The Cost - What could you do with an extra 150 hours? A lot, I suspect. The 2009 figures have just been announced by one association of professional organizers and their findings are that on average, we spent approximately one hundred and fifty hours last year looking for something lost.

A hundred and fifty hours works out to almost an entire month of forty hour work weeks. Yikes! That is a lot of time to throw away; more than one twelfth of your entire work year when you take vacations into consideration.
Aside from the time cost of disorganization, there is the loss of energy associated with disorganization.

Have you ever walked into your office and felt overwhelmed at the sight of your paper covered desk? It has been said that every single piece of clutter drains energy simply by being out of place. The cost of being disorganized is way too high.

The Remedy - Allocate some time to get yourself organized. You could take just one of those lost forty-hour work weeks and use it to get your office straightened out, then you could take a second to get the home in order. Put all your papers into one pile and sort according to the FAT Process: File it, Act on it or Toss it. If you have to ask if you need to keep something, the answer is usually no. Develop a filing system that has only one logical place to house each document. Then, give each item a happy home.

Join the Clean Desk Club! - This is the beginning of the Chinese New Year of the tiger. Make a resolution to do away with the “paper tiger” by giving yourself the gift of a clean desk. Take the time to put things away before leaving for the day.

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