There was an article I read about a few weeks ago by Extreme Tech that argues about how the messier the person the more organized he/she actually is. To some degree I agree with this statement so here’s my take on it. Being organized doesn’t necessary mean being clean. It just means that you've created a system for your self to know exactly where everything is and being messy just makes you more productive. Being clean and organized at the same time cuts down on productivity because of the amount of time you spend cleaning and putting everything back to the way it was again. And having a messy system doesn’t make you less organized than the person next door who spends every second trying to look neat and tidy.

Here’s my example:
When I was first starting out as a student pilot at day one, I was overwhelmed with the amount of panels, switches, and gauges even a small airplane had. I had no previous training, no simulator experience so I was clueless and stuffed with fear of never understanding the instrument panels. As my training progressed, I worked hard and began reading up on how these instruments worked, I even went as far as trying to replicate everything on paper, drawing everything little detail on that flight deck from memory and compared it with the actual picture. If I missed, or mispositioned something then I made a promise to start from scratch.

After a few failures I realized something with the way a flight deck was layed out. These instruments weren’t just placed randomly... no, they were actually placed specifically to make logical sense based on their function and how often an instrument is used. This chaotic flight panel is actually grouped in such a way that what every task you had to deal with whether it be navigation or an emergency situation, were so well organized that any one regardless of training could navigate them provided they knew the layouts algorithm.

If you were to look at an A320's flight deck you'd be so overwhelmed with the numbers of buttons and start to wonder... "how do pilots remember where all the buttons are?" and the answer to that is... they don’t. Its all about knowing where to expect the switches and buttons for a specific tast. It may seem chaotic and very messy, but to a pilot its the best way to deal with every demanding task and still be productive during the job.

Now remember what I said earlier... about being clean and organized? Well imagine if a pilot had to deal with that in his/her environment. Imagine being in an emergency situation where the pilot actually had a switch to open a group of other switches... lol sounds ridiculous right? Well that’s because it is. Not only does it take up precious time, but you'll be dead before the pilot can read the next paragraph on that Emergency Reference Handbook.

Most air traffic controllers are actually messy during their job. No, I don't mean they pick their nose and wipe it on the guy next to him to conserve time... I mean the fact that they don't have the time to neatly organize something. They must do it the fastest way possible and the only way to do that is by bieng messy.

Now similarly in a much more miniscule concept such as your work-area, your much less prone to emergency such as the one I described above in fact, I don't recall the last time I heard of a house with a flight deck falling 18,000ft from the sky before. So what’s the correlation here? Simple.. cleanliness will simply make you less productive!

Now this doesn't meen you have to go as far as avoid taking a shower for a few days just to be productive. Its just a general idea you should only apply to your work habit and not your entire life.

Labels: all, aviation, lifeline, opinion, organization, productivity, tips