S1 Reading and Assignments

Huh? The advantages of being disorganized!!! How can there be any advantages to disorganization?

I’ve worked in information management since 1973, and I’ve heard every excuse imaginable for being disorganized. Believe it or not, many people actually believe that it is better to be disorganized, to the point of working amid clutter. Here are a few of their justifications:

· “I’ve made myself an indispensable part of this company. If they ever fire me, they’d never find anything. Nobody would want to sort through my clutter to complete my tasks.”

· “I look busy. Nobody’s going to give me more work, because they believe I’m drowning in the work I’ve got.”

· “The piles of work on my desk tell people that I’m important.”

· “My manager won’t cut my salary, because it’s obvious that I work hard.”

· “I know where everything is in those stacks. If I rearranged them, I wouldn’t know where anything is.”

It doesn’t take a great insight to see through these arguments. They are all about image and illusion: the image the person wants to project to his or her manager and co-workers, and the illusion that this person is working productively. In fact, what we’re seeing are lack of order and the sure signs of low productivity.

If you hear yourself making excuses for your mess, take warning. Tell yourself the truth. There is no good reason for being disorganized, no positive benefit to be derived from clutter, no advantage to sloppy work habits. There is every reason for being organized. There are unlimited benefits to cleaning up your clutter and developing efficient work habits.

When you have mastered our program’s twenty-one techniques, you will experience “The Pleasure To Forget”. This does not mean you will cheerfully miss meetings, show up late for appointments, or neglect assignments. Obviously, there are certain things you should never forget.

There is a fundamental fallacy in the concept of what is commonly regarded as ‘time management’. In fact, time cannot be managed. Time marches on, as the old cliché goes, and there is nothing you or I can do to stop it or control it. We cannot rearrange it. We cannot buy more of it. Although we are accustomed to talk about ‘killing time’, in fact that is only a figure of speech. Can you imagine turning on the evening news and hearing the newscaster say, “A local resident was arrested today for killing time?” It doesn’t make sense, does it? What we can do is kill opportunities by not taking advantage of them. That is not good.

While we cannot manage time, we can manage ourselves: our working patterns, our environment, and the way we use our time. We can establish efficient habits, greatly minimize distractions, prioritize our tasks for the best results. We can always keep our working papers and computer files instantly retrievable. And instead of killing opportunities, we can grab up lost opportunities by having a foolproof system in place that further allows for doing our work in far less time.

Many years ago we were told the electronic age was leading us to the ‘paperless’ office, yet since that rosy scenario was first painted, paper consumption in the U.S. has tripled. In the same time, our computer systems have accumulated terabytes of electronic data. For many of us, the ‘information revolution’ has become a nightmare of disorganization and information mismanagement. Paper overflows our desk trays; E-mail and Voice-mail compete for our attention. It is too much for us to handle — unless we change the way we approach our work.

It’s not the amount of work that puts us in a state of chaos; it’s the mismanagement of it, the losing control of it. What we need is to learn a better way to manage our work, especially our information flow. We need to work smarter, in a more organized fashion. Not just any organized fashion, but in a way that makes us truly productive and truly creative.

The opposite of being proactive — constantly reacting to circumstances that you do not control — means stress. It means inefficiency. It means perpetually falling behind and feeling as if you’re standing in quicksand. It means chaos.

But that’s not you — not now, not any more. You are learning to get your work under control and eliminate the stress. If you manage your information flow according to the lessons in this program, you will replace the negative stress in your life with positive excitement and constructive energy.

Positive discipline: If you were to go out on the street and randomly ask ten people to give you their immediate reaction to the word ‘discipline’, what do you think the results would be? I’m willing to bet the majority would give you a negative definition. For many, discipline conjures up images of a harsh schoolteacher, a drill sergeant, a perfectionist ballet instructor.

I’m asking you to think differently about discipline. If you think of the ballet instructor, draw the thought out and picture the ultimate results. Discipline is absolutely essential to learning the art of dance. It is essential to competitive sports, music, the martial arts, the practice of medicine, home-building, bread making, clock repair, writing software code, meditation, growing up, and everything that is worth pursuing. Discipline is important in overcoming anxiety and depression and, in a certain way, it is necessary for maintaining a sound and happy marriage.

‘Discipline’ is not a bad word. Discipline should be a positive, creative experience. The only road to achievement is through discipline. The road to spiritual enlightenment, and indeed, the road to freedom — be it physical, mental, or emotional — is through the path of discipline. Discipline challenges us. It calls forth our inner strength.

To be a constructive force, discipline must be aimed positively. We are teaching you to use discipline to manage your workflow. Managing your workflow requires your energy, yet the payback is enormous. In fact, if you really think about it, learning to control your information flow and maintain an organized, systematic working style requires less energy than living in an unmanaged, chaotic state.

Think positively about discipline. Apply your best spirit of discipline to leading an efficient life at work, and the rewards will be unending in your personal and family life as well.

SESSION 1 – INTRODUCTION – ASSIGNMENT

Assignment #1

Before you begin Session Two, ‘The Purge’ please take a minimum of three photographs of your office as follows:

1. Your desk
2. Other office furniture
3. A wider angle shot of your area
Please get every aspect of your office in the photos.

If you are receiving the benefit of our personalized Tele-Coaching, your Coach will be using these photographs to optimize your office layout and create maximum office efficiency for you. Please e-mail the photographs to Team@LivingChaosFree.com. However, if you are not participating in Coaching you can still utilize these photographs to monitor your progress.

Assignment #2

Be sure to read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) in Session One.

Assignment #3

This Session has the most exciting, and yet the hardest, ‘Assignment of them all’.

TAKING THAT FIRST STEP…

REMEMBER, THIS MAY BE DIFFICULT AT TIMES, BUT WE BELIEVE THAT YOU WILL LIKELY HAVE SOME FUN WITH IT. SO TAKE A DEEP BREATH, ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES AND LET’S GET STARTED.