“Keep your desk clean,” read the Post-It Note affixed to my desk. I might have seen it … if not for the pile of crap covering it over like a beaver’s den.
So much for the power of Post-Its.
Call it a new year’s resolution. Call it my desire to get organized, or to bring feng shui into my life. (Feng shui is a 3,000-year-old Chinese term for harnessing extraordinary power by arranging paper clips into geometric patterns on your desk. It could also be the name of a 3,000-year-old Chinese predecessor to IKEA. I don’t know.)
Anyway, it’s a new year and I’ve gone looking for organization. No more scraps of paper and endless to-do lists everywhere. No stacks and piles that make people think I’m building a bomb shelter. No boxes strewn about so that I have a 1-in-5 shot of blowing out my knee every time I head for the bathroom.
At both the office and at home, I’m attacking my desk.
I’ve always subscribed to the saying that “a messy desk was a sign of a brilliant mind.” (Or a total slob. But I always leaned toward the first explanation.)
To some degree I think it’s true. A few years back there was a book called, “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder — How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and on-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place.”
It’s actually the world’s longest and worst book title. All because the authors lost a much better one in an avalanche of office junk. But they make a good point — that sometimes a little disarray makes for more effective systems.
From chaos we find order … or our car keys. Or the missing cat.
And I’ve always bought the idea that a messy desk was a sign of a busy person. If you’re working hard, there’s no time to keep things neat and tidy. Only to pile it up higher and higher until the desk legs threaten to buckle or you’re killed by 1,000 paper cuts when it topples over.
A messy desk is supposed to signal to superiors that you’re burning the midnight oil. That you have no time for silly things like cleaning or hygiene or washing your armpits when there’s work to be done.
This is how lazy people excel in the world. By that one principle alone. You don’t need to do anything else. Just keep a desk that looks like you’ve been raking leaves on it and people will promote you. They think you’re busy as hell. Here’s a new motto: “A messy desk is the key to success.”
Besides, who wants a boss to walk in and see a clean desk. Their first reaction is either: 1) you need WAY more work to do, or 2) that you’ve quit, cleaned out your office and that they need to go hire someone else really quick.
For years these have been my guiding principles — my work station philosophy.
But I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take a desk at home and a desk at work that look (and sometimes smell) like a garbage dump. It makes blood vessels in my brain swell. It makes me tense and scattered and mentally cluttered.
So I’m in organization mode, and it’s going well. I’m making progress, getting my piles under control, and feeling much better — much more calmmmmmmm.
Want to know how I did it? Here are four easy steps:
1) For starters, throw everything away. I mean EVERYTHING! Bank statements, prescriptions, mortgage paperwork, your birth certificate. Then, and this is the really important step, never, EVER, empty your garbage can. See? Your garbage can becomes your filing cabinet. You know it’s always there if you need it, but because you never will, you save all that time filing.
2) Recognize that most of your clutter comes in through the Postal Service. So have all of your mail forwarded to your worst enemy.
3) Donate your Post-It Notes to underprivileged Third World accountants. They need them way more than you do.
4) Eliminate to-do lists. Recognize that you were never going to do any of that stuff in the first place, and instead do whatever you feel like at the moment.
It’s guaranteed to bring a little feng shui (or your favorite ancient Chinese organizing store) to a desk near you.