The Slob Reforms
by George Halitzka

In the depths of Mom's photo boxes, there's a picture of her firstborn son standing up to his ankles in garbage. Regrettably, I'm not visiting in the county landfill ... it's my college dorm room. Dirty clothes and unfinished homework had made my carpet disappear under the rubble.

I was an organizational basket case in college. Worse yet, the chaos wasn't limited to my room: I also made a mess of time, distinguishing myself as the Heavyweight Champion of All-Nighters. Just before a paper was due, I would camp out at the campus radio station where I worked and write till 3 in the morning. Then I'd find an uncomfortable spot on the floor for a nap, and ask the guy working graveyard to wake me in two hours.

With that system, it really stunk when papers were due two days in a row.

But even after that disaster, I was sure that getting organized was not in my genes. Daytimers were a tool of the devil designed to shackle freewheeling artists to The Man's arbitrary standards. God just made me the messy type.

Organizational Reform School

Maybe your chaos has never been as bad as mine, but you can relate. You're living in a state of barely-controlled insanity and it's taking a toll.

The good news is that organization's a learned skill. Steady effort will lead to improvement, even for born packrats! You just need wise habits in your life.

Of course, you may not want to take advice from a guy whose dorm was a sanitary landfill. So consider how thoroughly I've reformed since college. Here are some of the current features of my office¹:

• I keep my calendar and task list constantly up to date, because I rely on them every day. (If they contain a mistake, I'm dead meat with one of my clients.)
• Speaking of piles, I have none on my office floor. Papers are in the filing cabinet in labeled folders, and all my "stuff" is in drawers or storage boxes.

You, too, can clean up your act! Even if you don't go to the anal-retentive lengths that I have (and for anyone who's wondering, I neither color-code socks nor iron underwear), small steps can bring you a more functional life.

Why Organize?

As you contemplate your potential as a neat freak, the biggest obstacle may be time. I understand. Remember, I'm the guy who couldn't find an hour to tidy my trash heap.

Yet after college, I discovered a remarkable thing: I could be more productive by spending 15 minutes with my daytimer than an hour rooting around for missing work schedules. Since I made organization a daily habit, it's saved tons of frustration and hours of life.

² In any line of work, cool ideas are useless without the ability to execute them. So whether you're a writer or a cable guy, good organization will benefit your career.

There are even spiritual reasons to get your life together. Think about my missed group final in college. If I'd spent a few minutes a day keeping a calendar, I would've kept my commitment to the people counting on me. Instead, I decided my time was too precious to be responsible.

Oops. From what I hear, God's into the "putting-others-before-yourself" thing.

Procrastination and Perfectionism

liveDon't procrastinate.

Checking Facebook will always be easier than putting your project deadlines on the calendar. But you'll do the deadline stuff later, right?

Wrong. We both know that "later" only arrives when you're frantically searching your piling system for the memo you forgot three weeks ago. Think about it: you can have a 2-minute distraction now, or a 30-minute stressfest later.

It's also important to clean up your messes as you make them. When you finish a big project, don't leave file folders in piles on the floor for a week! Your Mama was right, the job isn't over until the cleanup's done.

Uh, news flash: Jesus died because you're a screwup. So when you neglect your filing for a few days (or months), consider it your initiation into the human race. If you forgot to pay a bill, take care of it immediately and move on. Your organizational system isn't destroyed for life!

Don't let procrastination knock you down. But when it does, get over the perfectionism fast. Otherwise, your best-laid plans of mice and men are finished.

Give Things a Home

College was the first time I had to carry my keys and wallet. (Before that, Mommy was at home to bail me out.) I was terrified of losing them in the scary city of Chicago. So in spite of all my other disorganization, I started living one important principle: Always give things a home.

Every night, the keys and wallet went on top of my dresser. Every morning before I left the dorm, I shoved them in my pockets. Result: I didn't have to look for them in five different places and have a panic attack when they went AWOL. If you program your brain to put important things in a certain place, you'll have a much harder time forgetting them.

I realized after college that finding things a home applies to paperwork, too. Try designating places for items that are Unprocessed, In Progress, and Filed for Reference.

Unprocessed. Sometimes, you won't be able to handle an e-mail or a bill as soon as it hits your desk. (Maybe you're in the middle of Roller Coaster Tycoon.) So organizational guru David Allen says it's important to have an "Unprocessed" bin³right now. On your computer, these are the e-mails in your Inbox that need replies. On your desk, this is a folder for bills and memos and whatever else people inflict on you.

daily (or if your life isn't paper-intensive, weekly). All of its contents should end up in one of four places:

1. Your recycling bin (or other form of circular file). If it's junk, dump it now.
2. Your daytimer.⁴
3. Your "In Progress" files.and a physical folder in your file rack.) Then when you sit down to tackle the brochure design, you know just where to find everything.
4. Your "Filed for Reference" section.

You'll be amazed how much less paper and e-mail will pile up if you deal with things daily. My experience says that most paperwork takes five minutes or less before you can banish it forever.

In Progress. While I was in high school, I worked in a hospital's Medical Records department. As charts for recently-discharged patients arrived, they found an easily-accessible spot in our Temp filing room. When some guy's tardy lab results came in, we could easily locate his chart and stuff in the paper. Once his folder was complete, we'd move it to the much larger Perm Files, where it would gather dust with 20,000 of its closest friends.

Here's how the same system can work for you: After a quick stop in the "Unprocessed" folder, things that need more attention should go into your Temp files, where they're easy to find. Let's call those folders the "In Progress" section.

You may have a file called "Bills to be Paid" on your desk, and one named "E-mails Needing Lengthy Replies" on your computer. These folders are permanent, but the stuff inside them is not: it's called "In Progress" for a reason! Older things belong in your filing cabinet.

You'll also have folders that are "In Progress" only temporarily. Every time you begin a substantial project, make a file for it. Toss everything relating to your sales proposal for WidgetCorp into one folder. Once WidgetCorp has become your client, move their records to the "Filed for Reference" area. You can pull it out again when it's time to renew WidgetCorp's contract. But in the mean time, you've cleared the "In Progress" section for new clients. Your life is easier when you can see at a glance what's going on now.

The "In Progress" section may not need folders if you're organizing at home. Perhaps you'll stick some papers on the fridge and put your bills in a countertop rack. The important points are that (1) you give things a home, (2) you deal with them regularly, and (3) the old stuff migrates to cold storage. Otherwise, your mess will come back with reinforcements.

Filed for Reference.

Either way, make sure everything goes in labeled folders (which are arranged in order, of course). Never give into the sinful temptation of stacking loose papers in file drawers.

Organizing Time

It doesn't matter what tool you use. You can hang a cute-kitten calendar on your wall or buy a genuine-leather daytimer. Learn to use Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar. Just pick somethingthat will help you keep track of those elusive commitments! (You wouldn't want to forget a final exam, would you?)

Boundless article." For that birthday party, a simple note on your calendar will do. For big projects, the daytimer entry is a placeholder. It reminds you of the project, but you'll have more details filed elsewhere. So as I start a new article, it gets a folder in my "In Progress" file rack. Meanwhile, I type the deadline into Microsoft Outlook.

You can organize your time however you want. Some people with simple schedules use a calendar on the wall and nothing else. But if you have lots to keep track of, I recommend a system with three sections: a calendar, a task list, and contacts.

Calendar.

Tasks.

Contacts. As a freelancer, I spend a lot

Don't Be a Slave to the System

Any counselor worth their salt will tell you to set goals that are "reasonable, flexible, and self-supportive." So when you're putting things in your daytimer, give yourself some grace. It's notreasonable to think you'll never make a mess again. It isn't flexible when you won't let yourself postpone a task until tomorrow. It's not self-supportive to beat yourself up when you couldn't manage 318 phone calls in eight hours.

Personally, when I realize that I've become a slave to my system, I know it's time to step back and re-evaluate. Answering e-mails isn't nearly so important as cuddling with my wife.

To temper my control-freakishness, I have a personal mission statement posted on the wall above my printer. It reminds me that meetings and networking and writing are only means to an end:

Ultimately, my whole life is a story about grace, and I want to help other people find the plotline God wrote for them. Organization only works when it helps me do that.

live by them. Remember to keep the big picture in mind, and design the details so they'll work for you.

or your mess. Make organization a tool to accomplish what God created you to do.

* * *

1. Because I can't cover everything about organization in 3,000 words or less, I'm focusing onpaperwork and time.
2. Ahem ... I did submit this organizational masterpiece a few days after deadline. Do as I say, not as I do?
3. In his book Getting Things Done, Allen calls it an "inbox," but because most people associate that word with e-mail, I'll use the term "Unprocessed."

writingbygeorge.com. For further reading, George recommends two of the books that have shaped his ideas on organization: Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and David Allen's Getting Things Done.

Copyright 2009 George Halitzka. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. The complete text of this article is available at http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0002041.cfm