The problem isn't with the amount of stuff you have, but the place - mentally and physically - you're putting it in. Organization starts by finding the dividing

The problem isn't with the amount of stuff you have, but the place - mentally and physically - you're putting it in. Organization starts by finding the dividing lines that let you deal with the things you are ready to deal with, which could mean boundaries of place(different workspaces), boundaries of time (scheduling), or boundaries of quality(sorting and filtering mechanisms). And place actually ranks higher than you might first think: doing different things with different machines in different locations allows you "set and setting": you were inclined to work in a certain way, therefore you keep ending up in that place. From that you can engage with the particular philosophy of what your aims are with that tool or task. If you try to integrate it all together there's no point of release. Information is only the data that you find useful, and sometimes that means getting distance from it. Time and filtering, in contrast, are more narrow ways of looking at it: that you will spend some number of hours doing "the thing" is only applicable to some kinds of labor, since many times what you actually need is a once a day check-in, an opportunity to start. And filters establish topical specialization; they help you push your investigation further, but they can be an effort to enforce, as the world defaults to chaotic interconnectivity.