The Power of Personal Organization: A Great GOE Example

[KenR]

Here's an excellent site for you to read in the spirit of our Great GOE of 2006 ...

Order Out of Chaos; Progress Out of Order

Life is very complex. There are so many things to take care of in the course of the day. Imagine, however, if there was no semblance of order to our day. Upon waking one morning, we would see our clothes strewn across the floor, books and papers piled up everywhere, without arrangement or purpose. In addition, since there would be no plan for the day, we would not know what to do first. When we did take an action, it would be out of sequence - e.g. we might dress before we showered, or have our breakfast before brushing our teeth ...

http://www.gurusoftw...ics/Organization.htm

from alex3f

[Lilly]

we might dress before we showered, or have our breakfast before brushing our teeth ...

-KenR (October 22, 2006, 11:29 AM)

wait... aren't you supposed to brush your teeth after you eat?

[Darwin]

I completely agree with you, Lilly. However, I know people that brush their teeth right after getting out of bed and relieving themselves. Most of them brush their teeth after breakfast as well, though...

[tomos]

I'm one of those people who brush their teeth straight after getting up - do others not ?!?

OK stay calm now & please dont over react:
I dont brush them after breakfast - but, in my defence: i dont eat anything sweet for breakfast, nor anything strong tasting/smelling (e.g. cheese/ham!)

Do most people, for example,
brush their teeth straight after dinner ? (I dont think so, but who knows - maybe they sneak off to the jacks with their travel toothbrushes straight after eating at that dinner party .. )
Personally,
I would find that would ruin the nice "aftertaste" you get after a good meal (in fact i dont usually eat desserts for the same reason)

Funny the way we all (most of us?) are very set in our ways - I'd be shocked by someone not brushing their teeth straight after getting up - others seem shocked by not brushing after breakfast ....

[nudone]

i brush after each meal - unless i'm out of the house. i don't brush immediately on jumping out of bed - no point as i'm going to do it after my breakfast.

you brushing before breakfast people are crazy.

[tomos]

crazy    crazy    crazy

[app103]

Life is very complex. There are so many things to take care of in the course of the day. Imagine, however, if there was no semblance of order to our day. Upon waking one morning, we would see our clothes strewn across the floor, books and papers piled up everywhere, without arrangement or purpose. In addition, since there would be no plan for the day, we would not know what to do first. When we did take an action, it would be out of sequence - e.g. we might dress before we showered, or have our breakfast before brushing our teeth ...

Except for the silly example given about showering & backwards one about brushing teeth, that is pretty much exactly how my life is...except I don't wake up in the morning...I wake up when I damn well please, go to sleep when I please, and sleep as long or as little as I want or need. I do what I want when I want.

You could replace that absurd example of 'out of sequence' with my eating habits. I have no sense of what is considered 'breakfast food' or 'dinner food', for example...or even labeling meals as such things.

But what I want to know is why does living like this have to be considered a bad thing? What if it works for some people? What if having a structured life brings misery to some?

Does anybody besides me believe in organized chaos?

What is so bad about piles of papers all over if you know what is in each pile and can quickly find what you want & need? Would it be better to 'put it all away' and then not be able to make sense of anything later and not be able to find what you need?  Or worse...forget something because it wasn't within sight reminding you of its existence?

Just like there are people that get lost in a mess, I think there are people that lost in neatness, too.

From experience I can also tell you that other people's neatness is very disturbing to me....it can make me feel very uncomfortable...almost claustrophobic in the wide open spaces of their neatness. I am usually glad to come home to the cozy comfort of my clutter.

Over the years we have seen that serious attempt to raise the level of cleanliness in our environment will not only produce physically pleasing results, but is also likely to attract sudden good fortune – in the form of more money, sales, opportunity, and other positive benefits. For example, one man got down on his hands and knees one day to clean out the grit and grime in his refrigerator. At the very instant he rose from that effort, he received a call notifying him that he had just secured several months of new work -- when only a moment earlier he had nothing scheduled for the future.

I seriously doubt one thing had anything to do with the other. 

[mouser]

But what I want to know is why does living like this have to be considered a bad thing? What if it works for some people? What if having a structured life brings misery to some?
Does anybody besides me believe in organized chaos?

I guess i agree with you for the most part.  Especially things like sleeping - some of us are night owls and work much better at night.  I'm guessing that a real part of that tendency to work at night is biological for us, and so fighting against it is fighting an uphill battle.

I guess my position is that there is no point in trying to force yourself into a rigid structure that doesn't suit you.  If you can wake up and go to sleep and eat whenever you want, and it works for you, go for it.

But i also believe that sometimes we use that as a crutch to avoid having to change, and sometimes other circumstances in our life demand we adjust to that.

And lastly, i do believe there is a tradeoff.  there is definitely a kind of creativity available in having a chaotic open schedule, but i think there is also a price to be paid sometimes for it.  And speaking only for myself, i would like to work on improving the areas of my life that require more discipline and hard, minimally-creative aspects that depend more on having good habits.

[tomos]

What is so bad about piles of papers all over if you know what is in each pile and can quickly find what you want & need? Would it be better to 'put it all away' and then not be able to make sense of anything later and not be able to find what you need?  Or worse...forget something because it wasn't within sight reminding you of its existence?

-app103

App, have you come across this article.

Called "The Social Life of Paper",
its an interesting one about how paper is persisting in this "digital age".

But,
more to the point:

The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven't yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head. Kidd writes that many of the people she talked to use the papers on their desks as contextual cues to "recover a complex set of threads without difficulty and delay" when they come in on a Monday morning, or after their work has been interrupted by a phone call. What we see when we look at the piles on our desks is, in a sense, the contents of our brains.

&

...a photograph of an office piled high with stacks of paper. The occupant of the office -- a researcher in Xerox's European research facility -- was considered neither ineffective nor inefficient. Quite the contrary: he was, they tell us, legendary in being able to find any document in his office very quickly. But the managers of the laboratory were uncomfortable with his office because of what it said about their laboratory. They were, after all, an organization looking to develop digital workplace solutions.
... Whenever senior colleagues came by the office, then, the man with the messy desk was instructed to put his papers in boxes and hide them under the stairs. 

[my smiley]     [Edit: Link corrected]

[app103]

...a photograph of an office piled high with stacks of paper. The occupant of the office -- a researcher in Xerox's European research facility -- was considered neither ineffective nor inefficient. Quite the contrary: he was, they tell us, legendary in being able to find any document in his office very quickly. But the managers of the laboratory were uncomfortable with his office because of what it said about their laboratory. They were, after all, an organization looking to develop digital workplace solutions.
... Whenever senior colleagues came by the office, then, the man with the messy desk was instructed to put his papers in boxes and hide them under the stairs. 

I know exactly how that guy feels...I have to hide it all once a month when the landlord comes for the rent...then put it all back once he leaves.   

It would be nice if the new owner would let me mail him the rent, like the old one did. But no...this guy wants to come visit everybody in the building once a month & 'socialize'.

[app103]

App, have you come across this article.

-tomos (October 31, 2006, 04:19 AM)

bad link:  http://localhost:91/...2_03_25_a_paper.html   

correct link:  http://www.gladwell....02_03_25_a_paper.htm

[tomos]

bad link:

... must have been cause I accessed it through Surfulater
(its corrected)