A cluttered desk may certainly be a sign of a genius, but for most of us it leads to deep frustration when we try to find things. I have been in offices of a few genuis professors and, yes not just their desk but their entire office seemed to be in state of transition ... some where between packing for a move or unpacking after a move or may be a place recently trashed by robbers. I know someone who uses all possible horizontal surfaces in his room for stacking things ... floor, table top, shelfs, bed, chair, empty boxes, you name it. And surprisingly he is able to find things rather quickly. And if things a changed just a bit he gets disoriented ... he certainly has a system for organizing his stuff though it may appear chaos to all of us.
I often wonder why would these people not take the time to put away their stuff in places that are logically organized. May be it is the impatience or lack of time. May be they truly operate in a 4-dimension world, trading off clutter in 3D physical world in favor of a more organized 4th dimension. May be they manage their time well and see no point in wasting time in structuring the 3D space.
But then let us look at someone whose stuff looks pretty organized. Welcome to my study and library. I have seven huge book cases packed with books arranged by topic or theme as one would expect them to be in a bookstore. I rarely throw anything. I even have my handwritten notes from 30 years ago packed in nice boxes stacked in shelves in garage.
And although everything has a place and generally does not look clutters, too often I cannot find things when I need them and where I need them. Why? Unlike the genious who works and focuses on a one or too really important tasks, I am running around crazy trying to balance about seven different tasks. I tend to work in different corners of the house on different days and generally leave stuff here and there. I also take my books and notepads to work and there too I have a whole bunch of books and stuff. See given the nature of what I do, the highly structured stack of books and notes isn't much help. My seven tasks and their interdependence has a different structure amongst. In my head I can switch focus from one task to another while I am in office or driving, but at that moment the related books or notepads will be in someother location.
My highly structured stacks of books, notbeooks, scribbles are not available to me when I need them. Also given my physical mobility, I tend to think, scribble, and leave behind my notes in differnet places, and it is a challenge to keep them all together. And though I have tried, it is not possible to carry with me all the information I need in my backpack along with my laptop.
Given the nature of how I operate and work, these bookshelves and boxes do not represent an organization of information. They are simply storage. Rather than reveal information I would need or use, the storage hides it first in the form of books, and then in the form of knowledge hidden in the pages of the books. It is all nicely packaged and stacked away. It is stored, not organized. This situation is not all that different from what w eall have on our hard drives. Lots of files, lots of folders, subfolders, arranged by topic, by date, by purpose, etc etc. But it is not easy to find something we stashed away a week ago.
Here is my hypothesis: The organization of our work (when we do it, what we do, why we do, what do we do before we do a certain task, what do we do afterwards, what do we do if something unexpected happens, how do we change and rest focus, etc etc etc) is highly DYNAMIC. In the todays mobile-world, it is not only dynamic but is also conducted over multiple types of devices. This dynamic structure of work (always changing) requires that we find the right information or knowledge when we need it, where we need it, and on the device we need it. If the information is not readily forthcoming then that impedes our learning or any other task we are trying to accomplish.
The dynamic organization of work requires an equally dynamic organization of information. We need information to adapt to the shape or structure of our work, and not otherwise. And books in stacks or files on hard drive are simply too static ... they are merely storage with minimal structure to help quickly retireve if you know what you are looking for.
All around us the pace of information creation, consumption, and use has accelerated. Our work, priorities, learning, decision making has become rather rapidly changing dynamic structures. And to support this we need to look for novel ways to organize what used to "static stacks of traditional packets of knowledge (books, notebooks)", into more flexible and more dynamic organization of information which is available anywhere, anytime, on any device and adapts to the context of what we are doing.
We need to pay a lot of attention to how we organize our information such that they adapt to and support our work and learnings.
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