As my wife can attest, I am not a very organized person. My entire life I have struggled with this affliction and it has very likely prevented me from reaching my full potential. While having large, cluttered piles of paperwork on my desk does not necessarily bother me as much as it does some people (my wife being one), it definitely brings me no joy. I have often thought that I might actually look forward to going to work each morning if I didn not know I three tons of unfinished business sitting on my desk patiently awaiting my return.
I have made many efforts to alleviate this problem. I have two drawers in my desk with hanging file folders neatly labeled for every concievable subject I may need to file under. I use a personal planner from Franklin Covey where I can keep schedule information, phone numbers, and lots of other information that I wasn’t even aware I needed to keep track of until I bought the planner. And yet, I still end up with piles of stuff cluttering my desk. Due to having so many drawers and piles, finding any specific item usually takes awhile. Sometimes, I can’t find the item at all even though I am sure I did not throw it away. If I threw things away, I doubt I would have so many large piles. I am convinced that once a certain mass density is reached on a desk, small black holes are formed. These black holes are not large enough to be immediately noticed but do have enough gravitational pull to suck in one or two pieces of paper before disipating.
Being the good manager that I am, I decided to evaluate all of the above problem areas and then develop and implement a workable solution. And so I am proud to present to you the optimum filing system for the chronically disorganized, the “Monocolumnar Administration, Information and Data System” or MAIDS. Implementation is simple; take everything on or in your desk and put it in one big pile on the corner. Finding any item is now simply a matter of excavation, the search phase has been eliminated.
Jim – “Hey Rich, where did you put the schedule for next week”
Rich – “Right there” (points to MAIDS)
Jime – “Hey Rich, do you have laste weeks TPS report?”
Rich – “Yep, right there” (points to MAIDS)
I still haven’t figured out how to solve the black hole issue. I requisitioned a particle accelerator yeaterday. I’ll let you know how that works out next week.
3 Comments
Ok, for the chronically disorganized, I can see how this system might appeal to you, but I would make a few suggestions. These suggestions may complicate things a little but overall will end with a much more satisfying result (and it will help eliminate any new spontaneous black holes they might have formed under your current system.)
This is referred to as the TRi-columnar Administration Sanity Help system (or yes, TRASH), and as you can guess it involves three piles. The first pile is titled the FI/FO pile. This stands for Fast in, Fast out, not the standard ‘first’ version, and is reserved for items that will take the minimum time and effort to get back out of your filing system and into someone else’s so it is no longer your problem. The second pile is titled SIMBAAL (pronounced symbol) or ‘Stuff I Might Be Asked About Later.’ This is an important pile that requires some maintenance and at least a passing knowledge of how high any particular document might be in the pile. This is the pile that requires the most maintenance and will also involve the highest number of repeated searches. It is your primary working pile. Finally, the third pile is the STOMP pile, or Stuff To Occupy My Place. This is probably the most important pile, it requires little to no maintenance, no one ever expects to hear anything back regarding this material, you can use it to hide anything you don’t want found (dependent on how big it is: a TV, six pack of beer, etc.) and if necessary to make it look like you have achieved a substantial amount of work, you can always just dump a large portion of this into the trash. You can use this last feature to make excuses to get out of meetings, watching ‘Dancing with the Stars’ or anything else someone may require of you that would occupy your time in ways that you would not choose on your own. You can just make a show of the size of the STOMP pile, and when the leave you can just throw a portion of it away so that when they come back to check on you, you can say and show them how much you have been able to get done. Of course this is dependent on your ability to disguise the trash and to hide the small TV and beer when they come in the room, but that is a separate issue.
This system does take a bit more work than MAIDS but overall it will aid you in order, recovery, and periodically you can use this system to make you appear to be the single most productive person anyone else might know. Also, spontaneous black holes appear due to increased density of a work space, therefore your mono-column would need to be trimmed down fairly regularly and in sufficient quantities to minimize this effect.
Very good tweaks to the system chris. I like the TRASH system in principle but I think it may be too much organization for me. I am quite sure I would often put things in the wrong pile and then not be able to find them later. I also don’t think you have adequately addressed the micro black hole issue. Since we have yet to experimentally determine the actual density required to create these little admin suckers, your system may fall prey to them as well.
Let me know if your boss will get you a particle accelerator, mine said no.
A particle accelerator is the last thing you need, it will only make the problem worse. And I didn’t say my system would prevent the micro-black holes, just reduce the probability by distributing the paper a little less densely. As far as your inability to distinguish the three piles, it is simple, use color coding.
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