Organizing from the Inside Out

Due to a) the thickness of my Rolodex and b) its placement behind the phone, I am unable to get a good look at the numbers I want to dial and therefore pull cards out when I want to make phone calls. After a month, as many as 50 cards are strewn across my desk, which I then sift through for several minutes each time I need to make a critical call regarding something crucial to daily business operations, such as pizza delivery. The fact that 3 out of 5 psychologists would likely pronounce me reasonably sane suggests that I am not alone in my counterproductive behavior. Fortunately, help is available in the form of author, lecturer and former slob Julie Morgenstern, who shares with a seminar audience her three prong plan--analyze, strategize, and attack--for achieving organizational harmony in the home, office, and, ultimately, personal life. Pointing out the common causes of clutter ("technical errors," such as inconvenient storage; "external realities," such as an unrealistic workload; and "psychological obstacles," such as sentimentality), Morgenstern shares her biggest organizational secret (the perfect model is the kindergarten classroom--where everything is easily found and easily replaced at the end of the day) and offers a slew of solid tips for reorganizing home and work space into key activity zones with instantaneously retrievable items. Given the fact that a) unorganized people spend an average of an hour a day looking for items, b) that serious coinage is lost to "crisis purchasing" for things one already owns but has misplaced, and c) the toll in stress, most will benefit from this high-powered, tip-rich mini-course. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)