People regularly tell me keeping order is not for them, and they can never be good at it so they have lost hope. They also tell me stories about how their lives are broken.

To put it simply, order creates pockets of reflection which help you resolve all the things that order cannot solve. Order creates systems so that you have time and energy for the human parts of life. Take one step at a time—not twelve or even three—to become more organized and things will shift for the better throughout your entire life.

In terms of information management, there are two distinct working styles – stacking and filing. Business is an oasis for a stacker—it is full of research, reading, writing, logic and strategy.

Albert Einstein’s words –“If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, Of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”—could easily be the anthem of the stacker. They prefer large open horizontal work surfaces so that they can keep their projects out rather than away. They fear putting things away because out of sight is out of mind. Stackers have an inclusive mind, assigning value to most ideas, things, and papers. The inclusiveness they have naturally makes prioritizing, sorting, and deciding a challenge.

Stackers are usually visual learners and see life as a weave of ideas. They love to learn, explore, and think in a non-linear style. Their working method can appear random to the onlooker as they lay out a complicated map in their mind. This continual, quiet mapping is very loud and chaotic in the stacker’s mind.

Stackers have a high need for innovation which means they reinvent their systems regularly. This reinvention results in multiple copies or locations for specific items.

Eventually they become frustrated with their stacks. They lose a client because an appointment reminder gets hidden in a pile on their desk. This frustration sets them out looking for an answer. The pouring through solutions, as many are out there, creates more stacks and ideas. Action is not quick to follow, as the answer often needs to be perfect before action happens.

On the flip side, the filer working style is about putting away, prioritization, and removing. Office supply solutions are mostly created with filers in mind. Stackers often find frustration when searching since the solutions rarely solve their biggest need. “How do I keep it all in sight and organized at the same time?”

Team navigation

Stackers and filers have a tendency to drive each other crazy in a work environment. Stackers create complex navigation systems that only they can steer, and reinvent their systems regularly. Filers structured systems often create rebellion in the stacker because of the rigidity. However, I have learned to lean heavily on the filer strength to keep my idea stacks functional.

When stackers and filers learn to play nice in the sandbox, both order and inventiveness can co-exist. Think of sharing the road as a metaphor to how strong business environments share information. Filers create the rules and, unfortunately, also enforce them. Stackers get a “driver’s license” and tow the line. As bureaucratic as it seems, understanding the way to flow paper tames the chaos.

To a filer, and sometimes other stackers, stackers “need help” in the work environment. Most of the working world declares stackers inept simply because of their stacks. Many individuals have been ridiculed, teased, cajoled, shamed, or coerced into becoming filers. This behavior does not produced action toward filing, but instead causes resentment and rebellion. In some cases, it causes extreme hoarding.

If you are the filer in charge, create optimal systems—just enough order to satisfy the needs of the function at hand. Some questions I ask are: “Can you find things in your stacks easily?”, “Do your workmates know how to find information you have?”, or “Do your stacks visually overwhelm you?”

Also, consider the physicality in navigation. A stacker is more likely to return items to their places when containers have open tops and plenty of moveable space. This means tightly packed file drawers, delicate desktop stacking files, or three-ring binders are roads to trouble. Navigation also works best when its simple and easy. If extra steps are required to replace the paper (opening a 3-ring binder) more often than not the system will break and items will not be returned.

Two common opinions today are pushing order to the backburner in business, much to sustainability’s chagrin: “Organizing is a constraint to the creative process” and “Organizing skills are genetic.”

An ordered life is an acquired taste that can be blended and customized into any work environment. Order won’t look the same from industry to industry, or office to office, but there will be essential elements that make sustainability possible. Secondly, sustained ingenuity is actualized as organizing becomes a part of the working process. Without order, the creative process creates chaos at best and dissolution and apathy at worst.