Even the most disorganized person would agree that there is a lot of merit in organizing oneself. I am myself a very unorganized person (Hey! what is the difference between unorganized and disorganized?) and have felt that I could be more productive (efficient, if not productive) if I were more organized. While this was just a feeling I really did not have any articulated proof, which of course set me thinking.
Does planning / being organized help one to be more efficient?
If it does, how?
Why am I not more organized?
Intuitively it is obvious that planning would help one to be more efficient, so rather than waste my effort in conducting an experiment to prove it, I took that as the basic premise. Now the second question - how does planning help?
Of course, we have enough real life examples to substantiate this; lets take a simple case:
If I want to write a letter, if the postcard/envelope/stationary were readily available at a specific place then the task of writing a letter becomes that much easier than having to get together all the required stuff before actually starting the task. So an unorganized person has the additional preparatory task of getting the environment right before even commencing the work!
Now comes the actual task of writing - one needs to have the contents of the letter well organized in one's mind before being able to put it down on paper, which means that there would be atleast a couple of rough drafts before we get to express ourselves correctly. One can also settle for an overly over-written letter with scratches and scrawls. Of course in today's world with the computer at hand this task has become much easier and hence we have more people corresponding through emails, blogs and a variety of other formats.
Just a simple task of writing a letter shows that being organized both physically and mentally is required to achieve the objective. Just imagine the perils to which a letter written by an unorganized person is subject to! It is more likely to die a premature death than reach the intended person. So the next time round when you run into the intended receiver, imagine having to sheepishly say, "Oh, I did so much want to write to you, but I couldn't find my pen". The point here is that being unorganized also leads to procrastination.
Now why would an intelligent person like I be unorganized? Why can't I be more organized? That is a good question.
