I
have to admit to a cluttered desk. Not because I don't like order and neatness,
it is simply because I detest filing. I am organized. . . sort of. . . I have
lots of files. Indeed, I have many filing cabinets with files. Client files,
training material files, and hundreds of other files. I've also got a couple of
those stand up file organizers on top my desk, along with a 5-tier
horizontal shelf unit. I even have boxes of files and papers. I've got all kinds
of organization.
Then,
I have the stacking system. I have several stacks on my desk of papers,
magazines I haven't had the time to look at and these stacks, though crisp and
neatly stacked at one time, often have papers covering them up. Then I have a
roll around file unit that I stick things on top of and then the stacks on top
of the filing cabinet, and . . . well, you can imagine the picture. I am
cluttered and I have a cluttered mind I guess.
It's
not that I don't know how to be neat, but I don't know how, if that makes any
sense. It does to me. I know how. I just don't do it.
I
see people with nothing on their desk but a phone and a computer monitor and
keyboard and I wonder what they do. What is going on in their brain? How can
they tolerate such starkness? It seems like a sign of nothing going on. Maybe
they carry around a big briefcase carrying their stacks from home to office to
home again. Maybe that credenza is a holding area for clutter that is kept out
of sight. Maybe they keep all their stack in another room. Who knows? It's so
strange to me.
Then
there are some people I know who know where everything is in an instant and go
right to it in a file somewhere and there you have the answer to your quest. Me?
I go through this stack first and that one second all the while hoping it is
near. I've read that you should never touch the same paper twice. I don't. Twice
is too small a number for me.
I've
told my partners several times that when we make it big, the very first thing I
am buying for myself is the full time services of a masterful personal
assistant. Someone who has me so organized that I hardly recognize it as me.
Someone who knows where everything is like some of my friends. And, especially
someone who not only knows how to file, but what to file where. I can't wait. .
.
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