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There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

timharford.com

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Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#21

Post by mountaineer22 »

Rezo wrote: post #14

In 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 spe…

Agreed. 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.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#22

Post by mountaineer22 »

I'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

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.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#23

Post by Shank »

thedevil wrote: post #10

I 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 product…

Completely 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.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#24

Post by GrinningFool »

thedevil wrote: post #10

I 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 product…

Missing 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.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#25

Post by mountaineer22 »

chrisbennet wrote: post #7

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” - Albert Einstein

Can't upvote it enough (I am sure there are better links):

http://assets3.bigthink.com/system/idea_thumbnails/54803/pri...

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#26

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

Rezo wrote: post #14

In 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 spe…

Eh. 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.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#27

Post by tdb7893 »

Rezo wrote: post #14

In 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 spe…

What 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.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#28

Post by pavel_lishin »

Jtsummers wrote: post #19
pavel_lishin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that as "spiral staircase", and now I want to figure out how to build a Archimedes-screw-like rotating spiral staircase that also doubles as a bookshelf.

That could be absolutely gorgeous. A couple options that pop into my head. A column in the center which contains a number of shelves, and so the books. But also, you could have the books stored in the steps themselves. The space under the steps is hollow, so turn that into shelves. The height of the books would be an issue, but paperbacks would do well, I think.

One problem with storing books in the column is that as the staircase rotates, it might hit any books that are jutting out.

Although, I guess it doesn't have to rotate, I don't know why I wanted it to rotate.

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#29

Post by anc84 »

mountaineer22 wrote: post #22

I'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 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 s…

Unobfuscated link: https://www.amazon.com/Neat-Company-NeatDesk-Desktop-2005410...

Re: There’s magic in mess: Why you should embrace a disorderly desk

#30

Post by mountaineer22 »

BostonEnginerd wrote: post #9
kirykl wrote: post #8

A 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…

This 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

Used as part of the 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

and I would also like to mention Deming:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

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