized golden nuggets of information we couldn't afford to discard. And months later, they're still a pile of stuff and we have a gnawing sense we could have been the savior of a previous meeting if only we had had that information at the ready. For years, I felt overwhelmed by information. Then I read "Getting Things Done" by Dave Allen. Fun read, but a bit disorganized. But I was reminded of a strategy I'd learned decades ago in the Air Force; collect all the "stuff", dump it in the middle of the floor, then create piles based on what makes sense. Walk away. After about a day, come back and see if each piece of each pile still makes sense. If not, rearrange the piles...and walk away. After a week of iterating, you have stopped rearranging the piles. If not, get your spouse to help (and compensate them BIG TIME). This ticket discusses a way, my way, of organizing information. Hope it helps you. If it does, please send me an e-mail...