Stephen Yeargin

I have been making a more concerted effort lately to be more organized. I am by far the most paperless in our office, mostly because years of typing has rendered by handwriting illegible. There are times when I wonder if there are non-credit courses available to improve penmanship. Our project lists are all on our intranet server, and the vast majority of tasks come in over e-mail. I take a legal padfolio to every meeting, but rarely write more than the date and a few lines of action items. I often joke that it is just a prop so I do not look unprepared.

My at-home project has been to run through my contacts in my Mac’s Address Book application, making use of the notes field and correcting the spelling of spouse and children names. The list of contacts dates back to the late nineties and currently sits somewhere around 380 entries. I often catch myself wondering what ever happened to old friends and colleagues. Not everyone is on Facebook or Myspace, after all.

I see organization as a bell curve, with the X-axis representing the relative level of organization and the Y-axis representing chances of achieving desired goals. I have met the disorganized types that never seem to have it together, where small tasks somehow become huge obstacles. I also know a few that micromanage their lives to the point of absurdity, leaving little time to themselves or the so-called “big picture”. So, I shoot for the middle.