John Buchanan | travel time | trade magazines | refined Web

To take advantage of travel time or any unused time waiting for appointments, Park keeps a folder of reading materials with her at all times. When magazines or other periodicals arrive in the mail, she puts them in that folder, so there's no wasted time searching around.

Though Park used to subscribe to several newspapers at her house, she was often faced with a guilt-inducing stack when she got home from a trip. It would "stress me out," she says. She canceled the subscriptions and started reading the papers online. But Park is conscious of how easy it is to get caught up in the constant updating of news stories on the Web. "It's okay if you get the information in 48 or 72 hours," she says. "I'm trying to get the complete story."

The Clipper
Lettuce Consulting Group's John Buchanan didn't need to know about milk shakes the day he saw an article on the ice cream treats in one of eight trade magazines he reads every month. But just in case, he clipped it out and tossed it into his "future" file. A month later, one of his clients wanted to talk about - you guessed it - milk shakes. Buchanan, who says he's "disciplined bordering on anal but not crazy," has a clippings file system that goes several layers deep - from broad catchall files like the future folder to topic-specific files (such as one labeled "dessert") to files for specific projects. "Each individual has to draw the line as to how much organization they need," he says. "Going beyond that would be crazy."

Along with his endless clipping, Buchanan relies on refined Web searches to find information. "If you Google 'milk shakes,' you'll get 50,000 hits," he says. Once his search results come up, Buchanan scans through to see if the information is appropriate. "What I don't do is click on the first 20 and print them all up. It's more than likely that I won't get to them."