DISORGANIZED?
Author: Carolyn Koenig
February 2008
Features
Who you gonna call?
Get organized” is a popular New Year’s resolution appearing on the list somewhere after “Start a diet” and “Go to the gym.” And there’s a good reason for the need: Our professional and personal lives—however glorious—have become more hectic and time-pressed than ever. Getting organized gives us both the tools we need on hand and a workable retrieval system to find the information we need quickly and easily. In short, being organized gives us a sense of control and allows us to focus; it also gives us, at least in small measure, the leisure of time.
Make no mistake, however, “organization is a process, not a destination,” says Angela Wallace, CPO of Wallace Associates in Novato, Calif. “You never arrive at ‘organized,’ you always have to keep it up. But a good system is easy to maintain.”
So where do you start in the journey? Self-help books like Organizing Your Office in No Time by Monica Ricci are useful. So are websites like getorganizednow.com. But if you’re like some of us, inspiration isn’t enough. We need real nuts-and-bolts help that’s particular to our situation and our personalities. That’s when it’s time to call in an expert, someone who can narrow down the one-size-fits-all advice to fit our needs. And that someone is a professional organizer.
How do you find a reliable organizer to help you achieve your goals? The same way you find the right venue for your meeting—by researching and by asking questions. A good place to start is the National Association of Professional Organizers (napo.net), which has 29 chapters representing thousands of certified professional organizers nationwide. The site also has useful information to conduct your search, including the questions you should ask to find a good match (such as, what is your experience, your training, your approach—hands on, consulting, etc.—and your typical client).
Check out the organizer’s personal website and then have a conversation. The organizer will have some questions for you, too, Wallace says, like “What issues are most important to you right now? What’s causing the most pain? Why did you call for help?”
“Don’t start out by asking ‘What do you charge?’” advises Standolyn Robertson, CPO, principal of Things in Place Organizing Services in Waltham, Mass. and president of NAPO. Those who are newer in the business may charge less, but more experienced organizers may get the job done quicker, she says.
Rates can vary anywhere from, say, $40 an hour to $150 an hour and up. Some professionals will also determine their fee by the project; others by the value of the end result. As an example, Wallace was hired by a healthcare company to reorganize their billing system; by doing so, she saved them $80,000 a year. While her fee, based on value, took a chunk out of the first year, the company saved the entire $80,000 the next (this is a satisfaction-guaranteed type of project, she notes). You can always start with a small project first and see how that works before moving to a larger one, Wallace advises.
IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU
Once you’ve contracted with an organizer, the process does become all about you. The organizer wants to get to know you, how you think, what works for you, what doesn’t. The organizer will ask, what are these things? What do you use them for? How do you use them? Is this really important? Is there a better way? Are you messy when working on a big project, then clean up neatly afterward? How quickly your project is accomplished will depend in large part on how quickly you can make a decision (for example, keep? toss? archive?).
THE ZONE
Our experts offered Smart Meetings a few overall tips to consider as a launching pad. Starting with your office, think about your space as a series of zones. Your desktop is Zone #1, “the Fifth Avenue of real estate,” Wallace says.
“You only want the things here that you use every day.”
The next zone is your top drawer, then your bottom drawer, then your credenza or bookshelf and your filing cabinet, in order of importance. Even the filing cabinet has zones—the middle drawers for frequently used information, the others for lesser. (You really don’t need to hoard a stock of supplies in your desk, Robertson says. They’re better off in the communal supply cabinet.)
Everything in your office should have its own place within these zones—a place for everything and everything (eventually) in its place, a page that’s right out of your mother’s advice book.
PILE IT OR FILE IT?
To simplify the subject, we’re only dealing with paper management here—as our world, which promised to become paperless, has now inundated us with paper, paper and more paper. There are essentially three types of files, Robertson says: archived files, those that you have to keep to stay out of jail or stay out of trouble, that you hopefully never have to use (tax-related, contracts, SOX backup, for instance); reference files, things you can’t archive, that you look at once in a while (information about key locations, etc.); and action files, the things you’re planning now and working on now. You’ve got to figure out the difference before you begin.
As the first step, “You should start with the piles on your desktop—there’s always some buried and some outdated papers there—it just depends on how long that mulch pile has been sitting there,” Wallace says. “Sometimes you just need a smaller pile; you’re not ready to make a decision on those papers yet. Sometimes, they just become a moot point.”
Now the fun begins. Start with what Wallace calls a gross sort—sort by category, collecting like subjects with like subjects. Next, refine the sort alphabetically, then within the files by date. Put the files in a binder or in your file cabinet, whatever works best for you—just make sure the names of your paper files mirror the names on your electronic files. “Call them the same thing,” Wallace says. “What they are is a retrieval system. The only reason you have them is to retrieve them.”
Moving on, ask yourself, how often do you use those hotel brochures, those DVDs? How long do you keep them? Are they obsolete by the time you need them? Do you go online for current information? Do you take the old brochure out when you file a new one? Overstuffed cabinets are a deterrent to becoming—and staying—organized.
As for your magazine collection, organize it in magazine butlers by name, keeping a few months’ issues on a shelf (and that would be Smart Meetings with the year’s supply, of course).
LOW MAINTENANCE
The goal is to have an organizational system that’s simple, even intuitive for you. If that’s the case, you’ll trust it, use it and maintain it. No organizing system will continue to work if it’s not maintained—and maintenance is a much easier job than a big re-do, Robertson says. “People tend not to build in much transition time in a day, but if you build this in, you’re more likely to maintain [your system].” If you have to leave at 5:30 to pick up your kids, she says, don’t stop working at 5:30. Stop at 5 p.m. and put things away, and get organized for the next day—words to live by.
According to the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of NAPO, when you organize, you “free your mind, let go of excess baggage, transform your space, set up systems that really work and spend more time on things that matter.” They’re all reason enough to make that phone call.
RESOURCES
Angela Wallace, CPO
Wallace Associates
workshops4success.com
National Association of Professional Organizers
napo.net
San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, NAPO
napo-sfba.org
Standolyn Robertson, CPO
Things in Place Organizing Services
thingsinplace.com
