Cleanliness may be next to Godliness…

April 30, 2007 · Filed Under Slacking Off at Work 

But it isn’t anywhere near career success.

This is one article I am actually going to share with my boss. A good point from the article:

“Mess isn’t necessarily the absence of order,” Abrhamson and Freedman claim. “A messy desk can be a highly effective prioritizing and accessing system. In general, on a messy desk, the more important, urgent work tends to stay close by and near the top of the clutter, while the safely ignorable stuff tends to get buried to the bottom or near the back, which makes perfect sense. The various piles on a messy desk can represent a surprisingly sophisticated informal filing system that offer far more efficiency and flexibility than a filing cabinet could possibly provide.”

Whenever my boss complains about my messy desk, I always say “this is my organization system” and my hyper organized colleagues almost always take longer to find documents, assignments and stored files than I do. And while my boss isn’t hyper organized, I always make fun of her for taking longer to find documents than I do.

I would also say this applies to desktop computer organization. Some people have long hierarchal filing systems in place whereas I have about 10 folders in which everything is organized. I find things quicker than most people and I spent less time organizing it in the first place.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Cleanliness may be next to Godliness…”

  1. Lisa on May 1st, 2007 4:21 pm

    Would you consider 30 folders in my Outlook as a long hierarchal filing system?! I do have to remember which folder I put things into but I just can’t do it any other way :)

  2. Lemonizer on May 4th, 2007 12:04 pm

    I find that the piles on/around my desk fit my ability to concentrate an focus on items (which is pretty short). With so much information handy, I feel it is easy to switch from one topic to another quickly.

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