Why Get Organized?

Order from Chaos : A Six-Step Plan for Organizing Yourself, Your Office, and Your Life
by Liz Davenport

The Six Steps to Organizational Freedom

Do you:

• Miss important deadlines at work?
• Forget to return urgent phone calls?
• Lose papers that were "just here a minute ago"?
• Have multiple layers of sticky notes on your computer?
• Leave projects unfinished for days, weeks, or even months at a time?

If any of these sound familiar, then you are among the ranks of the disorganized - whether mildly or completely - and Liz Davenport has written this book just for you. Order from Chaos is the organizing book for disorganized people. In six easy steps she offers a system that will help you clean up your act. She demonstrates how to clear your desk by teaching you what's trash and why, reveals what a calendar is really meant to be, and provides a no-fail system for prioritization. At the end of the day, your desk will be clear and your mind will be free to relax.

Rather than offering overcomplicated instructions for filing systems and time management plans, Order from Chaos focuses on ease of use. There is not one person - from office assistant to CEO - who will not benefit from this straightforward, easy-to-maintain plan.

Chapter 1

The average businessperson receives 190 pieces of information each day. The average businessperson wastes 150 hours each year looking for stuff. Add 10 more hours and that is an entire work month. If you got organized, you could have an extra month each year! Just think how much more you could accomplish (or how much vacation you could have) if you got organized. You could take a three-day weekend every other week and still do as much as you are doing now — or MORE. What a concept.

Most of us have some sort of organizing system or, more likely, multiple systems. Unfortunately, those systems are not all-encompassing. They have holes, things that don't fit or aren't accounted for within the system you have designed. The piles on your desk result from holes in your system (as well as from the incoming 190 pieces of information each day). What you need is one, all-encompassing organizing system. Until you have one, simple, intuitive, easy-to-maintain system, attempting to clean off your desk will only thwart, exhaust, and annoy you. And your desk won't stay clean for long.

One of the major benefits of having a single, comprehensive system is that we don't have to make thousands of little decisions each day, such as "What do I do with this piece of paper?" "Where can I put this so I can find it again later when I need it?" Making 190 of those decisions each day is emotionally and mentally exhausting. Once you have a system, you know where those pieces of paper go, and it is simply a matter of putting them there.

You also need to change the way you think about those 190 pieces of new, incoming information each day. The biggest mistake disorganized folks make is believing there is a "later." For us, there is only "now" and "too late." All the things we optimistically put off till later end up just lying there for days, weeks, months, or years. How old are some of the things in your stacks? We need to develop methods for making decisions about things as they come in, not waiting till that magical hour in the mythical "later" miraculously appears. Then and only then can you begin get control of your own personal chaos.

What qualifies me to help those of you who are by nature disorganized? Because I am just like you. I am, by nature, disorganized. I have the same personality profile as most of my clients; that is, we are creative, we hate details, we are spontaneous, and we like to leave things open-ended. We are the creative geniuses of the world. Our energy is focused on the future — the next project, the next idea, the next grand scheme. Unfortunately, paper belongs to the past or, at best, the present. Our attention is on the future. Therefore, clutter is the natural side effect of being creative. That doesn't mean we don't have to deal with it; it just means we have a good excuse for our mess!

Given my personality profile, I have just described someone you would probably not hire to help you get organized. Another factor comes into play; I was born legally blind. This problem went uncorrected until I was 30. The effect has been that since birth, if I did not know where something was, I couldn't find it by just looking for it. So I learned to create simple, disorganized-person-type systems that are easy to set up and maintain.

If you only have the energy to implement one thing from this book, make it Step 1, the Cockpit Office. If you have the inclination to go further, implement Step 2, Air Traffic Control. Do not do Step 3 only, or Step 6 only, because each step builds on the last. I recommend spending at least one week accomplishing each step, but I don't care how long it takes you to do all the steps, just do them in order, please. What is offered here is a very simple system for businesspeople. It works for everyone, even you, because of its simplicity. You can modify it to fit your individual circumstances, but the basics apply to anybody who has a desk. So get going and get organized!

The Game Plan

Some of us need to have the big picture before we are willing to listen to the details, so here is an overview of the whole system. Each step is intended to be executed over the course of a week. At the end of each chapter is a detailed checklist.

One tip for success . . . getting organized is not a solitary activity. You will more likely succeed if you have someone to discuss things with, work with, or just to help keep you on track. Otherwise, you may easily get sidetracked, find something else to do, or simply never quite get around to it. So tackle this project with a friend, a family member, or a coworker. Share your schedule with them for the entire six-week program and ask them to ask you for weekly updates.

If you still have trouble getting off the dime, then invite them over for no more than four hours at a time. Fix them a pot of coffee (or a pitcher of margaritas) and tell them their job is not to touch anything, but rather to keep you on task. It is far easier for them to toss stuff-it isn't their stuff and they are not attached to it like you are. Truth be told, it will probably all look like junk to them. Keep to a schedule. Allow no more than 30 seconds for keep/toss decisions. Five seconds is even better. In your heart of hearts you know immediately what to do with your old stuff, you just let your fear get in the way.

Step 1: The Cockpit Office

When you sit down at your desk to work you should have everything you need to complete any project. Many of us believe that having other people interrupt us is the biggest waste of our time. In reality, interrupting ourselves is the real thief of our time.

Consider your desk your "Cockpit." Inside your Cockpit you want only "now," "happening" kinds of things, not old, archaic, moldy things that have not seen the light of day in years. For example, consider that file drawer in your desk, the one easiest to reach. What's in it? I'll bet you cannot even name, much less use, some of the things in it. It is a place where things go in and never come out again. They are often "important" things, not frequently used things. If the drawer contains some frequently used things, they are probably only in the front couple of inches. Sound familiar? Step 1, then, is to create the Cockpit Office, a space where you have only the essential tools necessary to do your work.

Step 2: Air Traffic Control

If you need to remember to do something, how do you remember to do it? You probably put that important piece of paper on the desk in front of you where you can see it. The next important thing you absolutely must not forget to do goes in front of you, too. The next follows suit, and on and on, ad infinitum. Soon you are buried under important pieces of paper, and every time you look at them, you ask yourself, "I wonder what is in that pile that I am forgetting to do?" Up goes your stress level. Creating an Air Traffic Control system is the alternative to the "out of sight, out of mind" methodology that most folks use. Your Air Traffic Controller is your single radar screen for each day and contains

• a section for appointments,
• a section for to-do's, and
• a section for important notes relevant to that day.

Copyright © 2001 by Liz Davenport. Excerpted by permission of Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Liz Davenport has brought hope to thousands of office workers afraid to open their desk drawers. She owns an organizing business, also named Order from Chaos, that serves individuals, companies, organizations, colleges, and government offices. She lives in New Mexico.