Had the supervisor come for a discussion (not the errant one, the other one), here in his office which I have taken over temporarily. He is not so good at throwing things away, and there are piles of paper gradually growing on the horizontal surfaces everywhere. Since I have been here, I've added my own piles. Which look a lot like his. So when he came to talk and I wanted to show him some of the papers that I have been getting ideas from, and that I wish to use as data sources for the Model, they were lost in this Cfined space. I hate that. My work desk is clean and clear except for what I am working on, and everything else goes in a file. My home desk has one pile, everything else lives in the filing cabinet. I get rediculously upset when I can't find something.
So I have tidied up. My stuff, not his.
I'm not sure exactly why I get so upset about this kind of thing. One of the reasons is I don't feel competent when I can't find what I am talking about. I also feel a fool, which is a different feeling for me than non-competency. It also wastes a lot of time looking for stuff, which is time I don't have available. But this doesn't really explain why I have a clean and clear approach to desks - it seems just a wee bit anal, and like there should be some childhood trauma making me so paranoid about losing stuff on desks.
Posted by Toni at December 11, 2003 01:32 PM