I came across some light essays by a Stanford prof from some time ago and found them just … nifty as heck. From structured procrastination, to a plea for the horizontally organized … ahh … quite! Well, just as an taste so you can know immediatement if you’d like it as well … ”
I do use filing cabinets. They are for a) storing finished things that one plans never to look at again and b) putting things that one would feel bad about throwing away but has no intention of reading. Say an old colleague sends you a long boring paper that she has just finished. It would be unfeeling and mean to throw it away; one would no doubt have to lie the next time one saw the person. But if one puts the essay in a filing cabinet one can say, “yes, its in my file of things to read this summer”. All this implies is that one has a file labeled “Thing to read this summer” and that one put the paper in it, so one is not really telling a lie, even if the chances of reading the paper this summer (or any summer, fall, winter or spring) are nil.” The one about bilingualism is spot on as well. The only disappointment is that there are not many of them. Ta.