| Clutter is Cool |
In my personal universe, chaos and order wage an ongoing battle that is often fiercely fought among the scribbled notations, newspaper clips, and other snippets of information scattered around my workspace. So I can sympathies with Karen Jackson, a Texas, schoolteacher who recently nabbed first place in a contest to find America's messiest desk.
The competition was sponsored by Little, Brown and Company as part of their promotion for a new book titled, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place, by Eric Abrahamson and David Freedman. The authors claim that neatness has a wide range of negative consequences and can actually make workers less effective.
I'm not proud of the clutter that accumulates next to my pens and pencils. I know it would be more efficient to keep a larger volume of data stored electronically. However, I often get ideas without warning and write them down immediately on the nearest envelope or scrap of junk mail, and I like having physical contact with my notes whenever I get around to sorting through them.
I'm in awe of people who have embraced the use of mobile phones, Black Berrys, and wireless networks. But cyberculture is a high velocity environment. It prides itself on speed and efficiency. I was raised in a household that emphasized "haste makes waste" and "slowly but surely". Instant responses to important questions were not encouraged. More common was the parental phrase, "Let's think about it."
"Think about it" is, of course, a euphemism for "I don't want to get caught giving an answer I'll regret later". In other words, you're stalling, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Stalling is one of the great traditions of all bureaucratic organizations.
Having worked as a mid-level employee, I've done it, and I have no regrets.
My hard-copy habits may seem disorderly and outdated, but all fans of the paperless office should keep one fact in mind: if the sun ever ejects a ball of plasma like the one that blew across this planet in 1859, our power grids, microwave towers and fiber-optic lines could be turned into fried spaghetti.
Fortunately, no mass of electrons can disrupt the paper trails in my office. Just give me a place to sit, a stack of Post-its, and a desktop big enough, and I will organize Earth.
Parkash Mehra is an IT professional and a freelance author.
Driven by the strong interest in Metaphysics, Parkash is consistently exploring into different fields of Metaphysics.
He is also a Feng Shui and I Ching Practitioner. Being an IT engineer for a living, he is also committed to create online tools and resources to enhance people's learning and application of these ancient arts.
 www.findingfengshui.com
Article Source: UnArchived Articles
|
|
|
|
