To Organize or Not To Organize?

January is, Big Frank kids you not, 'Get Organized Month', so designated by none other than The National Association of Professional Organizers. Right, this is the month to get yourself organiz-ized. There are tons of books, websites, speakers, seminars, tips, and rejoinders to help you get the task done. You have to let go of all that clutter - just let it go. Go to www.messies.com, or www.organizedtimes.com, or www.shoptogetorganized.com, or www.get-organized.com, - this last site actually has a get-organized poem. It is an amazing piece of literature. Here it is:

How To Do SomethingA poem from the Zine "Oop" (Joey Harrison, Editor, JoeyHarrison@usa.net) to subscribe).

HOW TO DO SOMETHING
First, begin.
That's the first thing.
You begin and then you proceed.
Proceed is next.
Proceed for quite a while.
This is the main part:
The proceeding.
The proceeding is actually the meat of doing something.
If something gets done,
Credit the proceeding.
After awhile the proceeding gives way to the wind-up --
The finishing.
This transition is delicate.
Too soon is bad,
Too late expends needless energy.
At the very instant something is at last done,
Fade the proceeding and move directly to finishing.
Finish instantly.

There is a certain minimalist beauty here - at first glance anyway. It reads something along the lines of a Dick and Jane reader. Here's Big Frank's Dick and Jane version:

Oh See Dick Do Something

First Dick begins.
That's what Dick does first.
Dick begins and then Dick proceeds.
See Dick proceed.
Dick is still Proceeding.
Still Dick proceeds.
Dick is proceeding and proceeding.
Now Dick is not proceeding.
Dick is winding up.
Dick is asking Jane.
He wants to know if it is too soon to finish.
Jane knows too soon is bad.
Bad, bad bad to finish too soon.
Jane says too late is bad too.
Too late is bad.
Too soon is bad too.
Dick is worried.
Jane says "finish".
Dick must finish now.
Dick finishes now.

However, as we know from Niels Bohr all profound ideas have equally profound opposite ideas. And so it is with getting organized. Look at the classic organiz-ized person in Taxi Driver - Travis Bickle. His mantra was to get organiz-ized. And look where it took him - into madness and mahem. And so the recent book in praise of messiness - A Perfect Mess. It turns out that, according to the authors - David Freedman and Eric Abrahamson - there are certain benefits from letting randomness into your lives. First of all you have access to all that stuff that otherwise would be unretrievably filed/boxed/stored away - god-knows-where. Instead it's all out there in front of you, and everytime that you look for anything you get to review everything, which, of course, then reminds you of all the tasks that you should be doing and then spurs you on to do them, but in a random sort of creative manner. That's benefit number one. Yet another benefit accrues from not having to waste all that time figuring out where to put everything and then actually putting it there. What a wonderful idea. So can we make February 'Get Unorganiz-ized Month' - or in other words "Just Let It Be"?