New Orleans - USAWednesday, January 31, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Procrastination
Messy is the New Neat
Thursday, Jan. 18, 2007
By JEREMY CAPLAN
Neatness is overrated. Let those stacks of paper pile up on your desk. Don't worry about the laundry tossed in the corner. Let the icons clutter up your computer screen. And whatever you do, stop obsessing over your letter-perfect filing system. Bless your mess, says a new group of "mess-iahs" spreading the gospel of healthy disorganization.
"Moderately messy systems outperform extremely orderly systems," says Eric Abrahamson, Columbia University professor of management and co-author of A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder (Little, Brown). Abrahamson, a scholar of organizational behavior who admits to being a bit of a mess, says the costs of maintaining order are often overlooked. He and co-author David Freedman make the case that Americans' obsession with neatness has got us so frazzled about the slightest clutter that we're needlessly draining time, money and emotion from our lives in the hapless pursuit of order. Don't spend two hours a day straightening up at home, the authors say. Devote that time instead to your family or creative endeavors or anything more enjoyable than getting on your knees with a Dustbuster. Making your home germfree may actually be harmful to tots. Decluttering it not only wastes time but also saps a home's sense of character.
Filing away loose office papers can be similarly counterproductive. There's a reason people tend to stack stuff on their desks: such intuitive organization can be effective. Not only are things often hard to find once secluded in a complex filing system, but they're also out of sight and therefore out of mind. Those with messy desks often stumble upon serendipitous connections between disparate documents. Don't believe there's a benefit? According to Abrahamson and Freedman, desk-paper mess helped Nobel-prizewinning scientist Earl Sutherland discover how hormones regulate cells.
Devotees of filing often interrupt their thought flow to stuff papers in folders, while pack rats just toss papers to the side for later. Procrastination like that can actually pay off. "Putting off undertaking almost any form of neatening or organizing will probably have some advantage," write Abrahamson and Freedman, "because it's much more efficient to organize a large set of things at one shot than it is to try to organize them in pieces as they come along."
The message at the heart of A Perfect Mess is not that neatness is by definition bad, but that a moderate amount of messiness isn't a terrible thing. For those obsessed with order, though, Abrahamson and Freedman have several suggestions:
MAKE PEACE WITH YOUR CLUTTER Organizational gurus may reclaim shelf space by getting clients to trash their high school honors or sentimental icons, but aren't their homes losing a bit of personality and history? There's a reason Rachael Ray is gaining on Martha Stewart, Freedman says. People are naturally a little clumsy and messy, and try as we might to cultivate monastery-like sanctuaries, clutter creeps back. Accept that, and you'll stress less.
DON'T WASTE TIME ORGANIZING YOUR LAPTOP Search tools can instantaneously locate anything from an e-mail message to a Word document, so why spend hours dragging things from one folder to another?
BE SLOPPIER WITH YOUR SCHEDULE "If you keep a tight calendar and you're not a dentist or a hair stylist, try being looser and not packing as many things in," says Freedman. A less structured date book makes it easier to adapt to inevitable surprises and affords you freedom to just go with the flow.
FORGET FILING If you organize your CD library alphabetically by artist, the collection will be randomly assorted with regard to style of music. If you structure it by date, it won't be sorted by artist. Whatever parameters you use for ordering means randomness for some other characteristic.
If your New Year's resolution was to straighten up, you still have time to reconsider. Your time, energy and money might be better spent on something else.
Thursday, Jan. 18, 2007
By JEREMY CAPLAN
Neatness is overrated. Let those stacks of paper pile up on your desk. Don't worry about the laundry tossed in the corner. Let the icons clutter up your computer screen. And whatever you do, stop obsessing over your letter-perfect filing system. Bless your mess, says a new group of "mess-iahs" spreading the gospel of healthy disorganization.
"Moderately messy systems outperform extremely orderly systems," says Eric Abrahamson, Columbia University professor of management and co-author of A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder (Little, Brown). Abrahamson, a scholar of organizational behavior who admits to being a bit of a mess, says the costs of maintaining order are often overlooked. He and co-author David Freedman make the case that Americans' obsession with neatness has got us so frazzled about the slightest clutter that we're needlessly draining time, money and emotion from our lives in the hapless pursuit of order. Don't spend two hours a day straightening up at home, the authors say. Devote that time instead to your family or creative endeavors or anything more enjoyable than getting on your knees with a Dustbuster. Making your home germfree may actually be harmful to tots. Decluttering it not only wastes time but also saps a home's sense of character.
Filing away loose office papers can be similarly counterproductive. There's a reason people tend to stack stuff on their desks: such intuitive organization can be effective. Not only are things often hard to find once secluded in a complex filing system, but they're also out of sight and therefore out of mind. Those with messy desks often stumble upon serendipitous connections between disparate documents. Don't believe there's a benefit? According to Abrahamson and Freedman, desk-paper mess helped Nobel-prizewinning scientist Earl Sutherland discover how hormones regulate cells.
Devotees of filing often interrupt their thought flow to stuff papers in folders, while pack rats just toss papers to the side for later. Procrastination like that can actually pay off. "Putting off undertaking almost any form of neatening or organizing will probably have some advantage," write Abrahamson and Freedman, "because it's much more efficient to organize a large set of things at one shot than it is to try to organize them in pieces as they come along."
The message at the heart of A Perfect Mess is not that neatness is by definition bad, but that a moderate amount of messiness isn't a terrible thing. For those obsessed with order, though, Abrahamson and Freedman have several suggestions:
MAKE PEACE WITH YOUR CLUTTER Organizational gurus may reclaim shelf space by getting clients to trash their high school honors or sentimental icons, but aren't their homes losing a bit of personality and history? There's a reason Rachael Ray is gaining on Martha Stewart, Freedman says. People are naturally a little clumsy and messy, and try as we might to cultivate monastery-like sanctuaries, clutter creeps back. Accept that, and you'll stress less.
DON'T WASTE TIME ORGANIZING YOUR LAPTOP Search tools can instantaneously locate anything from an e-mail message to a Word document, so why spend hours dragging things from one folder to another?
BE SLOPPIER WITH YOUR SCHEDULE "If you keep a tight calendar and you're not a dentist or a hair stylist, try being looser and not packing as many things in," says Freedman. A less structured date book makes it easier to adapt to inevitable surprises and affords you freedom to just go with the flow.
FORGET FILING If you organize your CD library alphabetically by artist, the collection will be randomly assorted with regard to style of music. If you structure it by date, it won't be sorted by artist. Whatever parameters you use for ordering means randomness for some other characteristic.
If your New Year's resolution was to straighten up, you still have time to reconsider. Your time, energy and money might be better spent on something else.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Procrastination Worsening
Don't put off reading this .....
Seth Borenstein
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Procrastination in society is getting worse, and scientists are finally getting around to figuring out how and why. Too many tempting diversions are to blame, but more on that later.
After 10 years of research on a project that was only supposed to take five years, a Canadian industrial psychologist found in a giant study that not only is procrastination on the rise, it makes people poorer, fatter and unhappier.
Something has to be done about it, sooner rather than later, University of Calgary professor Piers Steel concludes. His 30-page study is in this month's peer-reviewed Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association.
In 1978, only about 5 percent of the American public thought of themselves as chronic procrastinators. Now it's 26 percent, Steel said.
And why not? There are so many fun ways to kill time — TVs in every room, online video, Web-surfing, cell phones, video games, iPods and Blackberries.
At work, e-mail, the Internet and games are just a click away, making procrastination effortless, Steel said.
"That stupid game Minesweeper — that probably has cost billions of dollars for the whole society," he said.
The U.S. gross national product would probably rise by $50 billion if the icon and sound that notifies people of new e-mail suddenly disappear, he added.
And there's good reason to worry right now about the problem of procrastination.
"People who procrastinate tend to be less healthy, less wealthy and less happy," Steel said Wednesday. "You can reduce it, but I don't think you can eliminate it."
Psychologist William Knaus, who has written several self-help books on fighting procrastination since 1977's "Overcoming Procrastination," said Steel is "absolutely right."
He said he found it harder to wean chronic procrastinators from the habit of delaying than to wean alcoholics from booze. Knaus mentioned one businessman who spent 40 hours of delay time to avoid five minutes of work.
"It's a huge problem," Knaus said. "I think the majority of mental disabilities people have — anxiety, panic — they can be defined as a special case of procrastination."
There is personal financial fallout from procrastination, too. Delay in filing taxes on average costs a person $400 a year and last-minute Christmas shopping with credit cards was five times higher in 1999 than in 1991, Steel found in a review of more than 500 economic and psychological studies about putting off unpleasant chores.
Seth Borenstein
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Procrastination in society is getting worse, and scientists are finally getting around to figuring out how and why. Too many tempting diversions are to blame, but more on that later.
After 10 years of research on a project that was only supposed to take five years, a Canadian industrial psychologist found in a giant study that not only is procrastination on the rise, it makes people poorer, fatter and unhappier.
Something has to be done about it, sooner rather than later, University of Calgary professor Piers Steel concludes. His 30-page study is in this month's peer-reviewed Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association.
In 1978, only about 5 percent of the American public thought of themselves as chronic procrastinators. Now it's 26 percent, Steel said.
And why not? There are so many fun ways to kill time — TVs in every room, online video, Web-surfing, cell phones, video games, iPods and Blackberries.
At work, e-mail, the Internet and games are just a click away, making procrastination effortless, Steel said.
"That stupid game Minesweeper — that probably has cost billions of dollars for the whole society," he said.
The U.S. gross national product would probably rise by $50 billion if the icon and sound that notifies people of new e-mail suddenly disappear, he added.
And there's good reason to worry right now about the problem of procrastination.
"People who procrastinate tend to be less healthy, less wealthy and less happy," Steel said Wednesday. "You can reduce it, but I don't think you can eliminate it."
Psychologist William Knaus, who has written several self-help books on fighting procrastination since 1977's "Overcoming Procrastination," said Steel is "absolutely right."
He said he found it harder to wean chronic procrastinators from the habit of delaying than to wean alcoholics from booze. Knaus mentioned one businessman who spent 40 hours of delay time to avoid five minutes of work.
"It's a huge problem," Knaus said. "I think the majority of mental disabilities people have — anxiety, panic — they can be defined as a special case of procrastination."
There is personal financial fallout from procrastination, too. Delay in filing taxes on average costs a person $400 a year and last-minute Christmas shopping with credit cards was five times higher in 1999 than in 1991, Steel found in a review of more than 500 economic and psychological studies about putting off unpleasant chores.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
