Look it up yourself – LIUY

From: Sam
To: the inner circle of people in my life

Hello dear person,

I like you. I enjoy your company. I respect and possibly admire you.

But please don’t confuse that with a willingness to be your SECRETARY.

If you need to find a phone number, how to get to x location, a bank account or social security number, the name of somebody we met and who gave you their business card, a copy of a document, or any of a myriad of facts and figures that we have previously shared, I would kindly ask you to LIUY – Look It Up Yourself

I know, I know: it looks like it’s faster to ask me for it, but a) it pisses me off (not good) and b) in the long run, it will be faster to LIUY.

Why, you ask? Well, when you do the extra 10% effort to look it up, it will bother you. To eliminate that bother, you may even do an extra 10% of storing it it somewhere that is easily accessible. And as you rinse and repeat, you will increase your productivity.

Contrary to popular belief, we organized people are not soul-less. Maybe a bit more boring and annoying. But hey, that’s not the full picture.

Sam

PS1: Since I really like you, I have made a list of tools to help you LIUY more often.

Some tools to keep you organized:

• Your email: these days your email has almost every single piece of info you’ll ever need. Make sure yours is searchable. Get on Gmail. If you’re an Outlook diehard, get Xobni. Learn to use the search operators. E.g. “from:michael franz has:attachment”
• Your files: use spotlight. Use Alfred. Windows user? Upgrade to Windows 7. Tip
• Your thoughts: Evernote
• Your passwords, bank account numbers, credit cards, social security numbers, etc: 1Password, LastPass
• Your paper documents: have you consider getting a scanner? Too lazy to scan? OfficeDrop