10 ms·
There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk
- petepete 10y agoDidn't realise Tim Harford had a website. More or Less is an excellent programme, I listen weekly.
- Toenex 10y agoHis books are good too.
- sotojuan 10y agoInteresting. A messy desk (i.e. anything that doesn't just have my laptop and notebook on it) really bothers me and makes it hard to focus.
- arethuza 10y agoYou wouldn't like my desk (actually 2 desks) at work - I have a pile of stuff that includes, on casual inspection: a Microsoft Surface (half buried), 2 sets of earphones, a fleece hat that has been there since last winter, my wallet, some maps, tattered flip chart pages, notebooks, a good 2" of documents in various stages of decomposition (used for scribbling on rather than reading), half destroyed vendor anti-stress toys, a barcode scanner and stand.... And my actual work monitors, keyboard and mouse on a relatively tidy area.
- rhapsodic 10y agoI've found the easiest stuff to organize is the stuff I no longer have. I used to feel obligated to file a lot of stuff that came in the mail, like addendums to insurance policies, annual reports for stocks or funds, credit card statements, etc. But it dawned on me long ago that I virtually never need to refer back to that stuff. So it goes straight into the trash. When the bookshelves in my office fill up, I cull the books and donate them to Goodwill or sell them to a used bookstore. Old clothes, shoes, etc. are routinely purged from my life. Some people love to acquire new things. I love getting rid of old things that no longer serve a purpose in my life.
- vinay427 10y agoI usually take a photo of documents that there's a small chance I would need in the future. This way, they take up a very small amount of space on my phone but in case I need something again the photo will usually be sufficient and I can search by date to find it.
- thedevil 10y agoI do something similar: put in a pile and about once a month I scan the pile (I bought a printer with a paper-feed just for this), upload it to cloud storage, and date it.
- amelius 10y agoThe only step missing is OCR, so you can search on contents.
- ktta 10y agoIf you're using google drive, it automatically does OCR for you. So you just search for 'statement' and your bank statements show up. I didn't know to be alarmed or happy when I first saw that feature. I'm not sure it's an official feature, but it works for photos which are about a week old.
- Chris2048 10y agoWhat printer do you use? Only prob I have is some places insist on original docs :-/
- douche 10y agoI don't think I have ever thrown away a book. Some day, I hope to have one of those Victorian style libraries with a rolling staircase to house all of my books...
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
- chrisbennet 10y ago“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” - Albert Einstein
- mountaineer22 10y agoCan't upvote it enough (I am sure there are better links): http://assets3.bigthink.com/system/idea_thumbnails/54803/primary/BT_Einstein's_desk_final.jpg?1397064501 http://assets3.bigthink.com/system/idea_thumbnails/54803/pri...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- andars 10y agoA great quote, but another one that wasn't actually Einstein. Appears to be from Laurence Peter (eponym of the Peter Principle). reply
- dasil003 10y agoMakes sense, I don't like to imagine Einstein working at a desk but in front of a blackboard the size of a cinema screen.
- babygoat 10y agoA focused mind.
- kirykl 10y agoA friend of mine described work in the planning dept for major manufacturer. On the shop floor where equipment, parts shelves, tools all belonged were outlined in tape. This would show if something was out of place and keep the floor orderly. However at his desk he was also required to outline everything in tape. His stapler, keyboard, mousepad, laptop, wires running across were all outlined on the desk in tape. They would have desk audits, and any repeated deviation, where an item was outside its outline, would result in HR action.
- BostonEnginerd 10y agoThis sort of thing is typical in manufacturing environments. It's often called 5S -- sort", "set in order", "shine", "standardize", and "sustain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_%28methodology%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_%28methodology%29
- Jtsummers 10y agoAnd 5S is stellar in a production or manufacturing environment. Great in labs, too. It shines when physical products and processes are the primary purpose of an area. It absolutely sucks when it's applied to the physical space of an office (well, overly) where information is the purpose. A digital 5S needs to be developed, the physical one is mostly irrelevant.
- mountaineer22 10y agoUsed as part of the Toyota Production system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System As based on the Japanese principal of kaizen (the original CI): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen and I would also like to mention Deming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
- thedevil 10y agoI wanted to take this opportunity to give a shameless endorsement of Google's Inbox app. I prefer something like what the article called the "piler" strategy. I don't like spending precious time and energy organizing things. But the problem is if I have too many things in front of me, I can't concentrate. My anxiety builds up. My creativity vanishes. The Inbox app lets me reach an optimal balance of order and productivity. It's changed my life. And ever since, I've been proselytizing it. This post thinks that you have to trade off order and productivity, but why not both? It now sounds like a false trade-off to me. (PS Using search rather than categories and folders for email and files also was a big win but I'm not as excited about that now because that was years ago.)
- Shank 10y agoCompletely agree. Low priority gets 90% of my inbox, and I only ever glance at, but rarely open the contents. Sometimes something catches my eye, but the vast majority of the time it doesn't and I just end up archiving it. Search does work wonders, though, and I find myself using that a lot more to find emails, but it's so fast I consider it frictionless.
- GrinningFool 10y agoMissing the eighth or tenth meeting invite because it was auto-filed as an 'update' and never notified me, as well as similar experiences with messages I consider 'important' put an end to Inbox for me. I did first try 'training' it by moving things where they should be, but Inbox never changed what it did.
- dasil003 10y agoYeah this machine learning and personal assistant tech is on the ugly side of the uncanny valley right now. When we have the Star Trek computer then I'll get on board, but right now apps like Inbox flat out create more stress than save time.
- knz 10y agoWhat is the advantage of the Inbox App over just using the archive button and maintaining only a few important emails in the regular inbox? I did briefly try the Inbox app when it first came out but found the automatic sorting meant I occasionally missed important emails. If you use the regular inbox and the archive button you can at least see everything coming in and decide if it is important. I've been aggressive about disabling email from services that offer their own inbox (Facebook, Asana, Github etc) and unsubscribing from automated email lists - that helps limit how much I am archiving.
- Jtsummers 10y agoI've been using the Super Organised Method and didn't know it. Though not with papers (so much). I use it with clothes, books, and digital content like apps on my phone. To most of us, it may seem obvious that piling is dysfunctional while filing is the act of a serious professional. Yet when researchers from the office design company Herman Miller looked at high-performing office workers, they found that they tended to be pilers. They let documents accumulate on their desks, used their physical presence as a reminder to do work, and relied on subtle cues — physical alignment, dog- ears, or a stray Post-it note — to orient themselves. Filing requires cognitive effort. How do I categorise this email (tags, in Gmail, were wonderful for solving this)? How do I file this contact (circles, another good idea)? Metadata is more practical, ultimately, than creating a hierarchical category system that is simultaneously too precise and not precise enough. Simple categories like "work", "home", "school" can work to effectively divide my content. But what happens when work is paying for school? I need a letter from the school to send to HR for reimbursement (that email gets tagged as: reimbursement, school, work, tuition; a search in any of the related folders will find it). Removing the cognitive load of precise classification, using the physical space for physical items or multi-dimensional tag system for digital items, allows you to focus on the work itself and not on the items that make up the work. If you really need a filing system, hire a librarian.
- Rezo 10y agoIn 2011, Whittaker and colleagues published a research paper with the title “Am I Wasting My Time Organizing Email?”. The answer is: yes, you are. People who use the search function find their email more quickly than those who click through carefully constructed systems of folders. I used to organize email into folders meticulously, later using tags and rules. What a complete waste of time. These days I refuse to spend even a second organizing email or reducing my inbox, as I can summon any email even from years ago in a few seconds with fuzzy search terms. Here's another heresy I'm testing that I think may turn out to be true: Spending any effort whatsoever organizing files on your computer is equally worthless.
- mountaineer22 10y agoAgreed. This is where the real-world analogy of cabinets and file-folders breaks down. Yet we attempt to emulate it. Some people are horrified or judged based on a user's refusal to use filters and folders, carefully organizing content, and having an empty inbox.
- AndrewUnmuted 10y agoEh. One day I wanted to practice my BASH foo and wrote some scripts to rsync my files into neat dirs in my /home. 25 minutes later, I never had a file management or organization problem again. Email would be considerably harder to organize in this fashion unless you run your own mailserver.
- tdb7893 10y agoWhat works for me on my computer is put things into general buckets of downloads, things I don't care about, things I need to keep, and programming projects. This really basic organization allows me to be able to delete lots of files without worry while taking almost no time to organize. With search finding things is easy but deleting everything you don't need can still be hard.
- putterson 10y agoI found it striking how similar the system that I have settled into is to yours, and also the similarity of the benefits that you ascribed to it. I love having my /home/name/tmp folder and being able to delete everything in it without worry when I find it becoming a bit crowded. I find that it takes care of most things I don't need but there are a lot of small projects and downloaded libraries that sit in my programming projects directory that are more difficult to delete. All in all I find the organization very relaxing and passive. Roughly the buckets I have are: - Downloads - Documents - workspace (programming projects) - tmp
- henrik_w 10y agoThis post is derived from his latest book, Messy. I haven't read it, but it looks interesting. The other day there was another article also based on the book that I thought was good (on problems with automation): Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how...
- DannyB2 10y agoSome people who have what appears to be a disorganized mess, always know EXACTLY where any particular item is when it is wanted.
- mountaineer22 10y agoI wonder if some people think in 3 dimensions versus taxonomically? Combining for memory palace?
- s_kilk 10y agoI'm probably like this. For example, my CD/Vinyl/DVD/Book collections have never been alphabetized nor categorized, but I can find anything I want very quickly, because I seem to think spatially about the layout of the collection. For some reason, I know instinctively that my copy of "In the Nightside Eclipse" will be on the upper left shelf while the Miles Davis records will be on the second-last shelf.
- mountaineer22 10y agoI've worked with quite a few older successful CEOs of varying industries, and a majority have and use a Neat desktop scanner: http://amzn.to/2epDLEr http://amzn.to/2epDLEr One of the CEOs had his malfunction, and re-appropriated his son's a day later. The image recognition and organization are decent, but I can see how relying on it, and having it fail, can be very disruptive to one's process. File cabinets and file folders don't seem to suffer from such things.
- anc84 10y agoUnobfuscated link: https://www.amazon.com/Neat-Company-NeatDesk-Desktop-2005410/dp/B01A0FQ8Q4/ https://www.amazon.com/Neat-Company-NeatDesk-Desktop-2005410...
- Pica_soO 10y agoRecombination in the midst of mess, something the neurotic order makers and perfecter s cant see. Your brand new concepts, was born in a bloody mess, imperfected and shivering. And it was born by a different mindset, and will be again. There are things you cant see, you cant become, you cant create, limits, that you can not overcome, because they make you so great in all the other situations. No, side is more worth than the others, though the cooperate bureaucrats would be of another opinion, because you cant see, what has yet to be. You cant differentiate against what chaos will give birth too. Enjoy your day.
- makecheck 10y agoA mess in a fixed area can serve as a reminder of your mental limit. When your space is “full”, use the opportunity to take care of something and clean it up again (don’t buy more shelves or more boxes, for example). And ideally, entirely get rid of things you are not using. It’s the same with computers: you don’t want to let yourself do the digital equivalent of buying more shelves or boxes (don’t let yourself easily create even more new desktops or folders, to store an ever-increasing list of tasks); let your screen fill up with things to do and then use that pressure to take some of those items off your list.
- krylon 10y agoAt my last job, I shared an office with my supervisor, and his desk was messy. I mean, my desks tend to accumulate a Cambrian layer over time, but this guy had two desks to himself, both were covered more than a foot deep in paper. I am not exaggerating. One day, I carefully asked him if I could help him clean up some space. I was kind of nervous, because - while otherwise the best boss I ever had - he was not very good at taking what he perceived as criticism. To my surprise, though, he broke into a mischievous grin and said, "If I start to clean up here, it will take no more than five minutes for my boss to come in here and ask me if I have nothing better to do." His boss was kind of a neat freak when it came to his own desk, but he was indeed the kind of boss who, when he saw you cleaning up your desk, would ask you if had nothing better to do. (Which suited me fine, to be honest, my current boss is more the "You should clean up your desk"-kind of guy...) TL;DR - a messy desk can be fine, so long as it does not control you. I have seen people whose desks looked messy, but when asked for a specific item, they could reach for it without hesitation. Once you spend more time searching for things than you save by not keeping it in order, you have a problem.
- vvanders 10y agoI feel like there's some parallel lurking here with software development. I've never seen a production codebase that doesn't have it's own share of clutter, mismash and rough edges similar to a disorganized desk. Moving business requirements, obscure edge cases, performance concerns all seem to creep into an "orderly" codebase. I don't think this applies to all software, things with a very long release/feedback cycle(aerospace, medical, etc) necessitate planning and careful deliberation but there's certainly a tension between order and shipping code.
- mmazing 10y agoI had no idea that I would see this parallel as well when I started reading this article. I'm in a similar situation at my current job, we've got a few guys that want to go really crazy with OOP concepts (design patterns, going overboard with new technologies) from the first sign of a new issue/feature. It really causes a lot of problems though, when your business requirements change (or you encounter an edge case) and you need to redesign the entire codebase to account for it. They are literally grinding everything to a halt with this stuff, and I think their issues arise from a need to categorize everything in the codebase prematurely, before the solution has "evolved". Thoughts?
- vvanders 10y agoYeah, that's a tough one since you're dealing with a culture issue and not a technical problem. The only thing I've seen effective is prototyping a feature 2x and then taking the 2nd/3rd iteration. Finding time for that in a normal schedule is pretty hard though. Another approach if you have the option is to build the feature as rapidly as possible(within reason here obviously) and deliver it out of band. It doesn't win you an immediate friends(and may even burn a few bridges) however if you can pull it off 2-3x then you can build a reputation of getting things done. This has the potential to backfire pretty significantly though if you can't get the rest of the dev team onboard so I would be very careful about employing it.
- mmazing 10y ago
- quirkot 10y agoI want to print this out. Draw a giant middle finger on it. Then post it on the entry to my cube. So friggin badly. Take that you neatniks.
- krylon 10y agoYou and me both!
- initram 10y agoI've got a hybrid method that works pretty well for me. May not be for everyone. I have: L1 cache - stuff on my desk that needs to be paid or read in the next 30 days. L2 cache - Bills that have been paid and docs that have been read, but things that might need to be referenced in the next year - in a banker's box next to my desk, completely unfiled. Just drop them in when paid/read. RAM - At the end of the year, file the stuff in the banker's box into a small set of folders in a file cabinet or drawer. Disk - At the end of the year, move last year's files into a banker's box and put it in the basement/garage/storage. Also at the end of the year, take the box that's 7 years old to the professional shredder's place and destroy it. I do have email folders for mailing lists. I find that if I don't, then searching brings up too many hits, and if I can narrow the search to a particular list, that will reduce the number of false positives. I have a rule per mailing list, so it's very easy to maintain.