What it Costs to Be Disorganized

• A planned call takes 7 minutes, unplanned takes 12 minutes.

 

• 23% of adults say they pay bills late (& thus incur fees) because they lose them.

Harris Interactive

• The average American burns 55 minutes a day looking for things they know they own but can't find. That's 12 weeks a year.

Newsweek, 6/7/04

• Clutter adds 40 per cent to the housework in an average home.

Shelley Page, Ottawa Citizen, 1/04/03

• The average U.S. executive wastes six weeks annually searching for important documents lost in clutter ...for an employee who earns $60,000, that time lost costs the company a staggering $6,290.

Wall Street Journal

• It costs $120 in labor to track down a misplaced document or $250 in labor to recreate it.

North Carolina's Brunswick Beacon, 10/1994

• IKEA did a survey of customers in which 31% reported they were more satisfied after clearing out their closets than they were after sex.

New York Times, 3/01

• Knowledge workers spend 50% of their time searching for information, leaving only the remaining 50% to actually use what they have found.

Reuters Study

• Of the total 8 hours wasted per week in paper document management, we spend 1 hour finding documents, 1 hour with difficulty in sharing documents, 1 hour in distribution/storage and .5 hours in archiving and retrieval.

Imagetag's website, 2003

• Realtors regard clutter as a `first impression' turn-off for prospective buyers for your home.

 

• 50 percent of homeowners rate the garage as the most disorganized place in the house and a place the entire family uses regularly.

 

• Some executives will pick up a single piece of paper from their desk thirty or forty times before acting on it.

Michael Woolery, "Seize the Day"

• The average desk worker has 36 hours of work on his or her desk.

Richard Swenson, "The Overload Syndrome"

• The average desk worker spends 3 hours per week sorting piles trying to find the project to work on next.

Richard Swenson, "The Overload Syndrome"

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state unequivocally that 80% of our medical expenditures are now stress related.

Fast Company Magazine, 2/03, pg. 88

• White collar workers waste an average of 40% of their workday. Not because they aren't smart, but because they were never taught organizing skills to cope with the increasing workloads and demands.

Wall Street Journal