Challenge: Organize Al Gore's Messy Office!

How fascinating!!  Dr. Amie Ragan, the brilliant mind behind the Psychology of Clutter blog posted this photo with a challenge to professional organizers including me to stage an intervention. What a great foto find, Amie. Thanks for the challenge!

Here's my response.  I would be absolutely thrilled to work with Al Gore!  I actually campaigned for the first Clinton/Gore campaign and met him very briefly back in 1987. I got to shake both of their hands.  It was so exciting!

I love his work, especially his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". He has accomplished so much and been so productive, I would actually pay him to let me work with him and learn first hand how he does what he does!  Then I would see if I could help him become even more efficient. I imagine he must have excellent time management strategies to have accomplished everything he has and I'm sure he could teach me a thing or two.

If I were so lucky as to have the chance to work with him, I would first focus on learning how he works and how his system works for him. I would only attempt to "fix" things that actually bother him AND that would truly save him time and improve his productivity. 

My guess is he has intense powers of concentration and can block out all the clutter rather easily.  He strikes me as having an excellent memory as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if he actually can find things in those piles.  Probably not everything, but probably most of what's important to him. My approach would be to make sure I don't try to over-organize him or change him too dramatically. After all why fix what isn't broken?  Just because it looks messy doesn't mean it's not working for him! 

I'm definitely jealous of his monitors. As someone who uses 2 monitors, I'm already wishing I had a third!  It makes it so much easier to research and write! 

Check out Dr. Amie's post to see what other organizers are saying!

Comments

[Monica Ricci]

I'll bet he does have intense powers of concentration, for example he can block out logic and scientific data pretty well! LOL... Sorry Ariane, I tried biting my fingers, but I just couldn't resist. ;)

Yep that's one office I know a lot of organizers would love to get their hands on! Not me though. Ugh paperwork!

~Monica

[Ariane Benefit]

Hi Monica, Okay so you aren't a Gore fan. Obviously I completely disagree with you and would defend his work to the end, but this is not a political blog so I'm going to bite my "fingers" too. As for his office, I truly don't see what is so bad about it. He's a writer and researcher and if the piles work for him...let him have them! I wouldn't want my office to look that way, but I do like my piles when I'm working multiple writing projects! Thanks for writing! : )

[Emmie]

Wow working with Al Gore must be really cool.

[Jason]

I agree. The real question is to Mr. Gore himself, forget what we think when we look at his desk.

Here’s what I ask my clients: Is this working for you? Can you find what you need easily? What aspects of your system slow you down? Where’s the biggest payoff for you to put your focus & energy on?

He may reply that his digital files are a mess and would experience the biggest gain from processing his email into a list manager of actionable items. Or maybe he just needs some boxes that get labeled “Research”, “Presentations”, “Read & Reply”, etc... in order to gain some real estate back on his desk. Is he motivated by the piles or does it drain his energy when he looks out?

Other areas I would want to focus on (if this were my desk!) are the filing ability from this command center. Is it fast and easy to process this stuff and get it into his system so retrieval is quick & painless?

And finally is he as efficient as he can be with the technology he currently has? How’s his typing speed? I’ve seen his TedTalks presentation and he looks very savvy with his PowerPoints and computer use. I love working with clients like this. They’re the ones that get excited about a new speedkey or way to save them a step every time they do a repetitive task.

[damon]

Jason said:
"I’ve seen his TedTalks presentation and he looks very savvy with his PowerPoints and computer use."

POF-
He's on the Apple Board, so he's on a Mac and most likely uses Keynote rather than PowerPoint.

Monica said:
"I'll bet he does have intense powers of concentration, for example he can block out logic and scientific data pretty well!"

just like Rosie :)