Liz Davenport opens Order from Chaos by noting that:

“The average businessperson receives 190 pieces of information each day. The average businessperson wastes 150 hours each year looking for stuff. Add 10 more hours and that is an entire work month. If you got organized, you could have an extra month each year! Just think how much more you could accomplish (or how much more vacation you could have) if you got organized. You could take a three-day weekend every other week and still do as much as you are doing now–or MORE. What a concept.”

Yep. What a concept! Especially as I shifted through papers all over my room last night, trying to find the referral I needed for a mammogram this morning. It took me over an hour of going through all the papers on my desk and my night-table to find it. And if I hadn’t found it, I would not have been able to have my insurance cover the cost of the mammogram, which was long overdue. And, since I had a three-month wait for this appointment, rescheduling would have been right out of the question.

In short, not being organized would have had a significant financial bite in this instance; a bite that I can ill afford at the best of times, but even less so given the stuff going on in my life at the moment.

Why get organized?

Ms Davenport goes on to cover, in her first chapter, her belief that “the piles on your desk result from the holes in your system (as well as rom the incoming 190 pieces of information each day.” She notes that most of us do use a system, or more properly pieces of several systems to try to keep track of our information. The solution she says she will offer is an “all-encompassing, easy to maintain” system, which she claims is simple, intuitive, and easy to use.

She further notes her qualifications to be writing this book: She’s one of us. This is the system she evolved to solve her own organizing issues.

She follows that with a very brief outline of her system, suggesting that, if your time is limited, you only do Step 1 (the Cockpit Office). She notes that all five other steps build from this one. She recommends that you spend at least a week on each step and that how long it takes you to do the steps is less important than doing them in the order she sets out.

So far, it sounds pretty good. Her next chapter is called “The Game Plan,” and after last night’s little wake-up call, I am dying to dig in. Since the net chapter also falls under “Before You Begin,” I expect to be reporting on it fairly soon.

Next in this series: The Game Plan