The three I've long focused on are envisioning, enfeeling, and enauditing, especially in relation to the paths (and their forks) ahead; holding these three in epistemic balance, where for instance what we enaudit (especially language) has no extra reality over what we envision (a more spatial structure), or indeed the two are blended as equivalents, as we feel our way forward, seeking the good. When our culture posits an "inner voice," would it be more accurate -- and balanced -- to see this as vocal imagery as much ahead of us as we tend to see our visual imagery, rather than as some agent set to command us from within?
A note on "Tao": as Chad Hansen points out in his magisterial A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, the word in Chinese is indefinite as to whether singular or plural. We make it over-definite translating it as "The Way," with Western culture's monotheistic slant. It would be as warranted to translate it as "ways," such as were illuminated by Hecate's torch when her statue was a common feature at crossroads in ancient Greece. So Lao Tzu too can be seen as concerned with balancing envisioning against enauditing. Or as Chuang Tzu wrote, put the mind out and the world in, then spirits come to dwell.
I like the "philosophical translation" of the Dao De Jing ("Making This Life Significant") by Ames and Hall, which is supportive of the comments by Curt Jaimungal. They say that "At its most fundamental level, dao seems to denote the active project of 'moving ahead in the world,' of 'forging a way forward,' of 'road building.' Hence, our neologism: 'way-making.'"
And then "de is both process and product - both the potency and the achieved character of any particular disposition within the unsummed totality of experience. Dao and de are related as field and focus respectively."
So the Dao De Jing in this view is about "Making this life significant" by optimizing this focus and its field. Their translation of the first verse:
"Way-making (dao) that can be put into words is not really way-making, and naming (ming) that can assign fixed reference to things is not really naming."
Lovely! So, "The ways that can be weighed, are not of constant weight" ... more or less. "Way" and "weigh" in English are from the same root, as you'd "weigh" goods to get them under way on the "wagon," just as you'd pay a fair fare to get them across the water on the ferry. Our measure of our ways should always be fresh. The notion of a constant weighting of "The Way" is, contrary to Western monotheism, bull. So Lao Tzu is not, per the usual mistranslation, of what's know as "the anti-language school of Taoism," but rather warning against the limits of prior calculation and in favor of a constant forward-rolling revision. Perhaps.
I've been looking into trinities and threeness as well, which is why I think Perspectiva's systems/souls/society resonates. I'll look forward to see where you go with it.
I tend to see axiology/epistemology/ontology as a trinity, and cosmology as the "one" those three built up to.
I'm definitely a fan of threeness, starting with my study of Hegel way back in the day, then Gurdjieff, and many others, some you've listed. So yes, a nudge and encouragement for you to continue your exploration of it. I'll read and ponder....
I've also been interested in Gudjieff, and have read his book "Meetings with Remarkable Men". There's something magical about his very name and discovering people who are also interested in him creates an instant bond of recognition.
I'm a couple days late to the conversation here, but want to affirm your intention. Looking forward to reading your presentation of the grand three-ness of being. I'm also appreciating the way you've connected dots with so many other frameworks. I'll add one here.
My work, psychotopology, investigates our inner topological structure as it shows up in our experience of the virtual materiality of feeling. It turns out that the structure of the experience of being an agentic self-in-the-world is in fact a three by three matrix of functions. One triad governs the inside, one the outside, and one the context within which the inside and outside establish a relationship. This self/other/frame is inherent within us.
Within each triad, one module serves a function of possibilities. It provides a frame of what is possible in a given moment, within a given context. One module serves a function of choice, or presence, through which we inhabit one possibility to enact. And the third module serves a function of enactment, through which we engage with the world and monitor our pursuit of the chosen possibility. These three modules together generate the capacity for agency.
This is not something abstract or theoretical, but can be elicited in anyone through the fieldwork practice I've developed.
Maybe as you lay out more of your thinking, I'll see what connections there might be with this inner functionality and offer what I can. And I'm open to any opportunities to connect, if you're up for that.
I also want to say that your preface to this piece really resonates with me and my work. The chaotic decline of our world leads directly from the incompatibility of our modern ways of being with life's natural order as it lives within our own selves. We've cut ourselves off from that inner, more subtle, more interwoven wisdom in service to a rationality that has defined it out of existence. In cutting ourselves off from it, we are driven to ever more extreme compensations. To recover, we will need a program that responds to both the rational and embodied dimensions with answers and practices that elegantly and compellingly support the re-enlivening of spirit for both individuals and the collective.
It seems to me that you are setting out here (and have been working for a while) to provide the clear conceptual framework. This affirms my own shift toward an effort to make more clear how the practices I've been developing serve this collective need. Good luck to us both!
I also love threes. Had some fun conversations with Jordan Hall and some friends about the Trinity/trinities-- there's unity, multiplicity, relationality; Father as first person, Son as second person, Holy Spirit as third person; creates, changes, redeems.
Some of us riffed afterwards, one person preferring the symbolism of the Horus/Osiris/Isis story, another referencing Heaven/Earth/(Hu)Man. We played with Potential/The Creator/The Created; Being/Becoming/Relatedness. These fascinate me.
I give a huge high five to the continued exploration, I quite enjoyed this article, thank you!
I like the 3 voices Robin Kimmerer's 'Braiding Sweetgrass calls out...The voice of: Science, the Indigenous voice and the voice of Earth! That is the most critical - our Biology is the Ecology and it has the solutions we need to survive and thrive - we only need to walk softly on the land so we can listen, learn and understand the 'Landuage' language of the land, of the EartH. Its right there in the word...just move the H to the front and you have Heart!
"Those who achieve twoness will eventually seek threeness. Those seeking fourness are gauche" - yes! I have a strange intuition that this is something to do with factorials - 2! is 2 - which is rather too... binary. 4! is 24, which is a bit overwhelming. 3! is a 6, a real Goldilocks of a number, and roughly equates to the "slots" in our short-term memory.
Call it synchronicity or not, but I've just been thinking about your work on the subject and the threeness while exploring the alchemical realm for an essay! There too exists prima materia, the three primes: sulphur, mercury, and salt. Of course, they move into the psychological realm (as per Jung's research), and become aspects of psyche, aspects of the matter. Thank you for sharing, quite timely!:)
Jonathan, I am unable to resist Peirce contribution.
From Stanford University there is a 32 page summary on Peirce and below is section 9 of 9 sections. This ends with a question "what drove Peirce more than mere examples."My guess is that the Combinatorial Hierarchy mentioned in an earlier comment is in fact a very general aspect of reality.
9. Triadism and the Universal Categories
Merely to say that Peirce was extremely fond of placing things into groups of three, of trichotomies, and of triadic relations, would fail miserably to do justice to the overwhelming obtrusiveness in his philosophy of the number three. Indeed, he made the most fundamental categories of all “things” of any sort whatsoever the categories of “Firstness,” “Secondness,” and “Thirdness,” and he often described “things” as being “firsts” or “seconds” or “thirds.” For example, with regard to the trichotomy “possibility,” “actuality,” and “necessity,” possibility he called a first, actuality he called a second, and necessity he called a third. Again: quality was a first, fact was a second, and habit (or rule or law) was a third. Again: entity was a first, relation was a second, and representation was a third. Again: rheme (by which Peirce meant a relation of arbitrary adicity or arity) was a first, proposition was a second, and argument was a third. The list goes on and on. Let us refer to Peirce’s penchant for describing things in terms of trichotomies and triadic relations as Peirce’s “triadism.”
If Peirce had a general technical rationale for his triadism, Peirce scholars have not yet made it abundantly clear what this rationale might be. He seemed to base his triadism on what he called “phaneroscopy,” by which word he meant the mere observation of phenomenal appearances. He regularly commented that the phenomena in the phaneron just do fall into three groups and that they just do display irreducibly triadic relations. He seemed to regard this matter as simply open for verification by direct inspection.
Although there are many examples of phenomena that do seem more or less naturally to divide into three groups, Peirce seems to have been driven by something more than mere examples in his insistence on applying his categories to almost everything imaginable. Perhaps it was the influence of Kant, whose twelve categories divide into four groups of three each. Perhaps it was the triadic structure of the stages of thought as described by Hegel. Perhaps it was even the triune commitments of orthodox Christianity (to which Peirce, at least in some contexts and during some swings of mood, seemed to subscribe). Certainly involved was Peirce’s commitment to the ineliminability of mind in nature, for Peirce closely associated the activities of mind with the aforementioned triadic relation that he called the “sign” relation. (More on this topic appears below.) Also involved was Peirce’s so-called “reduction thesis” in logic (on which more will given below), to which Peirce had concluded as early as 1870.
Thanks Michael. I know Peirce was a mathematician almost as much as a philosopher. I will find some way to bring him in, though I’m not totally sure where yet…
I used to teach international students how to write academic essays, including the law of three. The convention is that you list ideas or examples in threes. Perhaps the triadism of Peirce is taking this basic organizational structure of academic writing to an extreme. However, when did it become the norm?
Please keep 3-ness coming. In addition to Cynthia Bourgeault/ Gurdjieff/ trinity, you might wanna check out the developmental framework of Terri O’Fallon at https://www.stagesinternational.com/. Takes Wilber’s essentially 2x2 matrix into a genuine 3-ness of three fundamental poles: insides and outsides, individual and collective, receptive vs active stance. The 3 poles intertwined yield developmental stages. Solidly research backed. And remarkably effective when working with real life human beings!
I'm on board. There is an instinctive attraction to 'three' but I'm wondering if this is an ontological reality or an epistemological lens (if I have correctly understood those terms)? Or is it, as you suggest, something that bleeds through each? There are several other 'ors' that come to mind but I'll stop there,,,,
I don't know a lot about all this, but it sounds like a much more fascinating slog than many others I've undertaken. So I'll be coming along, thanks for your work.
CS Peirce and his "triadomania" are often associated with this topic. A few quotes of his:
"… I was long ago (1867) led, after only three or four years’ study, to throw all ideas into the three classes of Firstness, of Secondness, and of Thirdness. This sort of notion is as distasteful to me as to anybody; and for years, I endeavored to pooh-pooh and refute it; but it long ago conquered me completely. Disagreeable as it is to attribute such meaning to numbers, and to a triad above all, it is as true as it is disagreeable."
"I fully admit that there is a not uncommon craze for trichotomies. I do not know but the psychiatrists have provided a name for it. If not, they should. “Trichimania,” [?] unfortunately, happens to be preëmpted for a totally different passion; but it might be called triadomany. I am not so afflicted; but I find myself obliged, for truth’s sake, to make such a large number of trichotomies that I could not [but] wonder if my readers, especially those of them who are in the way of knowing how common the malady is, should suspect, or even opine, that I am a victim of it."
Great to hear you're planning to bring in Peirce, and his concept of thirdness. I highly recommend my friend Tim Winton's paper, "The Meaning of Planetary Civilization: Integral Rational Spirituality and the Semiotic Universe."
He opens with a quote from Peirce:
“The action of a sign generally takes place between two parties, the utterer and
the interpreter. They need not be persons; for a chamelion [sic] and many
kinds of insects and even plants make their livings by uttering signs….
However every sign certainly conveys something of the general nature of
thought, if not from a mind, yet from some repository of ideas, or significant
forms, (my emphasis) and if not a person, yet to something capable of some
how “catching on”…. That is [,] of receiving not merely a physical, nor even
merely a psychical dose of energy, but a significant meaning (my emphasis).”
—C.S. Peirce (sited in
Corrington, 1993, pp. 163)
In the Abstract, Tim writes:
"In this paper I seek to develop an integral pragmatasist approach, which I refer to as integral Semiotic Realism, as a distinction supportive of resolving the cosmological divide. An integral cosmology is then proposed based on the post-metaphysical injunction prescribed by the semiotic enactment of Planetary Civilization through the
signification of Integral Rational Spirituality. "
As for Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, I used this principle to assist a staff attorney at P&G to organize his office. I got him three large wire mesh baskets, and divided all of his papers into: first importance (must read and respond to urgently), second importance (read and respond, not so urgent), and third importance (read when you have some extra time, no need to respond, FYI).
The three I've long focused on are envisioning, enfeeling, and enauditing, especially in relation to the paths (and their forks) ahead; holding these three in epistemic balance, where for instance what we enaudit (especially language) has no extra reality over what we envision (a more spatial structure), or indeed the two are blended as equivalents, as we feel our way forward, seeking the good. When our culture posits an "inner voice," would it be more accurate -- and balanced -- to see this as vocal imagery as much ahead of us as we tend to see our visual imagery, rather than as some agent set to command us from within?
A note on "Tao": as Chad Hansen points out in his magisterial A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, the word in Chinese is indefinite as to whether singular or plural. We make it over-definite translating it as "The Way," with Western culture's monotheistic slant. It would be as warranted to translate it as "ways," such as were illuminated by Hecate's torch when her statue was a common feature at crossroads in ancient Greece. So Lao Tzu too can be seen as concerned with balancing envisioning against enauditing. Or as Chuang Tzu wrote, put the mind out and the world in, then spirits come to dwell.
Thanks Whit. On the translation issues you might like the link in the footnote.
I like the "philosophical translation" of the Dao De Jing ("Making This Life Significant") by Ames and Hall, which is supportive of the comments by Curt Jaimungal. They say that "At its most fundamental level, dao seems to denote the active project of 'moving ahead in the world,' of 'forging a way forward,' of 'road building.' Hence, our neologism: 'way-making.'"
And then "de is both process and product - both the potency and the achieved character of any particular disposition within the unsummed totality of experience. Dao and de are related as field and focus respectively."
So the Dao De Jing in this view is about "Making this life significant" by optimizing this focus and its field. Their translation of the first verse:
"Way-making (dao) that can be put into words is not really way-making, and naming (ming) that can assign fixed reference to things is not really naming."
Thank you David. How do you know all this stuff? (Only half joking).🙃
By "way-making" - trying to weave together important threads, trying to find the big picture of things, and not getting lost in the weeds. :)
Lovely! So, "The ways that can be weighed, are not of constant weight" ... more or less. "Way" and "weigh" in English are from the same root, as you'd "weigh" goods to get them under way on the "wagon," just as you'd pay a fair fare to get them across the water on the ferry. Our measure of our ways should always be fresh. The notion of a constant weighting of "The Way" is, contrary to Western monotheism, bull. So Lao Tzu is not, per the usual mistranslation, of what's know as "the anti-language school of Taoism," but rather warning against the limits of prior calculation and in favor of a constant forward-rolling revision. Perhaps.
I've been looking into trinities and threeness as well, which is why I think Perspectiva's systems/souls/society resonates. I'll look forward to see where you go with it.
I tend to see axiology/epistemology/ontology as a trinity, and cosmology as the "one" those three built up to.
I'm definitely a fan of threeness, starting with my study of Hegel way back in the day, then Gurdjieff, and many others, some you've listed. So yes, a nudge and encouragement for you to continue your exploration of it. I'll read and ponder....
Thank you Rick, and thanks also for becoming a paid subscriber - much appreciated.
I've also been interested in Gudjieff, and have read his book "Meetings with Remarkable Men". There's something magical about his very name and discovering people who are also interested in him creates an instant bond of recognition.
I'm a couple days late to the conversation here, but want to affirm your intention. Looking forward to reading your presentation of the grand three-ness of being. I'm also appreciating the way you've connected dots with so many other frameworks. I'll add one here.
My work, psychotopology, investigates our inner topological structure as it shows up in our experience of the virtual materiality of feeling. It turns out that the structure of the experience of being an agentic self-in-the-world is in fact a three by three matrix of functions. One triad governs the inside, one the outside, and one the context within which the inside and outside establish a relationship. This self/other/frame is inherent within us.
Within each triad, one module serves a function of possibilities. It provides a frame of what is possible in a given moment, within a given context. One module serves a function of choice, or presence, through which we inhabit one possibility to enact. And the third module serves a function of enactment, through which we engage with the world and monitor our pursuit of the chosen possibility. These three modules together generate the capacity for agency.
This is not something abstract or theoretical, but can be elicited in anyone through the fieldwork practice I've developed.
Maybe as you lay out more of your thinking, I'll see what connections there might be with this inner functionality and offer what I can. And I'm open to any opportunities to connect, if you're up for that.
Thanks, Joe. I’m Intrigued to hear more about this
I also want to say that your preface to this piece really resonates with me and my work. The chaotic decline of our world leads directly from the incompatibility of our modern ways of being with life's natural order as it lives within our own selves. We've cut ourselves off from that inner, more subtle, more interwoven wisdom in service to a rationality that has defined it out of existence. In cutting ourselves off from it, we are driven to ever more extreme compensations. To recover, we will need a program that responds to both the rational and embodied dimensions with answers and practices that elegantly and compellingly support the re-enlivening of spirit for both individuals and the collective.
It seems to me that you are setting out here (and have been working for a while) to provide the clear conceptual framework. This affirms my own shift toward an effort to make more clear how the practices I've been developing serve this collective need. Good luck to us both!
I also love threes. Had some fun conversations with Jordan Hall and some friends about the Trinity/trinities-- there's unity, multiplicity, relationality; Father as first person, Son as second person, Holy Spirit as third person; creates, changes, redeems.
Some of us riffed afterwards, one person preferring the symbolism of the Horus/Osiris/Isis story, another referencing Heaven/Earth/(Hu)Man. We played with Potential/The Creator/The Created; Being/Becoming/Relatedness. These fascinate me.
I give a huge high five to the continued exploration, I quite enjoyed this article, thank you!
I like the 3 voices Robin Kimmerer's 'Braiding Sweetgrass calls out...The voice of: Science, the Indigenous voice and the voice of Earth! That is the most critical - our Biology is the Ecology and it has the solutions we need to survive and thrive - we only need to walk softly on the land so we can listen, learn and understand the 'Landuage' language of the land, of the EartH. Its right there in the word...just move the H to the front and you have Heart!
"Those who achieve twoness will eventually seek threeness. Those seeking fourness are gauche" - yes! I have a strange intuition that this is something to do with factorials - 2! is 2 - which is rather too... binary. 4! is 24, which is a bit overwhelming. 3! is a 6, a real Goldilocks of a number, and roughly equates to the "slots" in our short-term memory.
I wrote, very briefly, about this and other aspects of threeness here: https://peakrill.substack.com/p/the-magic-number
Call it synchronicity or not, but I've just been thinking about your work on the subject and the threeness while exploring the alchemical realm for an essay! There too exists prima materia, the three primes: sulphur, mercury, and salt. Of course, they move into the psychological realm (as per Jung's research), and become aspects of psyche, aspects of the matter. Thank you for sharing, quite timely!:)
Jonathan, I am unable to resist Peirce contribution.
From Stanford University there is a 32 page summary on Peirce and below is section 9 of 9 sections. This ends with a question "what drove Peirce more than mere examples."My guess is that the Combinatorial Hierarchy mentioned in an earlier comment is in fact a very general aspect of reality.
9. Triadism and the Universal Categories
Merely to say that Peirce was extremely fond of placing things into groups of three, of trichotomies, and of triadic relations, would fail miserably to do justice to the overwhelming obtrusiveness in his philosophy of the number three. Indeed, he made the most fundamental categories of all “things” of any sort whatsoever the categories of “Firstness,” “Secondness,” and “Thirdness,” and he often described “things” as being “firsts” or “seconds” or “thirds.” For example, with regard to the trichotomy “possibility,” “actuality,” and “necessity,” possibility he called a first, actuality he called a second, and necessity he called a third. Again: quality was a first, fact was a second, and habit (or rule or law) was a third. Again: entity was a first, relation was a second, and representation was a third. Again: rheme (by which Peirce meant a relation of arbitrary adicity or arity) was a first, proposition was a second, and argument was a third. The list goes on and on. Let us refer to Peirce’s penchant for describing things in terms of trichotomies and triadic relations as Peirce’s “triadism.”
If Peirce had a general technical rationale for his triadism, Peirce scholars have not yet made it abundantly clear what this rationale might be. He seemed to base his triadism on what he called “phaneroscopy,” by which word he meant the mere observation of phenomenal appearances. He regularly commented that the phenomena in the phaneron just do fall into three groups and that they just do display irreducibly triadic relations. He seemed to regard this matter as simply open for verification by direct inspection.
Although there are many examples of phenomena that do seem more or less naturally to divide into three groups, Peirce seems to have been driven by something more than mere examples in his insistence on applying his categories to almost everything imaginable. Perhaps it was the influence of Kant, whose twelve categories divide into four groups of three each. Perhaps it was the triadic structure of the stages of thought as described by Hegel. Perhaps it was even the triune commitments of orthodox Christianity (to which Peirce, at least in some contexts and during some swings of mood, seemed to subscribe). Certainly involved was Peirce’s commitment to the ineliminability of mind in nature, for Peirce closely associated the activities of mind with the aforementioned triadic relation that he called the “sign” relation. (More on this topic appears below.) Also involved was Peirce’s so-called “reduction thesis” in logic (on which more will given below), to which Peirce had concluded as early as 1870.
Thanks Michael. I know Peirce was a mathematician almost as much as a philosopher. I will find some way to bring him in, though I’m not totally sure where yet…
I used to teach international students how to write academic essays, including the law of three. The convention is that you list ideas or examples in threes. Perhaps the triadism of Peirce is taking this basic organizational structure of academic writing to an extreme. However, when did it become the norm?
Please keep 3-ness coming. In addition to Cynthia Bourgeault/ Gurdjieff/ trinity, you might wanna check out the developmental framework of Terri O’Fallon at https://www.stagesinternational.com/. Takes Wilber’s essentially 2x2 matrix into a genuine 3-ness of three fundamental poles: insides and outsides, individual and collective, receptive vs active stance. The 3 poles intertwined yield developmental stages. Solidly research backed. And remarkably effective when working with real life human beings!
I'm on board. There is an instinctive attraction to 'three' but I'm wondering if this is an ontological reality or an epistemological lens (if I have correctly understood those terms)? Or is it, as you suggest, something that bleeds through each? There are several other 'ors' that come to mind but I'll stop there,,,,
I would like to know more about any of your ideas about the metaphysics of our lives. And keep the jokes coming, like epistemic pub menus!
I'm thinking of the Three Stooges as the world seems to collapse in front of us right now. Though there are no doubt more than three...
BRING IT!!!! Looking forward to this exploration. Anything to feed and expand the conversation.
I don't know a lot about all this, but it sounds like a much more fascinating slog than many others I've undertaken. So I'll be coming along, thanks for your work.
CS Peirce and his "triadomania" are often associated with this topic. A few quotes of his:
"… I was long ago (1867) led, after only three or four years’ study, to throw all ideas into the three classes of Firstness, of Secondness, and of Thirdness. This sort of notion is as distasteful to me as to anybody; and for years, I endeavored to pooh-pooh and refute it; but it long ago conquered me completely. Disagreeable as it is to attribute such meaning to numbers, and to a triad above all, it is as true as it is disagreeable."
"I fully admit that there is a not uncommon craze for trichotomies. I do not know but the psychiatrists have provided a name for it. If not, they should. “Trichimania,” [?] unfortunately, happens to be preëmpted for a totally different passion; but it might be called triadomany. I am not so afflicted; but I find myself obliged, for truth’s sake, to make such a large number of trichotomies that I could not [but] wonder if my readers, especially those of them who are in the way of knowing how common the malady is, should suspect, or even opine, that I am a victim of it."
http://www.commens.org/keywords/keyword/triadomany
Thanks Eric, I was planning to bring in Peirce a little later. I knew about third was but these quotations are very helpful 🙏
Sorry “thirdness” (!)
Great to hear you're planning to bring in Peirce, and his concept of thirdness. I highly recommend my friend Tim Winton's paper, "The Meaning of Planetary Civilization: Integral Rational Spirituality and the Semiotic Universe."
He opens with a quote from Peirce:
“The action of a sign generally takes place between two parties, the utterer and
the interpreter. They need not be persons; for a chamelion [sic] and many
kinds of insects and even plants make their livings by uttering signs….
However every sign certainly conveys something of the general nature of
thought, if not from a mind, yet from some repository of ideas, or significant
forms, (my emphasis) and if not a person, yet to something capable of some
how “catching on”…. That is [,] of receiving not merely a physical, nor even
merely a psychical dose of energy, but a significant meaning (my emphasis).”
—C.S. Peirce (sited in
Corrington, 1993, pp. 163)
In the Abstract, Tim writes:
"In this paper I seek to develop an integral pragmatasist approach, which I refer to as integral Semiotic Realism, as a distinction supportive of resolving the cosmological divide. An integral cosmology is then proposed based on the post-metaphysical injunction prescribed by the semiotic enactment of Planetary Civilization through the
signification of Integral Rational Spirituality. "
https://www.academia.edu/5395136/The_Meaning_of_Planetary_Civilisation_Integral_Rational_Spirituality_and_the_Semiotic_Universe
As for Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, I used this principle to assist a staff attorney at P&G to organize his office. I got him three large wire mesh baskets, and divided all of his papers into: first importance (must read and respond to urgently), second importance (read and respond, not so urgent), and third importance (read when you have some extra time, no need to respond, FYI).