Hasta La Ideas

Professional organizer Deb Lee runs a neat feature on her organizing blog every Friday, titled “Fact Friday.” This past week, she featured a statistic from 1992 that I found to be fascinating:

“In a recent survey of 200 executives of 1,000 of the nation’s largest companies, respondents were asked: ‘What percent of time do executives waste because they or their assistants can’t find things?’ The median response was 4.3 hours a week, based on a 40-hour week.”

[When Time’s Money, Organizing Pays Off · Penny Singer · New York Times · November 29, 1992]

Computer usage and digital search functionality have certainly increased and improved since 1992, but I doubt that this statistic is much different today. Now, we search for things like old e-mails and mis-named documents instead of paper memos and proposals.

The lede paragraph of the New York Times article says that six weeks a year are wasted looking for items when you’re disorganized. Think of all the work you could accomplish in six weeks. Amazing.

Clutter has a way of accumulating in poorly-lit spaces. If you can’t see it, you forget it’s there, and it’s easier to mindlessly add to the disorder. Deep drawers, basements, closets, lower cabinets, and garages are especially vulnerable to dark spaces where clutter can hide.

After you clear the clutter from an area, if it is poorly lit, I recommend putting in an adhesive LED Puck Light ($14 for a 3-pack). They require very little energy, can be used with rechargeable batteries, and help the spaces to stay clear of clutter going forward — just be sure to put the light in a place you can easily reach.

How has better lighting helped keep clutter out of your home? Is there a space where better lighting could help you? Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

Everyone begins life as a messy, disorganized, lump of a baby. No one is born in a starched shirt and polished shoes with a day planner in one hand and a vacuum cleaner in the other. (Our mothers, they are particularly happy about the vacuum cleaner part.) We scream. We drool. We poop. We cry some more. Everything about a baby is chaotic.

During the early years of life, some children are formally taught by their caregivers how to be organized. Others garner bits and pieces through observation, example, and trial and error. Finally, there are those who picked up very little during childhood and didn’t start learning about organizing until adulthood (I fall into this category).

The speed at which we acquire organizing skills is also varied. Some people learn a specific organizing skill the first time they encounter it. Others, it takes considerable practice.

How you learn or how quickly you learn is completely irrelevant; the point is that everyone can learn to be organized.

From this point forward, I want you to stop thinking about your disorganization as a state of being. Instead, think about the specific way that you’re not yet organized.

“My closet is a mess because I haven’t mastered the skills necessary to keep it free of clutter. I need to learn how to organize my closet and acquire the skills that it requires to maintain it well.”

“My big project at work is a mess because I don’t know what programs and systems are available to help me get it under control. I need to research and learn about what I can do to better manage my time and work of this project.”

When you stop identifying as someone who is disorganized, and start thinking about it as just a specific skill that you can learn, getting organized becomes an easier task.

Today we welcome Brian Kieffer, one of Unclutterer’s amazing programmers, to tell us how he created his extremely useful note card task board.

I’m a big fan of using index cards as organizational tools. They’re cheap, relatively sturdy, and the perfect size for jotting down tasks and notes, among many other uses.

Unless you really like flipping through cards over and over, though, it can be difficult to keep from losing track of everything you have going on your cards. If you’ve searched for a solution to this, you may have encountered Levenger’s excellent Note Card Action Board. But at nearly $40 for a 13″x15.5″ board, they’re pretty pricy.

I made my own in less than 5 minutes for a fraction of the cost using simple parts I picked up on a trip to my local art store. All you need is a board, and several large, heavy-duty rubber bands.

Any sturdy board will work, but the board I chose is the 16″x20″ Studio Panel. It’s essentially a 3/8″ thick piece of masonite with a canvas-like surface, and you can get them in many different sizes. The textured surface of the board provides a little bit of friction to keep the cards secure, and could easily be painted to match the decor of your office. The back of the panel includes pre-drilled holes for hanging on the wall.

Assembly is quick and easy. Just stretch your rubber bands over the board and space them according to the size of the cards you use. And BAM! DIY Note Card Action Board. Then you can use your label maker to mark the different sections of the board for your productivity system.

When you imagine a CEO’s office, you probably think of a wood desk, an ornately framed print of a stale landscape, a couple diplomas on the wall, a bookshelf of leather bound classics, a large window with a decent view, and everything well organized with no clutter anywhere. I could probably create a coffee table book filled with thousands of examples of this exact office.

For better or worse, most CEO’s offices send the message: “I am in charge, and I get work done.”

Forbes recently profiled the offices of 10 CEOs in the article “What CEOs Love To Keep In Their Offices.” The article discusses the not-so-obvious things that some big-wigs keep in their spaces. But, I have to be honest, none of the items they mention are really that far off the regular path — a dry erase board, a dart board, an executive bathroom.

CEO offices are consistent because they are, in many ways, the face of the company. Consumers and employees alike judge CEOs based on the image they present. If a CEOs office is full of clutter and chaotic, then it sends the message that the company is cluttered and chaotic. So, the CEO of a company will always have an office that looks like the one I described in the first paragraph.

Can you take a few cues from the CEOs? I’m not advocating that you retrofit your cubicle with wood laminate and bad artwork, but can you keep your office clutter free? Can you project to your co-workers and clients that you are efficient and productive and able to handle all the work that comes your way? Does your office say that you’re organized and ready to lead?