Tidy Desk Quotes

Sugar leans her chin against the knuckles of the hand that holds the pen. Glistening on the page between her silk-shrouded elbows lies an unfinished sentence. The heroine of her novel has just slashed the throat of a man. The problem is how, precisely, the blood will flow. Flow is too gentle a word; spill implies carelessness; spurt is out of the question because she has used the word already, in another context, a few lines earlier. Pour out implies that the man has some control over the matter, which he most emphatically doesn’t; leak is too feeble for the savagery of the injury she has inflicted upon him. Sugar closes her eyes and watches, in the lurid theatre of her mind, the blood issue from the slit neck. When Mrs Castaway’s warning bell sounds, she jerks in surprise. Hastily, she scrutinises her bedroom. Everything is neat and tidy. All her papers are hidden away, except for this single sheet on her writing-desk. Spew, she writes, having finally been given, by tardy Providence, the needful word.

Her tiny and organized handwriting reminded me of the tidiness of her desk, as if she'd wanted to find in words the peace and safety that life hadn't wanted to grant her.

Today Amanda was dressed in a gown of soft pink wool trimmed in corded silk ribbon of a deeper shade. She had worn a bonnet adorned with China roses, which now reposed on the side of his desk, a pair of velvet ribbons draping gently toward the floor. The pink shade of the gown brought out the color in Amanda's cheeks, while the simple cut displayed her generous figure to its best advantage. Aside from Jack's considerable regard for her intelligence, he couldn't help thinking of her as a tidy little bonbon.

where the desks looked as they normally did – Reggie’s neat and tidy, Ox’s like a vacuum cleaner and a recycling bin had fought to the death over a takeaway order.

Kat and Will must have been quietly plotting their escape for years, and I'd been so intent on making sure that their homework was done and their desks were tidy and their shoelaces tied that I'd missed all the signs.

She described how Camus’s aphorism “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” helps her fight back against unproductive feelings of meaninglessness. If we consider, like Camus, Sisyphus at the foot of his mountain, we can see that he is smiling. He is content in his task of defying the Gods, the journey more important than the goal. To achieve a beginning, a middle, an end, a meaning to the chaos of creation—that's more than any deity seems to manage: But it's what writers do. So I tidy the desk, even polish it up a bit, stick some flowers in a vase and start. As I begin a novel I remind myself as ever of Camus's admonition that the purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. And even while thinking, well, fat chance! I find courage, reach for the heights, and if the rock keeps rolling down again so it does. What the hell, start again. Rewrite. Be of good cheer. Smile on, Sisyphus!

TIDY UP YOUR WORKSPACE BEFORE YOU CALL IT A DAY. When you go to an office, you can leave your messy home, well, at home. Not so for remote workers. And this is a problem, because working in a messy space zaps your concentration. Research shows clutter can trigger the release of cortisol (the stress hormone). Messy homes are also linked to increased procrastination. Before you clock out each night, spend five minutes putting things away, organizing your papers, and removing dirty glasses. You’ll appreciate your efforts when you sit down to your desk the next morning.

one big room, except for the landing—to himself. Three windows open onto the rue Vauborel in the front, three more onto the alley in the back. There is a small and ancient bed, his coverlet smooth and tight. A tidy desk, a davenport. “That’s the tour,” he says, almost whispering. Her great-uncle seems kind, curious, and entirely sane. Stillness: this is what he radiates more than anything else. The stillness of a tree. Of a mouse blinking in the dark. Madame Manec brings sandwiches. Etienne doesn’t have any Jules Verne, but he does have Darwin, he says, and reads to her from The Voyage of the “Beagle,” translating English to French as he goes—the variety of species among the jumping spiders appears almost infinite… Music spirals out of the radios, and it is splendid to drowse on the davenport, to be warm and fed, to feel the sentences hoist her up and carry her somewhere else.

The fact is, nobody would have known from looking. An outsider walking past my cubicle that morning would have seen a petite woman of thirty-four with long, light brown hair pulled back in a barrette, neat and orderly-looking. Closer inspection would have suggested a perfectionistic, polished exterior, a careful attention to detail: a young woman with well-manicured nails and black leggings and Italian shoes; a daily list of things to do sitting on the desk, written in perfect print, several items already neatly ticked off; a workspace so compulsively tidy that one of my staff writers used to say you could fly a plane over my desk and it would look like a map of the Midwest, everything at perfect right angles. Colleagues saw me as smart and introspective, a little reserved maybe, and a paragon of efficiency at work: organized, professional, productive.

An individual has been described by a neighbor as follows: “Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.” Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a farmer? The resemblance of Steve’s personality to that of a stereotypical librarian strikes everyone immediately, but equally relevant statistical considerations are almost always ignored. Did it occur to you that there are more than 20 male farmers for each male librarian in the United States? Because there are so many more farmers, it is almost certain that more “meek and tidy” souls will be found on tractors than at library information desks. However, we found that participants in our experiments ignored the relevant statistical facts and relied exclusively on resemblance.

An individual has been described by a neighbor as follows: “Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.” Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a farmer? The resemblance of Steve’s personality to that of a stereotypical librarian strikes everyone immediately, but equally relevant statistical considerations are almost always ignored. Did it occur to you that there are more than 20 male farmers for each male librarian in the United States? Because there are so many more farmers, it is almost certain that more “meek and tidy” souls will be found on tractors than at library information desks. However, we found that participants in our experiments ignored the relevant statistical facts and relied exclusively on resemblance. We proposed that they used resemblance as a simplifying heuristic (roughly, a rule of thumb) to make a difficult judgment. The reliance on the heuristic caused predictable biases (systematic errors) in their predictions.

It’s okay. And clearly you’re not the thief either or you’d hardly be hunting for the real one.” “I just want to clear my name.” “Understandable.” Mr Jackson applied the Band-Aid to his knee. On the desk, Angus noticed a second photo. Mr Jackson with his arm around a little girl. Five or six years old, maybe. “Who’s she?” he asked, indicating the picture. “My daughter. She died.” “I’m sorry,” he said again, not knowing what else to say. “She was in hospital for a long time. The staff were good to her.” Neither of them said anything for a time. “Look,” continued Mr Jackson, finally, “I think it’s great that you and your friend are trying to find the thief. But you have to be realistic about your chances. And you definitely don’t want to be going into any school rooms without permission like you did the other day or you will end up in even more trouble.” “Okay,” Angus said, standing up. “Just a thought,” said Mr Jackson, “but if you’re serious about finding the culprit, I’d look closer to home.” “Closer to home?” Angus didn’t understand. “The phone was found in your tidy tray, right?” “Yes, but—” Angus couldn’t finish as Mr Jackson’s own

I’m sorry, I should have realized you’d be hungry. If you let me give you intravenous fluids, it would help.” The moment she put the glass down, she retreated to her computer desk. He ignored her comment. Why do you not feed? The question was asked casually, curiously. His black eyes were thoughtful as he studied her. From her position of safety across the room, Shea watched him. The weight of his gaze alone broke her concentration, took her breath away. She was feeling far too possessive of this patient. She had no right to tangle her life around his. It was frightening that she was reacting so uncharacteristically to him. She had always felt aloof, remote, detached from people and things around her. Her analytical mind simply computed facts. But right now, she could think only of him, his pain and suffering, the way his eyes watched her, half-closed, sexy. Shea nearly jumped out of her skin. Where had that thought come from? Knowing she wouldn’t want to think he was reading her mind at that precise moment, Jacques did the gentlemanly thing and pretended merely a casual interest. It was nice to know she found him sexy. Smugly he lay back with his eyes closed, long lashes dark against his washed-out complexion. Despite the fact that his eyes were closed, Shea felt as though he witnessed every move she made. “You rest while I shower and change my clothes.” Her hands went to her hair in a futile effort to tidy the wild thickness of it. His eyes remained closed, his breathing relaxed. I can feel your hunger, your need for blood nearly as great as my own. Why would you attempt to hide this from me? With sudden insight he let out his breath. Or is it that you are hiding from your own needs? That is it--you do not realize it is your hunger, your need. The gentleness in his flooded her body with unexpected heat. Furious that he could be right, she stalked into the bathroom, shrugged off her robe, and allowed the warm shower to cascade over her head. His laughter was low and taunting. You think to escape me, little red hair? I live in you as you live in me. Shea gasped, whirled around, grabbed frantically for a towel. It took a moment to realize he was still in the other room.

to a small room. Set up as a home office with computer, filing cabinets, wood desk and two small bookcases, the space was cramped but tidy. One small window looked out onto the darkness. Jason closed the door to his office, took a key from his desk drawer and unlocked the top drawer of the filing cabinet. He stopped and listened for any sound. This had become habitual even in the confines of his own house. That revelation was suddenly profoundly disturbing to him. His wife had gone back to sleep. Amy was sleeping soundly two doors down. He reached in the drawer and carefully pulled out a large old-fashioned leather briefcase with double straps, brass buckles and a worn, glossy finish. Jason opened the briefcase and pulled out a blank floppy disk. The instructions he had been given were precise. Put everything he had on one floppy disk, make one hard copy of the documents and then destroy everything else.

Photos Cherish who you are now If you have been sorting and discarding things in the order I recommend, you have likely stumbled across photographs in many different places, perhaps stuck between books on a shelf, lying in a desk drawer, or hidden in a box of odds and ends. While many may already have been in albums, I’m sure you found the odd photo or two enclosed with a letter or still encased in the envelope from the photo shop. (I don’t know why so many people leave photos in these envelopes.) Because photos tend to emerge from the most unexpected places when we are sorting other categories, it is much more efficient to put them in a designated spot every time you find one and deal with them all at the very end. There is a good reason to leave photos for last. If you start sorting photos before you have honed your intuitive sense of what brings you joy, the whole process will spin out of control and come to a halt. In contrast, once you have followed the correct order for tidying (i.e., clothes, books, papers, komono, sentimental items), sorting will proceed smoothly, and you will be amazed by your capacity to choose on the basis of what gives you pleasure. There is only one way to sort photos, and you should keep in mind that it takes a little time. The correct method is to remove all your photos from their albums and look at them one by one. Those who protest that this is far too much work are people who have never truly sorted photos. Photographs exist only to show a specific event or time. For this reason, they must be looked at one by one. When you do this, you will be surprised at how clearly you can tell the difference between those that touch your heart and those that don’t. As always, only keep the ones that inspire joy. With this method, you will keep only about five per day of a special trip, but this will be so representative of that time that they bring back the rest vividly. Really important things are not that great in number. Unexciting photos of scenery that you can’t even place belong in the garbage. The meaning of a photo lies in the excitement and joy you feel when taking it. In many cases, the prints developed afterward have already outlived their purpose. Sometimes people keep a mass of photos in a big box with the intention of enjoying them someday in their old age. I can tell you now that “someday” never comes. I can’t count how many boxes of unsorted photographs I have seen that were left by someone who has passed away. A typical conversation with my clients goes something like this: “What’s in that box?” “Photos.” “Then you can leave them to sort at the end.” “Oh, but they aren’t mine. They belonged to my grandfather.” Every time I have this conversation it makes me sad. I can’t help thinking that the lives of the deceased would have been that much richer if the space occupied by that box had been free when the person was alive. Besides, we shouldn’t still be sorting photos when we reach old age. If you, too, are leaving this task for when you grow old, don’t wait. Do it now. You will enjoy the photos far more when you are old if they are already in an album than if you have to move and sort through a heavy boxful of them.

All the creatures seemed happy to be at the library. The Headless Horseman gave horsey rides and the kids lined up! Someone brought out a ball and played fetch with the Hound of the Baskervilles. Dracula told jokes. The giant gently picked up some kids and lifted them high in the air. Everyone was enjoying the fun. The characters didn’t seem so scary now! Virginia Creeper’s happy smile suddenly changed to a worried frown when she looked out the window and saw the seniors’ book club coming up the walk. “Oh my,” said Ms. Creeper, “I almost forgot. It’s time for the book club! They can’t see this! It will give the seniors such a fright.” “Go and tidy up while I stall them at the door!” the librarian told Miss Smith. Virginia Creeper blocked the impatient readers from entering while Miss Smith ran around in a tizzy. She picked up overturned chairs and straightened the book shelves. Outside, the seniors were getting grouchy, but inside, the kids and the characters had become too silly to notice. “Can I help?” Zack asked Miss Smith. She handed the Incredible Storybook to Zack. “Remember,” Miss Smith said, “we have to finish each story so that the characters will go back into the book. Read the last page of each tale, while I deal with this mess!” Zack opened up the book and quickly finished all the stories. One by one, the characters went back into the Incredible Storybook. The puzzled book club burst into the room just as Zack finished the last page. “Okay, class, it’s time to check out your books,” Miss Smith said. She guided the class toward the big front desk. Everyone thanked Virginia Creeper before marching down the library steps and heading back to school. With borrowed books under their arms, the children were looking forward to reading more about all the characters they had just met. Zack smiled and wondered what they would read tomorrow.

Studying history is for tourists - polite, tidy people with clean desks and clean consciences. Making history is for people willing to get their hands dirty, to make mistake and lie when necessary, so that someday historians can sit quietly at their desks and act shocked.

which a drawing imported into a text document can no longer be altered, but must be changed in the original graphics program and reintroduced into the text document.) Out of the box the Star was multilingual, offering typefaces and keyboard configurations that could be implemented in the blink of an eye for writing in Russian, French, Spanish, and Swedish through the use of “virtual keyboards”—graphic representations of keyboards that appeared on screen to show the user where to find the unique characters in whatever language he or she was using. In 1982 an internal library of 6,000 Japanese kanji characters was added; eventually Star users were able to draft documents in almost every modern language, from Arabic and Bengali to Amharic and Cambodian. As the term implied, the user’s view of the screen resembled the surface of a desk. Thumbnail-sized icons representing documents were lined up on one side of the screen and those representing peripheral devices—printers, file servers, e-mail boxes—on the other. The display image could be infinitely personalized to be tidy or cluttered, obsessively organized or hopelessly confused, alphabetized or random, as dictated by the user’s personality and taste. The icons themselves had been painstakingly drafted and redrafted so they would be instantaneously recognized by the user as document pages (with a distinctive dog-eared upper right corner), file folders, in and out baskets, a clock, and a wastebasket. Thanks to the system’s object-oriented software, the Star’s user could launch any application simply by clicking on the pertinent icon; the machine automatically “knew” that a text document required it to launch a text editor or a drawing to launch a graphics program. No system has ever equaled the consistency of the Star’s set of generic commands, in which “move,” “copy,” and “delete” performed similar operations across the entire spectrum of software applications. The Star was the epitome of PARC’s user-friendly machine. No secretary had to learn about programming or code to use the machine, any more than she had to understand the servomechanism driving the dancing golf ball to type on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Changing a font, or a margin, or the space between typed lines in most cases required a keystroke or two or a couple of intuitive mouse clicks. The user understood what was happening entirely from watching the icons or documents move or change on the screen. This was no accident: “When everything in a computer system is visible on the screen,” wrote David Smith, a designer of the Star interface, “the display becomes reality. Objects and actions can be understood purely in terms of their effects on the display.

I reached a point in my own life where I had enough. There was so much stuff around me that I just wanted to scream. I started to get really distressed when looking around my home at all the unnecessary things laying around. At first I took to “tidying up”, putting things away in neat little plastic boxes and lining these boxes up in perfect rows in my closets, desk and other storage areas. This didn’t do it for me, because the clutter would always return and I felt like I wasn’t getting to the root of the issue. I realized that my issue wasn’t just wasn’t the disorganization, but it was the matter of why I had all this stuff to begin with. In my mind, throwing stuff away became less wasteful than having acquired it in the first place. It was almost like this stuff I had acquired was a crutch. The expensive stuff I had was a way to tell myself that I am successful. The activity items, like cookbooks and sports equipment, was a way of pretending that I am consistently an active and dynamic person. The redundant items, like extra jackets and clothing, kitchen supplies, and books were a security blanket guarding against an unknown future (i.e. “you never know”). I suspect that the sentimental items from my past were also a way of holding on to what I know and a fear of moving forward.

order does not spontaneously appear out of nowhere, and if you leave something alone long enough, it will inevitably decay into disorder. Anyone who has tried to keep their desk tidy will understand this, the universe’s most intuitive and maddening natural law.

Yogurt is good for you. And it’s just one spoon,” Sharpcot had replied, but this stack summoned a billion voices, all of them saying in a chorus, “Just one spoon.” From kids’ lunches and store shelves and desk drawers and airline meal packs, in every country of the world: Canada and the United States and Nicaragua and Uruguay and Argentina and Ireland and Burkina Faso and Russia and Papua New Guinea and New Zealand and very probably the Antarctic. Where wasn’t there disposable cutlery? Plastic spoons in endless demand, in endless supply, from factory floors where they are manufactured and packaged in boxes of 10 or 20 or 100 or 1000 or individually in clear wrap, boxed on skids and trucked to trains freighting them to port cities and onto giant container ships plying the seas to international ports to intercity transport trucks to retail delivery docks for grocery stores and retail chains, supplying restaurants and homes, consumers moving them from shelf to cart to bag to car to house, where they are stuck in the lunches of the children of polluting parents, or used once each at a birthday party to serve ice cream to four-year-olds where only some are used but who knows which? So used and unused go together in the trash, or every day one crammed into a hipster’s backpack to eat instant pudding at his software job in an open-concept walkup in a gentrified neighbourhood, or handed out from food trucks by the harbour, or set in a paper cup at a Costco table for customers to sample just one bite of this exotic new flavour, and so they go into trash bins and dumpsters and garbage trucks and finally vast landfill sites or maybe just tossed from the window of a moving car or thrown over the rail of a cruise ship to sink in the ocean deep.

The trick is to imagine in vivid, motion-picture detail what your whole day will look like after you finish tidying up. That image should include three elements: the physical environment, your behavior, and your feelings. Visualize what your workspace looks like, such as your neat and tidy desk and where everything is stored; what you do there, including such things as enjoying a cup of coffee or refreshing aromas; and what you feel when you do that: for example, excited, fulfilled, or content.

As a rule, don’t store anything on top of your desk. Your desktop is a work surface, not a storage cupboard, so the rule of thumb is to store nothing on it. Pick a spot in your drawers and on your shelves for each item or category. As much as possible, the only things on your desk should be whatever you need right now for the project you are working on. Keep this image of a clear desktop in your mind when you start storing. People who do so usually finish with only a laptop and an ornament or potted plant on their desk. Designate a storage space even for things you use daily, such as a pen or memo pad. My clients are often surprised to find that it’s not inconvenient at all to store these things out of sight when not in use. Once they experience how a neat and tidy desk enables them to focus on their work, they quickly become addicted to that state.

The information we work with is frequently updated as we receive new materials and as the content of various projects evolves. Documents and papers quickly pile up. Even if we tidy our desk once, to keep it that way we need to stay on top of it, and that requires a mindset that keeps us motivated, an understanding of why we want to tidy up.

The findings of these studies can be summarized in three simple points. A tidy desk results in a higher evaluation of our character and capacity. This raises our self-esteem and increases our motivation. As a result, we work harder and our performance improves.

Father and I were stuffed into two rooms on the third story: a tidy, square office for him, with a big desk and a single window, and a gray, musty-smelling room with two narrow beds for me and my nursemaid. The newest one was a German immigrant named Miss Wilda, who wore heavy black woolen gowns and an expression that said she hadn’t seen much of the twentieth century yet but heartily disapproved of it thus far. She liked hymns and freshly folded laundry, and detested fuss, mess, and cheek. We were natural enemies.

Half a long pepper and lastly a teaspoon of troll fat.' 'Yuck,' Stef said, as she looked down at the small bowl of fat. 'Yes, it is a bit gross, but it's very effective,' Miss Maker said, as she walked over to the front row and paused by a cauldron that belonged to a girl with red hair. 'That looks fantastic, Patricia.' 'How does she know all our names?' Gerty whispered to Charlotte, forgetting that Miss Maker could hear them. 'Gerty, Charlotte, how are you getting on?' She smiled over at them. 'Erm, okay,' Gerty muttered quietly. Yeah, okay I think,' Charlotte added. 'Great!' Miss Maker walked back to the front of the room. 'Now take your spoons and place them into the cauldron, careful not to splash any of the potion. Turn it in a clockwise direction twenty times, like this’ She began to turn her spoon, counting the turns aloud. 'When you've done that, carefully remove your spoon.' 'Now take your wand out and say, 'strength potion make me strong.' Then add one cup of cranberry juice and stir another ten times in a clockwise direction. Pour a glass and drink up girls. This spell will only last for three hours, and then your body’s strength will return to normal.' Stef was the first to drink her potion, followed by Margaret and then Demi. Charlotte and Gerty exchanged looks before they picked up their glasses and drank the liquid. Charlotte looked down to see her arms begin to bulk up under her cardigan until large muscles were visible. 'Look, look!' Gerty lifted her blouse, revealing a six-pack of muscles on her tummy. ''Whoa,' Charlotte said, as she looked down at her own stomach and legs and saw that they were changing too. 'My thighs are huge,' Alice said disgustedly, clutching hold of her muscled leg. 'I feel so strong,' Gerty giggled, as she reached out and lifted Charlotte with one hand and balanced her above her head, spinning her around like a spinning top. 'I feel weaker Miss Maker, what's happening?' Stef asked, as she stumbled and gripped onto the table for support before looking down at herself. Her arms and legs had become much smaller, and she looked skinny and haggard. There were gasps at Stef's appearance as the other girls gathered around her. 'Can you show me what direction is clockwise?' Miss Maker passed Stef a spoon. Stef nodded as she put the spoon into the cauldron and stirred to her left. 'Oh dear.' Miss Maker shook her head. 'That is anti-clockwise, you're lucky the spell is only for three hours.' She led Stef over to the comfy chair that was behind her desk and then addressed the other girls. 'This is a perfect example of how careful you must be when brewing potions and a great lesson for us all. Now, we have to tidy up. Please be careful when cleaning the cauldrons and glasses, don't forget your new strength.' 'Have you seen Demi's muscles? They're huge!' A girl with black hair pointed to Demi's arms.

The goal of the method shared in this book is not just to have a nice neat desk but to begin a dialogue with yourself through tidying - to discover what you value by exploring why you are working in the first place and what of working style you want. This process will help you see how each task you do is linked to a joyful future.

1.5 Make time to manage People used to worry about keeping their desk tidy. Now it’s also about keeping the computer desktop tidy. Then there are the interruptions, the telephone, the meetings…Follow these nine tips to get rid of the time robbers in your life. 1 Be clear about what you want to achieve. Do the one minute wonder exercise opposite. 2 Plan your work. Write down your goals and break each goal down into sub-tasks. Give start and finish dates to each task. 3 Book appointments with your work. If a report is going to take two hours, then make an appointment with that report as if it were a real person. 4 Deal with tasks as soon as you can. If it’s an unpleasant task then do it first thing. 5 Be ruthless with time – but courteous with people. But don’t over-socialize either face to face or on the phone. Remember you’re eating into other people’s time as well! one minute wonder Write down your job purpose. Then write the five activities that help you achieve this job purpose. Rate each activity 1-5 according to how happy you are with the time you spend on each (1=low, 5=high). Now get those low – rated activities into your diary! 6 Deal with your email three times a day. First thing in the morning, mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Turn off the pop-up that tells you when an email has just come through. 7 Deal with interruptions. Ask the interrupter if it’s quick or if it can wait until later. If interrupted at your desk, then stand up to keep the other person focused. 8 Deal with your in-tray once a day. Take each item and: deal with it; delegate it; file it or dump it. 9 Plan your telephone calls. Save them up and do them in a block so they’ll be quicker and more focused. The worst feeling as a manager is when we think that the workload is too much for us. These nine tips make sure that you stay in control and go home each evening feeling on top of your workload. Being a great time manager leaves you with more time for your people.