Find that job: Lesson 71. Good news for messy people
Why is neatness and order at workplace equated with virtue? Do tidy desks mean efficient workers, as the corporate organizers would have us believe? Not according to Eric Abrahamson, professor of management at Columbia Business School. According to him people who keep a 'very neat' desk spend on average 36% more time looking for things at work than people who keep a 'fairly messy' desk.
Yes, to other people your desk may look a mess, but to you it's a fragile ecosystem. Professor Abrahamson believes that a messy desk can represent a surprisingly sophisticated informal filing system that offers far more efficiency and flexibility than a filing cabinet. Have you ever had that feeling that when your desk has been tidied you can't find anything, whereas in its messy state everything you need is at hand? And doesn't all this tidying and organizing take time and energy that could be spent doing more productive things? Isn't it in itself a form of procrastination - one way of doing nothing and feeling virtuous at the same time?
According to professor Abrahamson order and uniformity are the enemies of those serendipitous random connections that can be priceless. If Sir Alexander Fleming had kept his bacteriological laboratory scrupulously clean, he wouldn't have discovered penicillin. Order doesn't have to be good, and mess is not always bad. So why don't you mess up your desk (if it's tidy), bin the lists and files - and become a creative disorganizer?
Eric Abrahamson is the author of 'A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder - How Cluttered Offices Make the World a Better Place'.
a Słownik
messy - nieporządny
neatness - schludność, staranność, porządek
order - porządek
workplace - miejsce pracy
to equate - utożsamiać, porównywać
virtue - cnota
tidy - porządny, posprzątany
desk - biurko
efficient worker - wydajny pracownik
corporate management - dyrekcja przedsiębiorstwa
mess - bałagan, nieporządek
fragile - kruchy, delikatny, wątły
sophisticated - zaawansowany, wysokiej klasy
filing system - system segregowania dokumentów
efficiency - wydajność
flexibility - elastyczność
filing cabinet - segregator, szafa na dokumenty
to tidy - uporządkować, posprzątać
at hand - pod ręką
procrastination - zwlekanie, gra na zwłokę
virtuous - cnotliwy
uniformity - jednostajność, jednolitość, jednakowość
enemy - wróg
serendipitous - nieoczekiwany, przypadkowy
random - przypadkowy, losowy
connection - związek, więź, połączenie
priceless - bezcenny
scrupulously clean - w nieskazitelnym porządku
to discover - odkryć
penicillin - penicylina
to mess up - zrobić nieporządek, bałagan
to bin - wyrzucić do śmieci
file - skoroszyt, segregator, teczka na dokumenty
creative - twórczy, kreatywny
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