It's Not Your Fault!

Organizing doesn’t come naturally to everyone and it’s OK if organizing doesn’t come naturally to you. I'm convinced this is a skill that is genetic in origin. In my family, three generations all alphabetize our spices and label stuff for fun. (I know, it's an illness, but at least we can laugh about it!)

If you weren't blessed (or cursed) with this skill at birth, don't despair. You probably have skills and abilities of which your organizer might be envious. I work with a lot of creative people/artists and would give my right arm for the ability to do half the things that come naturally to them! Getting organized can be learned with the help of a good professional, and getting help from a professional is the smart thing to do.

Here are some of the many reasons most of us are feeling swamped and out-of-control:

• A weekly edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime during the 17th Century England.

Saul Wurman, “Information Anxiety"

• Your four-drawer file cabinet, when full, holds 18,000 pages.

Jay Davidson, Office Systems magazine, March 1995

• It takes a person 20-30 minutes to transition into deep, critical and creative thought. The average American worker is interrupted 8 times an hour. Not only do they struggle to get into their creative zone, they lose productivity because they are repeating steps to retrace where they left off.

Jim Miller, GM, Extended Workplace Solutions for U.S. West

• Americans are working 164 more hours per year than 20 years ago.

The Overworked American

• The document for a Boeing 747 weighs more than the plane itself.

Jay Davidson, Office Systems Magazine, March 1995

• We wear 20 per cent of the clothes we own 80 per cent of the time. The rest hangs there, just in case.

Karen Gram, Calgary Herald (Alberta, Canada), 1/18/04

• 85% of the information that businesses need to operate ... exists in a wide range of unstructured content such as email, graphics or video. ...employees spend roughly 25% to 35% of their time looking for the information they need to do their jobs.

Document Magazine, October 2003

• Irked by the piles of catalogs clogging their mailbox and cluttering their room, Richard and Toni Goldsmith ...saved and sorted every catalog their received in 2000. The results were astonishing: 37 companies sent more than 1800 catalogs to the Goldsmiths' home in a single year. ... they weighed in at 494 pounds.

Christopher Anderson, San Antonio Express News

An organizer can give you the tools you need to conquer the clutter of paper, information, things and activities that you are bombarded with every day.