Spaced Out by Clutter? There’s Hope
As anyone can plainly see from the accompanying “before” photo, taken a year ago, I needed a bigger work space.
OK, you’re right. What I actually needed was the ability to throw something--anything--away.
Over the course of several frenetic weeks, I had lost my battle with clutter, creating a towering fortress of books, folders, mail and news clippings--not to mention the trick-or-treat pumpkin that I never managed to take home to my daughter.
Having piled files to precarious heights atop my lone, sagging bookshelf and into mounds on and under a spare chair and at my feet, I had resorted to pulling out overstuffed desk drawers to serve as new repositories for heaps of tidbits. They seemed important enough to keep but not so vital that they cried out to be filed away immediately for future reference. Besides, my few file drawers were already bursting with vertical stacks of story notes in no particular order.
If an earthquake of any significant magnitude had rumbled through the office, I would have been buried in the rubble. Stress was mounting along with the mounds of paperwork that confronted me each morning.
About that time, I overheard an editor say he was looking for a guinea pig to take a desk-organizing seminar and write about the experience. I poked my head above my high-rise jumble to volunteer my services. Sizing up my space, he tsk-tsked and agreed that I was the right clutter maniac for the job.
And that is how I was thrust into the world of “turtle touchdowns,” “clear 180s,” imaginary in-trays and the tenacious (to put it delicately) ways of Len Merson.
Merson, an animated (some might say agitating) motivational speaker and veteran organizer, is the force behind Productivity Concepts Inc., a West Los Angeles company that has taught its Careertech productivity system to more than 31,000 individuals during the last quarter-century. The going rate for one of his all-day seminars is $1,195, which includes three to six on-site sessions with a desk coach for six to 12 months, plus numerous follow-up calls. All the hand-holding is designed to alter longtime habits and patterns and prevent a relapse. Merson agreed to waive the fee for this story.
Just shy of a year after taking the seminar, I can point to a much cleaner desktop, orderly file drawers and a more dependable system of tracking appointments and tasks. But the transition was time-consuming and fraught with backsliding; I am less disciplined about the process than Merson would like. It’s tough becoming a pillar of organization, especially after years of conditioning as a pack rat.
Recent surveys indicate that I am not alone in turning my cramped work quarters into the office equivalent of a grandmother’s attic. The Houston-based International Facility Management Assn. notes that employees have less space to spread out in this era of cost-cutting. And computers, printers, fax machines and other technological gadgets eat up loads of valuable desk space.
As a result, more employers are hiring consultants to help workers change their sloppy ways. Measuring the benefits of such programs is difficult, but many workers swear by the reduction in stress and the improvement in “file retrievability” that can lead to greater efficiency.
Putting the Program to Work
Back to my own transformation, which is probably too strong a word.
After my initial enthusiasm, I resist many of Merson’s suggestions. After all, in an odd way, my disorganization is comfortable. My job, I tell him at a get-acquainted lunch, doesn’t lend itself to organization. Reporters get hit with information overload every day; much of the material that crosses my desk defies categorization. I search for justification, finding it in the words of Harold Geneen, the legendary former chief executive of ITT Corp.: “If your desk isn’t cluttered, you probably aren’t doing your job.”
Merson has heard all these excuses before. Let the program work for you, he urges. It will afford you the “pleasure to forget”--in other words, the pleasure not to have to remember.
On a chilly Thursday morning last February, I head to a hotel meeting room in Redondo Beach.
Along with two dozen other participants--some sullen, some eager--I open the daily planner that all of us receive. I have never before used such a formal system, preferring to keep track of things in my head, on a simple flip-over calendar at work and on Post-its and envelope scraps.
“Throw away all your other calendars,” Merson insists. “This is all you’ll need.” I cringe at the thought of carrying the bulky thing everywhere I go (although it is now a cherished object that I would be lost without).
Merson presents each of us with an imaginary in-tray--a sheet of paper with the image of a plastic bin. Oh, this is so silly, I’m thinking. It is designed to go on a corner of one’s desk, and we are supposed to train our co-workers to treat it like the real thing. Yeah, right.
Merson dislikes traditional plastic bins and other organizational gizmos, preferring that desk-bound professionals maintain a clear work space across the 180 degrees of the desk top--his “clear 180.” (He encourages employees to scatter around a few family photos, but staplers, pens, paper clips and tape dispensers belong in a drawer.) The lingo is getting thick, and I am wishing I were elsewhere.
In the Careertech system, a (preferably small) pile of papers sits behind the employee on a credenza to serve as reminders of tasks that the employee can deal with on his or her own. Each day, the employee should turn the stack upside-down and go through it, tossing or filing any paperwork that has been handled and reordering priorities. Sure, Len, I’m thinking. I’ll just stop the presses while I reorder my priorities.
For his own odd reasons, Merson calls this modified to-do stack a “turtle.”
He offers other tips. He suggests having a “pending” file in a nearby drawer, containing information that can’t be acted on until somebody else gets back to you. Another recommendation: Each time a magazine crosses your desk, turn immediately to the table of contents and clip and file any article that looks interesting. Throw the rest away!
Never, Merson warns, work on more than one task at a time. Keep just one file on the desktop, leaving others out of sight (and thus out of mind) until needed. For those who have offices, he offers another tip for keeping distractions to a minimum: Turn your desk around so that your back is to the door. Many people chuckle at the thought.
As the crowd warms a bit, Merson, who was reared in Philadelphia, acknowledges that his excitable, drill-sergeant style and quirky terminology don’t sit well with all clients. “People from the East Coast enjoy being around someone like me,” he says. “If you’re from the Midwest, you think I’m an obnoxious [jerk].” Let me just say I’m from Indiana and let it go at that.
To satisfy the goals Merson lays out for us--doing our work in less time, with fewer errors, more creativity and less stress--he encourages everyone to first spend a few hours “purging.” About 60% of what’s on a worker’s desk and in file drawers is trash, he maintains. I recall the Everest-esque piles festering on my desk and estimate that the task will require more like three or four days. And I grimace at the thought of filing all those haphazard folders in my drawers. He wants that part done within a week or two.
As the seminar grinds to an end, my heart sinks at the labor ahead.
A week later, Sherman Lew, my genial desk consultant, pays me a call. I have little progress to show. He agrees that I have much to cope with, in an atypical cubicle that does not, for example, provide any desk space behind me for a turtle perch or a reading pile. We agree that I’ll use the top of a small file cabinet to the left of my computer. As for purging and organizing my files, he chirps: “Just do it!” Easy for him to say, I grumble.
By early March, I’ve spent two weekend days and many evening hours clearing my desktop. It feels great, but I doubt my ability to stay disciplined. Lew gives me a Merson-style pep talk: “When it gets really busy, that’s when the system will help the most if you just stick with it.”
Lew acknowledges that I’m a big challenge and offers to make as many follow-up visits as necessary to help me get comfortable. By the time we’re through, he will have made half a dozen.
By June, months behind schedule, I am still stymied by my file drawers. I start logging hours of filing and purging time. I stop counting at 15. But at last the job is done, and I vow to make time to thin out the paperwork on a regular basis. (Ha, ha, ha.) Still to do: File into a Rolodex the hundreds of business cards sitting in my desk drawers. Frustrated, I hire my young nephew to do that job.
I am determined to achieve a “turtle touchdown”--by disposing of every scrap of paper in my turtle pile. At 8:30 p.m. on a Friday in early July, I fax Merson a letter, trumpeting my feat. A few days later, I receive my reward in the mail: a glass turtle paperweight, with (alas) a broken leg.
Lew is right. The system is helping me work more efficiently, and I love the way I feel less jangled when I behold my desk in its clean state. Especially helpful is Lew’s suggestion that I record all phone messages in a spiral notebook. I have many times referred to long-ago messages to find needed phone numbers or recall the timing of stories and tips. And I can pull out any story or subject file at the drop of a hat.
OK, so the skeptic has become a believer--up to a point.
I still procrastinate on sorting through my turtle pile, which often more resembles a humpback whale. Truth be told, during certain intense periods, I tend to have two or three turtles going.
Because I field calls and e-mails all day long relating to any number of subjects, I find it impossible to keep just one task before me. And the reading pile that Lew allows me because of the deluge of books and magazines I receive sometimes gets out of hand.
To quote Paul Nesbitt, a Los Angeles lawyer who attended the seminar with me last February: “I could use a tuneup. Certain habits [notably spreading out] are clearly hard to break.” Nesbitt plans to attend a refresher course in February.
I agree with Nesbitt that the Careertech system has merit. And I know it’s up to me to make it work. Maybe Merson has a point when he says, “The energy and discipline that we employ to maintain the chaos in our life is a harder and harsher discipline than the discipline needed to live in a managed state.”
Sounds good to me. Now, if only Merson could help me tackle those paper piles at the foot of my bed . . .
