"Well. This looks suitably Sisyphean." He looks the office over, then nods, beginning to move all the office furniture out of the center of the room. He has a plan.
It starts with making piles, taking everything off the desk and out of the desk, organizing it by type: Post-its, file folders, loose papers, non-paper items. The staplers and pens go into the desk drawer, and then his real work begins.
What will end up happening first is a re-piling by apparent subject matter. Post-its with phone numbers and emails will be matched with reports on the people they belong to. Plans for events will be cross-references in the appointment book. And once he's satisfied with the state of these piles, he turns the computer on.
The appointment book becomes a calendar in Microsoft Outlook, with alarms for the most vital appointments. Contacts are added, with rank and suit preceding name in standard notation: 2D, 4S, 7C.
And the files and other papers are filed in the bottom drawer, with the most urgent, "to be acted on" set in the upper lefthand corner of the desk, opposite the computer.
He surveys the room, and takes the time to vaccuum the carpet and take the trash out before picking up the urgent folders and returning to Katya's office. Time elapsed? Five hours.
TL;DR!
It starts with making piles, taking everything off the desk and out of the desk, organizing it by type: Post-its, file folders, loose papers, non-paper items. The staplers and pens go into the desk drawer, and then his real work begins.
What will end up happening first is a re-piling by apparent subject matter. Post-its with phone numbers and emails will be matched with reports on the people they belong to. Plans for events will be cross-references in the appointment book. And once he's satisfied with the state of these piles, he turns the computer on.
The appointment book becomes a calendar in Microsoft Outlook, with alarms for the most vital appointments. Contacts are added, with rank and suit preceding name in standard notation: 2D, 4S, 7C.
And the files and other papers are filed in the bottom drawer, with the most urgent, "to be acted on" set in the upper lefthand corner of the desk, opposite the computer.
He surveys the room, and takes the time to vaccuum the carpet and take the trash out before picking up the urgent folders and returning to Katya's office. Time elapsed? Five hours.