Touch a piece of paper once only

This last week has seen me occasionally entering moments of tidying. I tidy the paperwork at home - the so called "in tray" (of death), and then I come to the office and today my desk(kind of) and then I spend time filing my emails (oh yes). I wonder sometimes what people might really think of me if they were to discover my system of filing emails. Essentially, i throw little out - ie, delete them. It's only spam and rubbish that gets junked. But no, I have a folder within a folder - in fact loads of them, all stuck in Outlook, and they go back over 6 years, easily. I have folders on everything from admin and suppliers, to mission events, leadership, and yes, a folder on everone in the church and the correspondence I have from them or about them. In defence of this seemingly manic approach to organising chaos, I would justify myself by saying that time and time again I am able to retrieve within seconds the appropriate piece of information upon a situation, person or whatever really. Well, ok, I am very sad doing stuff like this, but its survival to be honest. If I don't do it, then chaos will take place.
It's been a fair old speedy transition over these last 10 years from where things were still mostly paper, to now the norm being electronic coms. But in the day of paper, the rule was "touch a piece of paper only once!" In otherwords, make a snap decision to keep it or file it, and with the leaning towards junking it essentially! So in the split second of temptation on whether to "oh, yes keep it because ....." you have to be disciplined enough to throw it! The theory being that if really is important enough, it'll come back to you again.
Well I find it a challenge, hand on heart, in keeping up with it all. Then again, I see how some people organise their lives and to be frank, I'm streaks ahead on points. The interesting thing is this word "discipline." It is a discipline to sit down and deal with it all. We must! We have to! Now I know that in some cases it's all about how we are wired - our personality types. Some are "hang loose and it'll all work out" kind of people, and others are control freaks. But there is this discipline of simply sitting down and doing it. The connection between the word "discipline" and the title "disciple" is fairly clear to see. The disciple must be disciplined. A mark of spirituality and discipleship is discipline. Well that's a tough call and a real challenge for most of us, but the one thing we can't do is bury our heads in the sand and hope that it will all work out, because it never does.