This ‘n’ That
Nicky De Lange
Really organized people, I’ve always heard, are list makers.
If they’re going shopping, they make a careful list of all the items they want to purchase. For a trip to the grocery store, they will write down every single thing they need, carefully divided into categories (produce, pet foods, dairy products, etc), which are then listed under those headings in the order in which they are located in the store.
People like me, on the other hand, will forget items, put most stuff under “miscellaneous” and then lose the list somewhere around aisle nine.
Really organized people also make lists of things they need to get done. These “to do” lists are numbered in order of importance, or sometimes in the order in which they can be accomplished most efficiently. And these organized people take great pleasure in crossing off each item on the list. Did I mention this will also be done promptly?
People like me jot down things that need to be done on scraps of paper, which then get lost and eventually forgotten – until it’s too late. This explains over-due library books, late payments on bills and missed appointments.
After a lifetime of being an unorganized person, I’ve long suspected that individuals are born organized or disorganized. It’s part of our hard-wiring. Organized folks seem to be that way from birth. As children, they never lose a Lincoln Log, marble or backpack.
Those of us born disorganized, on the other hand, spend our lives from childhood onward frantically trying to find permission slips, jackets, lunch money and, later on, purses or wallets, key rings, checkbooks – well, the list is endless.
Naturally, in this era of self-help books on virtually every subject, there are tons of books out there on “how to get organized”. I know – I own most of them.
They really don’t seem to help. The authors are people who were always organized. Their biggest thrill is finding some new way to improve on that. Their minds don’t work the way ours do. We – the totally unfocused, easily distracted people – have what I like to think of as Organizational ADHD.
We start out to bring order into our chaotic lives with the best of intentions. Today, we decide, is the day to clear off our desks. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, a fact we will quickly discover.
We clear a few easy things off our desks – pens, pencils, sticky notes. We’re on a roll!
That’s when we discover that item that has been sitting there for weeks or months because we just can’t decide whether or not to keep it.
This is usually something like a phone number (but we have no idea whose it is or if we need it) or a key (to what door or drawer we have no clue). Throw it or keep it?
And that’s how easily we get derailed from our attempt to organize things. Overwhelmed by these big decisions, we opt to leave things just as they are.
If this describes you, take comfort in a sign I saw years ago. It always cheers me up when I think of it. This is what it said: “A clean desk is a sign of a disturbed mind.”
I rest my case.
