Organizing Creative Professionals: Sorted

Freeing up time

One of the great reasons for getting organized is to save time: time spent looking for stuff, time spent trying to remember exactly which stack of papers that thing is in, time spent opening electronic files to see if that's the particular one you did that cool thing in.

But it goes beyond that. The more organized you are, the fewer duplicates of things you have. That means that you've had to spend less time creating stuff again because you can't find the original, and less time shopping for and buying replacements for items you can't find, or have overfilled.

If you really want a shocker, I've got a couple of statistics on hand here: 

• In "The Overload Syndrome," Dr. Richard Swenson reports that the average desk worker spends 3 hours a week sorting through piles of paper on his or her desk to determine which project needs to be worked on next.
• According to a study conducted by a Boston marketing firm, the average American burns 55 minutes a day—roughly 12 weeks a year—looking for things they know they own but can't find.

And, you know, that's not exactly time well spent. That's time spent in a stressful state, feeling anxious and maybe getting mad at yourself, and you don't always have a great result, either. By getting a system together and keeping it together, you not only save time, you save yourself from spending time in a rather unpleasant way. That's a pretty big component of freedom, I think.

What about you? Do either of those statistics speak to you? What's the longest you've ever spent looking for something? Let me know in the comments!

Freeing up mental space

One of the most common phrases people with a passel of piles on their desk use to justify said piling system is: "I know where everything is." To me, that actually kinda makes it worse, because that's a hell of a lot of information to be carrying around in your head.

I'll tell you right now: I don't know where everything is in my desk. But I've designed it so I don't have to. I have a simple system for my file cabinet drawers (personal on the left, business on the right) and a printed file index for each drawer. Furthermore, I can check the iPEP to do a quick search for a file location or a bit of info.

I'm not saying that to sound all superior and mega-organized. I want to point out how having a system means I don't have to keep everything in my head. I don't have to know that the paperwork for my student loan is in the third pile on the left from the door, or remember that the red post-it flags sticking out from the side of a particular stack mean that there's a form in there I need to sign and mail in.

I can just stick papers in a hanging file, make a note in the iPEP that they're in that file, and keep on trucking. I'm not being superior at all here; I'm being lazy and saving myself a ton of work.

My client Gail has told me repeatedly about how free she feels, just knowing that there's a system to her files, and that she doesn't have to remember where she put things. She knows just where to look, and there's a handy file index with keywords in case she needs a little prompting. She's cleared out some mental space, and it feels great to her.

As a creative person, your mind is full of enough stuff as it is, and in general, it's very cool stuff. Why weigh down the ideas and inspiration in that noggin of yours with "Oh, and don't forget: next week's bills are tucked under the Pantone chip fan"?

What filing system are you carrying around in your head? Let me know in the comments!

Freeing up electronic space

While physical clutter impinges on your freedom in rather obvious ways (from "can't find a place to set this down" to "can't find a path to the door!"), electronic clutter is sneakier in its destruction. Physical clutter gets in the way of your functioning, while its electronic cousin gets in the way of your functioning and your computer's functioning.

You're familiar with the frustration when you can't find what you need, or it isn't where you thought it was. Or you've changed a file title so many times that you can't tell one version from another. Or just looking at your hard drive's directory folder makes you want to shut the whole thing down for the day.

When you get organized, you develop systems (for folder arranging and file naming, say) and tools (like Google Desktop for finding specific things in documents) to help you make sense of all your electronic files. You streamline your hard drive, eliminate duplicates, back up your files regularly and archive what you don't need onto external storage. That frees up lots of electronic space, which can have some unexpected benefits.

Just like you tend to spread out physical stuff as you work, your computer's processor "spreads out" into your hard drive space as it works on stuff. In general, if your hard drive has less than half of its total capacity available as free space, your computer is probably not working at its optimal efficiency. To keep your processor working fast, it helps to have as much free space on your hard drive as possible.

I can't dictate exactly what to keep, what to archive and what to trash on your computer in just one blog post. (I can come up with a plan for that with you if we work together.) But I'd like to encourage you to start looking through your hard drive and seeing what improvements you could make.

Have any of you thought about getting your hard drive sorted out? What have you done, and how has it worked? Let me know in the comments!

Freeing up physical space

Last week, I listed the five types of freedom you can get by getting Sorted, and the first one on the list was freeing up physical space. Now, I know that seems pretty obvious, but sometimes there's a lot to be said for not just stating the obvious, but elaborating on it. So let's talk a bit about what it means to free up some physical space in your office.

Some offices have this type of clutter: papers everywhere, spilling out of file cabinets and onto the floor.

Some offices have this type of clutter: technology crammed into every corner, a little techno-cave of activity.

Most offices have a combination of both.

In all these photos, you can clearly see that there's not much space available. But what does that mean in terms of what you're sacrificing?

1. You need space to work. I have yet to meet someone who can work completely on a screen or in their head. Just about everyone tends to make notes, sketches, etc., even as they're working electronically, and creative folks are no exception to that. Just freeing up a one-foot-by-two-feet space next to your computer can give you a dedicated spot for your notes, which can help you do much better work.

2. You need space to move around in. Unless you can teleport into your chair, you need a way to get from the door of your office to your desk. You'll also likely need a way to get from the desk to the filing cabinet, and from the desk to the printer, and to get behind the printer when something goes wrong and you need to turn it off for a while. And ideally, you need a way to do all of that without barking your shin on a file drawer.

3. You need to find stuff. In the super-techno office above, how many of those drawers do you think can actually be opened without hitting the chair, a table leg or another drawer? If you can't get at your stuff, it might as well be on another planet.

4. You need to stay alive and safe. If you have lots of paper clutter and computer-related physical clutter, I have two words for you: fire hazard. If you don't get Sorted, at least look into getting insurance.

5. You need to be able to breathe. Well, by "you" here, I mean "me." I get a little claustrophobic when I contemplate some of these spaces.

Am I the only one whose heart rate starts to race at the sight of these offices, and not in a good way? What are your thoughts on the value of freeing up physical space? Let me know in the comments!

The 5 types of freedom getting Sorted can give you

As we've discussed, "freedom" and "organization" may seem to be opposing concepts. But not only can they go hand in hand, getting organized can deliver many different types of freedom. Check out this list and see if any—or all—of these don't strike you as more rewarding than "the freedom to just put stuff anywhere."

5. Freeing up physical space Having room to walk around your workspace—to work in your workspace, even—can be a revelation for someone whose space has gotten out of control.

4. Freeing up electronic space Is your hard drive getting a little crowded? How about your email Inbox? What kind of system resources are being used to store unnecessary bytes?

3. Freeing up financial resources If you're using offsite physical storage or purchasing external hard drives rather than getting organized, is that really the best use of your funds?

2. Freeing up time Whenever you have to look for stuff, not only does it take time to find it, you have to interrupt your flow state, then try to get back into it. A 20-minute search could wind up costing you an hour of creative time.

1. Freeing up mental space All of the things I've listed above take a toll on your peace of mind as well as your space, time, etc. If you're trying to remember where you put something all the time, that's taking up vital energy and effort.

My client Gail discovered the rewards of freeing up mental space when we cleaned out her late husband's old office and remade it into a space she could use as her own home office. As she told me, "I have never been this organized nor have I felt the sense of freedom that comes with knowing that I will no longer have to spend hours searching for essential papers."

I could even see the change in her attitude as the office changed from the room on the left to the room on the right. When we started, she didn't want to go into the room at all; the sheer volume of papers was intimidating, and she had no idea where to start. But as we progressed, a weight seemed to lift from her, as she reclaimed this space as her own. She was definitely feeling more free.

What about you? Have you experienced other kinds of freedom when you got organized? Let me know in the comments! g968bri3yf

Freedom and organization: does it have to be either/or?

Like I said last week, you don't see a lot of cultural overlap between the concepts of "organization" and "freedom," especially among creatives. When you think of "free spirit," you very rarely visualize a numbered filing system. (Hell, even I don't, and I have a numbered filing system.)

Where does the disconnect between freedom and organization begin? Honestly, I think a lot of creative folks have some blocks about organization that carry the faint echoes of their parents' voices griping about the state of their room.

You are no longer the one on the left.

I've known quite a few creative people who hated their chaotic workspaces but resisted the idea of getting organized, and when I asked them where that resistance came from, the usual answer was "I always hated being told to clean up my room."

Ah, the classic move of the disenfranchised teenager. I don't say that with a sneer, by the way; I still remember that feeling of having no say in my life whatsoever. A lot of times, when a parent pushes for an organized space, a young adult will try to claim some small power in the situation by letting his or her room get completely messy and disorganized.

And that makes a sort of sense, when it's not your name on the deed to the house, and you have control over so little, and you need to have some kind of space that's your own. But here's the thing: you're not a teenager anymore. You've signed housing documents, you have not only your own living space but your own working space, and you do have complete control over that working space.

Retaining the "you can't make me clean it" mentality now that you're an adult might feel freeing, but the chaos, and the lost time, lost money and lost opportunities that accompany it, are anything but. When you were younger, you were sticking it to The Man. Now, you're only sticking it to yourself.

What kinds of freedom could you gain by embracing some order in your workspace? Well, I'm glad you asked. Because we'll spend the rest of this month talking about them! ;-)

What about you and your experiences as a teenager vs. now? Did you rebel by keeping it messy -- or by keeping it neat? Let me know in the comments!

Land of the free, home of the Sorted

Yes! It's another month with a theme. This month's theme is "freedom," which is no surprise considering the weekend holiday, but it might seem a little bit counterintuitive considering that freedom isn't often associated with organization. For a lot of folks, the notion of being free, especially of being a "free spirit," as creatives are often described, is totally anathema to being organized.

But that's a real shame, because honestly, one of the great benefits of organization is that it creates freedom, on a whole lot of levels. Getting Sorted means freeing up space, time, megabytes, resources and mental energy. We'll be exploring all of those aspects this month, as well as looking into the perceived disconnect between organization and freedom. And I'll have some cool before/after shots to show!

So everyone have a safe, fun Fourth of July weekend; I'll see you on Monday.