So, Why Get
Organized?
The average business person receives 240 to 300 pieces of
information each day.
The average businessperson wastes 150 hours each year looking
for stuff.
Add 10 more hours and that is an
entire work month.
YOU, organized! You could have an extra month each year!
Just think how much more you could get done (or how much
vacation you could have) if you got organized. You could take a
three-day weekend every other week and still do as much as you
are doing now - or MORE. What a concept.
You probably have some sort of organizing system or, more
likely, multiple systems. Unfortunately, those systems are not
all encompassing. There are holes in them, things that don't fit
or aren’t accounted for within the system you have designed.
The piles on your desk result from holes in your system (as
well as the 190 pieces of information you receive each day).
You need one, all encompassing organizing system. Until you
have that, until you have one, simple, intuitive, easy to
maintain system, attempting to clean off your desk will only
thwart, exhaust and annoy you.
One of the major benefits of having a single, all
encompassing system is that you don’t have to make thousands of
little decisions each day such as "What do I do with THIS piece
of paper?" "Where can I put this so I can find it again later
when I need it?" Making 190 of those decisions each day is
emotionally and mentally exhausting.
Once you have a system, you KNOW where those pieces of paper
go, and it is simply a matter of putting them there.
You need to change the way you think about those 190 pieces
of new, incoming information each day. The biggest mistake
disorganized folks make is believing there is a "later." For us,
there is only "now," and "too late." All the things we
optimistically put off till later end up just laying there for
days, weeks, months, or years.
How old are some of the things in your stacks? We need to
develop methods for making decisions about things as they come
in, not waiting till that magical hour in the mythical "later"
miraculously appears. Then and only then can you begin get
control of your own personal chaos.
What qualifies me to help those of you
who are by nature disorganized?
I am just like you. I am, by nature, disorganized. I have the
same personality profile as most of my clients; i.e. we are
creative, we hate details, we are spontaneous and we like to
leave things open-ended. We are the creative geniuses of the
world. Our energy is focused into the future; the next project,
the next idea, the next grand scheme. Unfortunately, paper
belongs to the past or at best the present.
Our attention is on the future. Therefore, clutter is the
natural side effect of being creative! That doesn't mean we
don't have to deal with it, it just means we have a good excuse
for our mess!
Given my personality profile, I have just described someone you
would probably NOT hire to help you get organized. Another
factor comes into play; I was born legally blind. This problem
went uncorrected until I was 30.
Not being able to see, if I did not KNOW where something was,
I couldn't find it by just looking for it. So, I learned to
create simple, disorganized person type systems that are easy to
set up and maintain.
If you only have the energy to implement one thing from my book,
"Order from Chaos", make it step one, the Cockpit Office. If you
have the inclination to go further, implement step two, Air
Traffic Control.
Do not do step three only, or step six only, because each
step builds on the last. I recommend spending at least one week
accomplishing each step, but I don't care how long it takes you
to do all the steps, just do them in order, please.
Order from Chaos, is a very simple system for business
people. It works for everyone, even you, because of its
simplicity. You can modify it to fit your individual
circumstances, but the basics apply to anybody who has a desk.
So, get going and get organized!
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