Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
This phrase is widely attributed to Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, who first used it in her 1878 novel Molly Bawn; essentially meaning that what is considered beautiful is subjective and depends on the individual’s perception.
I have come to apply this same philosophy to organization. I explain my position in an excerpt from my book, The Time-Optimized Life (Pages 33 and 34).
Susan (my wife) and I approach organization very differently. We each have offices in our home, and they are right next to each other. On any given day, if you stand at the doorway and look into my office, there is little clutter. My workspace is clear. The books are organized, and the paperwork is filed. Anything that is not needed is either hung up or put away. From a visual scan, it is arranged.
Take six steps to the left, and you’ll enter my wife’s office. The shelves are overflowing with books. Her extra chair is filled with items to be mailed, folders, and even a sweater she wears when she is cold. Move your eyes to her desk, and she has two stacks of paper, about a dozen books, notepads, and what seems like endless written Post-it notes everywhere. She has totes containing a host of old papers and writings stacked up on an adjacent wall. To my eyes, it always looks a little chaotic.
At this point, some of you think I am crazy and are wondering if I am still married. The answer is yes; keep reading.
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While I prefer for everyone to have a neat and unadorned workspace, I have also come to realize that time-optimized organization goes much deeper than the surface, and here is the premise: If Susan was standing in our kitchen and you were in her office, and you shouted out to her, “Where is such and such paperwork?” She would immediately answer something like, “Go to the second stack of papers—closest to the computer—and about halfway in, you will see a blue folder. Look under that, and you will find it.” Guess what? It will be there.
Now, if you do the same with me, I will probably answer, “Check my filing cabinet and look under the ‘home improvement’ file folder, and it should be there.” After a few minutes, you will ask, “I checked there and don’t see it; where else could you have put it?”
My response might be, “Oh sorry, try the ‘other expenses’ folder.” In a short time, you may come back with, “I did not see it there, either.” To which I will come in, look in the file cabinet myself and say, “Oh yeah, sorry again, that is in the ‘to be filed’ area I have in the holder on the side of the cabinet.”
In each case, the item was found, but which one took the least amount of time and effort? I’ll let you answer that out loud yourself, and that should confirm to you that I am still married.
While she often declares she need to get in and clean up her office, she does not let herself stop the “lack of organization” from being productive. If you are like Susan – neither should you. Here are a few tips to help you keep focused if your space is not as organized as you would like it to be.
Clear just your immediate working area – push everything back to create an 18-inch radius of empty space around where you’re actually working. Don’t organize it, just relocate the clutter temporarily. This will allow you to have enough flexibility to place items within immediate reach as you stay concentrated.
Keep an empty box next to you and quickly drop in anything that comes across your desk during your work session. Don’t sort it, just contain it for later. Give yourself enough Real Estate to get done what needs to be completed and then decide if you want to tackle what is in the box.
Set a phone timer for 10 minutes and challenge yourself to stay in one spot and “clear a path” to be able to focus and work. You are not trying to do everything in one sitting, just enough for you to be able to stay at it.
While I am a space and place person, I now embrace that organization is in the eye of the beholder. You can be like me, neat and clean. You can be like my wife, what I consider a little “unsystematic”. What counts is your ability to identify what you need and to be focused when it counts, no matter what the space looks like.
David Buck is the author of the book The Time-Optimized Life, coauthor of The Retirement Collective, and owner of Kairos (Time) Management Solutions, LLC. Learn how to apply the concepts of proactively planning and using your time. Take the Time Management Analysis (TMA), the Retirement Time Analysis (RTA), or all the other free resources offered to help bring more quality time into your life.
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