I’ll get back to my series on creativity soon. A post I put on one of my online communities seemed relevant here. If anyone here has comments, I’d value them.

I just finished reading Making It All Work, David Allen‘s book after Getting Things Done. Then cleaned almost a meter of old books off my shelf that were dead weight. Feels great!

I remember this community having some GTD aficionados. I have a question for you.

I came across a few things that I couldn’t figure out what to do with — too valuable to throw away but not worth anything on their own. The two examples that come to mind are my high school diploma and my last remaining marathon medal. Also some old letters and mementos from family and friends. I can’t see what I’ll ever do with them, but they’re irreplaceable in case I regret getting rid of them.

On the one hand, they don’t take much space and there aren’t many such things, so I can store them without doing anything until I die without much trouble. On the other hand, I feel like not figuring out what to do with them holds me back from being more free — which is the main goal of GTD. What’s the point in putting it in a file if I look at it at most a couple times in my life?

I’m curious if others have thought about such things and what they’ve come up with.

By the way, for those who know my story about getting rid of books, these remaining books were all course books from school I had mentally categorized as educational materials and hadn’t kept on the old shelves with the other books.

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