Datasheet

15
Chapter 1: Planning for Better Balance between Your Work and Personal Life
In my case, I’m very uncomfortable with clutter and disorder (especially in
my work environment) but nonetheless tend to be a rather disorganized and
messy worker. (I seem to have a real knack for creating piles and stacks.)
The good news, however, is that I’ve really made my peace with tidiness. I
can now recognize when I really need to get the office organized because the
level of disorder is beginning to impede my ability to be really productive. At
that point, I proceed to get the place in order straightaway without hesitation
or resentment.
Organizing my work environment strictly on this kind of as-needed basis
enables me to maintain a high level of productivity without feeling like
a neatness drudge. As a result, I no longer bristle at tasks such as filing
because I never feel like too much of my work time and energy is spent in
tidying up and organizing the place.
In case you consider yourself a dyed-in-the-wool Oscar Madison with little or
no hope of becoming the least bit like Felix Unger, you’ll be happy to know that
there’s still hope for you when it comes to achieving high productivity in your
work. In fact, there’s now a school of thought on personal productivity that
actually celebrates a certain degree of chaos in the workplace, maintaining,
in short, that one person’s mess is another person’s order. See Chapter 2 for
more on my take on this challenging (crazy?) notion that you can still be
productive without being organized, at least in the strictest sense of the word.
I’m just not good with technology
As someone who did corporate computer training for many years, I’m
very well acquainted with the “I’m no good with technology” excuse. It’s
a complaint I heard a lot as business people scrambled to adapt to the
wholesale introduction of personal computers into the workplace.
Several factors seem to contribute to the general funk over technology
that I sometimes find among many otherwise quite bright and enthusiastic
business people:
 The accelerated rate of change (in the name of incessant improvement) of
the high-tech industry that constantly requires the expense and relearning
associated with upgrading your hardware and software.
 The continuing gap between the high tech’s promise of greater personal
productivity and its actual delivery that leaves you wondering whether
using all this stuff is really worth it.
 The ever-increasing portability of high-tech hardware and omnipresence
of high-speed wireless communication that makes it increasingly possible
to work anytime, anywhere (commuting, traveling, and even on vacation)
and thus harder and harder to keep work and play separate.