Friday, January 4, 2008

Managing that Magazine Mountain


I get a couple dozen magazines every month. I
have great intentions when I stack them next to my chair. I think that I will sit down and relax in the evenings and pour through all those glossy pages. However, things get crazy and I've only read a few pages when something comes up. If I manage to get through an entire issue and find things that I want to go back to, I add the magazine back to the stack. The stack grows and grows and before you know it, I have a mountain.


In addition to the magazines that I get at my home and office, I buy a few every time I get on an airplane. With this last trip over the holidays, I purchased 4 fabulously glossy magazines in the airport before boarding. Although they may all fit in my Louis Vuitton Never Full bag, it makes it awfully heavy. I decided on the airplane to try something new.


As I read through the magazine, I tore out pages that had something of interest that I wanted to return to. I made four piles: things I want to try, things I want to explore as topics for anatomyofstyle.com, websites I want to visit, and clothes that I love.


I managed to complete this process for two magazines before the plane landed in Denver. When the flight attendant came around for trash, I gladly let go of the two magazines I had read from cover to cover. It made my Never Full bag significantly lighter and I was able to retain the information that I found of value.

Interestingly, I only came out with about 10 pages per magazine that were relevant!! That mountain that has managed to take over a corner in my office and a spot in my living room represent about 200 pages that are of interest to me....less than one complete magazine. I've considered cancelling some of my subscriptions in an effort to manage the mountain, but I think that I have finally hit upon the answer.

So, now I have a bunch of loose pages in piles. What to do...what to do. I got back to the office, after a wonderful holiday, and put the pages in a binder with dividers. I spent about an hour visiting the websites that I wanted to see and ordering the products that I wanted to try. In our next editorial meeting I will share the information that I think we may want to expand on and report on our site.

After I visited sites and bookmarked them or ordered a product, I tossed those pages. I am feeling fabulously light and getting the most value ever out of my glossies. How's that for tackling a New Year's resolution (be more organized) right out of the gate?

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