Your Organizing Coach

Is Being Neat and Organized Overrated? Costco Wants to Know.

Costco, a place that sells an enormous number of items you can spend time keeping organized (or not), is running a survey in their online magazine titled: "Is being neat and organized overrated?"

Now, it always drives organizers crazy to hear those two adjectives used together as if they mean the same thing. They don't. Why is that such a hard concept to grasp? My dad was one of those people who have tippy-looking stacks of paper all over the room. But he knew what was in the stacks. He was a writer and was inspired by having as much material as possible to look through when he was working.

If he had been a piler who was also disorganized, he might have discovered some really interesting things to write about in those piles, but he also would have missed his deadline. Being an organized piler meant that he could meet deadlines and have fun reading obscure articles about incunabula that could inspire future writing.

The Costco article quotes David Freedman, author of A Perfect Mess, who proposes that you have to be messy to be creative. He cites the discovery of penicillin in a messy, disorganized lab where mold had grown on some sample dishes.

That's nice, but the ancient Greeks, among others,  had already noticed that mold could inhibit bacterial growth, and there's been a steady, scientific study of the subject since then. At least two scientists discovered penicillin before Fleming did, in the traditional way of being curious about phenomena they noticed in the world around them. They did not have to wait until an accident occurred in their labs. (Mold picture courtesy of the PBS website.)

It's probably a safe bet that once Fleming made his accidental discovery, he applied the scientific method to it. That involves a lot of experimentation and analysis that has to be kept and presented in an organized fashion. It's hard to get published in a scientific journal if you've misplaced your lab results.

Bottom line: being organized is about finding stuff when you need to, but that doesn't mean it's labeled and shrink-wrapped and lined up on a shelf. It means you know where it is and can get to it without breaking your neck falling on that old guitar.

So, what's your vote?

Be Productive in Your Own Time

Do you live your life by the clock so you can squeeze everything in? Do you anxiously consult your watch while working toward a deadline? Most of us have to live by a schedule part of the time, whether it's work, school or events. But when you don't, try leaving the watch on the bureau and forgetting about its constant ticking.

Susan Sabo proposes having a "watch out" day or evening on her Productivity Blog. Remember what it's like to do something because you're prompted from within. This is a way to tune into your internal clock. Without the pressure of time, you may find that you're more productive. Ideas may come more easily.

You might also find yourself lollygagging and daydreaming and feeling unproductive. However, your creativity and thus, your productivity, also needs that kind of time, or timelessness, to really shine.

Dawn in Norway photographed by Maikun.

Goals vs. Tasks

You need both goals and tasks, and they're easy to confuse. A big reason that people don't get things on their to do list done isn't that they procrastinate, but that the list entries aren't really do-able.

Does your to do list look like this?

• Design the book
• Increase sales this month
• Find an accountant

These are actually all goals, not tasks. A goal is reached via a series of tasks. Once you identify a goal you need to figure out what the first thing to do is. Do that, then figure out the next thing. And so on.

Here's a real to do list based on the list above:

• Narrow color schemes down to 2 choices and create palettes
• Contact top three clients this week and remind them of the new products
• Ask Maya and Rob if they can recommend an accountant

Notice that to do's are much more specific. They are active, they have deadlines and they involve particular people. As soon as they're done, they're replaced by the next logical step, for example, schedule a meeting to present the color schemes, or follow up the client calls with mailed brochures.

If something is languishing on your list for weeks on end, it might be a goal. To find out, just ask yourself, well, how do I design the book?  You know the answer already; you just need to put that on the list instead.

Tips for Taming Distractions at Work

I often hear from people that they come in to the office early in the morning or on weekends just to get some work done in peace. They don't particularly like doing it, but they do like the quiet and the lack of interruptions from phone, email and coworkers.

Lifehacker yesterday ran a post about "guerilla tactics" people use to get some distraction-free time at work. This was a favorite:

"A couple colleagues of mine and I schedule fake meetings so we can sit and get an hours work done. If it's just the three of us, it's quiet and easy because we know why we're there."

Over at 43Folders, there were several good ideas for managing emails and meetings, such as "filter any email that contains the string “to unsubscribe.” Although many of these certainly will be valuable (sign-ups, Google lists), that string means there’s a good chance they’re also bulk messages that are being generated automatically. And some folks want to only see those sorts of emails, again, once or twice a day — and only when they have extra time"

Email in this category is being referred to these days as bacn. It's not as bad as spam but it significantly clogs inboxes.