Inbox Plaque

I got my teeth cleaned yesterday. I know this is weird, but as I was enthusiastically and carefully brushing the front and back of every single tooth before bed last night I was thinking about plaque. I had just spent 30 minutes or so going through my inbox cleaning up old emails and I started thinking about the parallels.

When I reclined in the dental chair and opened my mouth it took my dentist all of about 75 seconds of probing around to tell me very accurate details about my private, home dental habits. You can brush as vigorously as you want right before the visit but the plaque doesn't lie when you've got a trained eye (I should probably trademark that phrase).

I don't pretend to be as expert in this area as my dentist is in his, but I can sense a great deal about a person's private, personal productivity habits by looking at her/his desk, files, and inbox. I realize and have posted about the fact that everyone has his/her own style so I'm not saying everyone's desk should look exactly the same. But what's the difference between not brushing and flossing properly every day and not keeping up on your mail or paperwork? In the first case, plaque builds up on your teeth and begins to erode your dental health. In the latter, email, IM's, voice mail, and paperwork (a.k.a. "plaque") builds up in our work life and begins to invade our creative, proactive space and becomes a drag on our effectiveness.

Personal Productivity, Time Management, GTD, Getting Things Done