Organization

My advisor says the secret to finding a job is organization. In response I have read a lot about organization.

I confess I am unorganized. Jeff looked at my computer desktop and told me the clutter said a whole lot about my organizational skills. I had no idea what he meant. But after reading about organization, I reduced my desktop down to five folders and action items. The action items are just PDFs or Word files that I want to read or work on. Once I am done with these they go into a folder or get deleted. I also limit my Email inbox. I reply, delete, or mark it an action item. I do my best to limit the action items. These steps do help. I am not organized yet, but I am improving.

I participated in a soccer game yesterday. There were Eastern Europeans, North Americans, Indians, Asians, Latinos, and Middle Easterners. Everyone played the game a different way. Everyone saw a different organization to the game. For one team it turned into a clusterfuck. For our team, the Eastern Europeans took over, played with the Americans, and easily won the game.

There were also two two-year old boys. One was Asian and the other Eastern European. The boys also had different behavioral traits. One was rather adventurous and quick. He crawled up the playground stairs faster than I could walk up them. The other was more deliberate and curious. He used the handrail and went up as fast as his short legs would allow. When he saw the other boy crawling, he modified his style, but he was still much more deliberate. The adventurous boy played with my door handle for twenty seconds then went onto something else. The curious boy played with it until he figured out how to make something happen.

These anecdotes really have no point except to show that organization, a way to get things done, is subjective. My mother and father can attest to this by the number of times they have fought over kitchen organization. It is amazing that it has not caused a divorce.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. And the only way to get better is to keep skinning cats.