Organizational Dysfunction

I always struggle with the reality that not everyone is like me. It was a profound shock the first time I realized it. Imagine that. It is one of life’s humbling personal experiences.

I am reminded of this by the response to the Women in Business column HOW TO: Organize With a Calendar and To Do List. Organization is so easy. It is, after all, just simple discipline and committed follow through. Bootstrap stuff, really.

Or is it?

I have a much-loved friend who cannot organize anything. She is a smart, professional woman; a wonderful, caring mother; a social activist; a devoted wife; and a loving, supportive friend. Her life is rich, complex, thriving and satisfying. By any measure she is a success.

But she is completely disorganized.

Her house is perpetually in overwhelming disarray. Her car is littered with the remains of everything she is doing, or going to do, or wants to do. Her dining room table is overflowing with projects she has undertaken, all of which are in various stages of confusion. Every day she suffers multiple, recurring crises over lost keys, pens, papers, clothes, eyeglasses, wallets, money, notes, stamps, phone numbers, messages etc.

But she wants to be organized. She desperately wants to be organized. She tries harder than anyone I have ever seen to be organized. She asks for my help to "teach her how to be organized" and I always give it.

I even imagine I can actually do it.

She searches incessantly for her notes to herself, her scratched down phone numbers from the answering machine, and her task lists and reminders. So we got a large, red, spiral notebook for her to write everything in just one place. I chose a large, red notebook so that she could find it in her clutter. I chose a spiral notebook so the notes would become a useful, orderly chronology.

It worked for two days. Then she started inexplicably tearing pages out of the notebook and running around putting them wherever. I cannot honestly understand why she started tearing out the pages. She cannot understand it herself. But this is what happened. Of course, the torn out pages became lost, and the notebook became spotty and useless, just another piece of debris in the chaos. We decided to try something else.

I got her a purse sized, fancy organizer with compartments and colored pages as a gift. She still proudly carries it in her purse. Of course, she cannot always find her purse, so she only haphazardly writes anything useful in the organizer. She continues to grab for newspaper corners, paper towels, napkins, tissues, cereal boxes etc. to jot down important information. When she also can find a pen with which to do it.

We decided to focus on a smaller problem, her keys. We got a large clip to snap on the handle of her purse, and I told her to clip her keys on it the instant she walked in the door. (We even sheepishly went in and out the door several times to practice the timely clipping technique.) We were confident that we could solve the perpetual problem of where are the keys. But, in reality as opposed to our practice, she is inundated with children, dogs, phone calls, mail and crises when she opens the door. She gets distracted, and honestly forgets to do the key clipping. She continues to lose the keys several times a day.

For years I blamed my inadequate self. Surely if I just thought about it more intensely I could help her, organize her, reform her. After all, I know how to organize any process on earth. Why could I not teach her to be organized?

For years she blamed herself for not being disciplined, not sticking to it as she felt she should. She wanted to do it. She felt guilty for not following my direction...my simple, logical, organized direction.

Finally, we have given up this blame and guilt. We now agree that I am organized and she is not. We are just different. Life is like that.

She still has her maniacal frenzies a hundred times a day. I always know where everything is. She still wants to be organized and I still want to teach her, but we have come to accept that it is not likely to happen. I truly do not understand why, except, of course, that we are different.

So, she is trying to teach me about chaos.

She has made a flourishing, happy life in the bosom of disorder. I want to learn how this is possible. I am trying to incorporate a lack of organization into my life. I want to misplace a phone number, or lose my keys. I want to embrace disorganization with zest, to know the exhilaration of it.

But, I cannot seem to do it. She tells me that disorganization is so easy. But it is very, very hard for me. I am not disorganized and she is. We are just different.

Imagine that. Another one of life’s humbling personal experiences.

Copyright © 1998, 1999 by D.E. Summerville. All rights reserved.

The advice and suggestions in the Women in Business column are solely those of the author. DC Web Women assumes no responsibility for its content.

Back to Top