Regina Leeds, the best-selling author of One Year to an Organized Life: From Your Desk to Your Deadlines, the Week-by-Week Guide to Eliminating Office Stress for Good, has a brand new book out that might come in handy as you work on getting your work organized for 2009. It’s called One Year to An Organized Work Life — and it’s different from a lot of the self-help, get-yourself-organized books that are out there.
There are two factors in this book that convinced me it would be useful to just about anyone. Most important is Regina’s approach: she’s known as the Zen Organizer, and her books are all about getting organized with a Zen approach. Don’t worry — that doesn’t mean that she expects readers to get touchy-feely about which drawer their paperclips go into. Instead, Regina’s references to Zen are a matter of focusing on eliminating stress. The philosophy of Zen is about creating calm — an impossibility when you’re stressed out over a messy desk or a disorganized calendar. To reach a more Zen-like state, Regina walks readers through getting rid of some of that stress.
The second factor that makes Regina’s book stand out is the fact that while the book has the word ‘work’ in the title, it takes a holistic approach. Regina makes it clear that a person can’t get his or her work life organized but still be unproductive at home. She quotes a Zen proverb:
…the way a man does one thing is the way he does everything.
Throughout the book, Regina makes a point of giving readers the tools to organize their entire lives, even if their current focus is work. After all, you can’t just stop being organized when you leave the office each evening.
The Twelve Month Guide
One Year to an Organized Work Life is organized in twelve chapters, one for each month. Each chapter is broken down even further into individual weeks. For each month, Regina sets out a work habit and a home habit for readers to work on developing. For January, for example, readers are asked to leave their desks every day for at least five minutes and to make their beds at home.
At first glance, these habits may seem to have little to do with getting yourself organized. Even the work habit is counter-intuitive: you’d think that doing something at your desk is more likely to get your stuff organized faster. But there is a reason behind Regina’s approach. Moving around for five minutes refreshes both your mind and body after hours of staring at paperwork — and knowing that you can step away from your desk for even a few minutes can reduce your stress over trying to deal with everything that has built up.
But why a home habit? The book is about work, right? Regina includes home habits as a part of that holistic approach I mentioned. If your home is more organized and less stressful, making the transition between home and work is that much easier. In both cases, Regina sets forth relatively simple habits. She also provides some simple advice on developing a new habit, including the advice to repeat the same action every day for 21 days to make it habitual.
The Weekly Tasks
In addition to monthly habits, Regina offers small tasks for readers to complete each week. These tasks range from something you can knock out in thirty minutes to something you may need to dedicate two hours to. The tasks vary: some involve setting goals, others cover reviewing your filing system. Regina devotes several pages to each task, making sure to provide readers with all the tools necessary to complete each task as well as explaining why the task will be useful.
We are talking about 52 individual tasks here, as well as 24 habits. It seems like a lot of work. I bet some prospective readers are already wondering whether it’s worth their while to spend the next year with One Year to an Organized Life. I think it can be worth the effort, though: setting out to get organized is very difficult without any kind of roadmap. You have to organize your organizational plans and it’s easy to get discouraged in the process. But Regina’s book lays out a clear approach. It might not be the approach you would have planned for yourself, but eliminating the planning phase can get you on the road to organization a lot faster.
I think Regina’s background has allowed her to create a logical approach to organizing work: she started working as a professional organizer in 1988. While Regina has done a lot of organizing homes, she’s also helped a long list of business professionals get their work under control. While organizing might not be an exact science, Regina has had the opportunity to see what actually works in the real world — and to find out where the pitfalls are. Her book acts as a roadmap around those problems.
Finding the Book
You can find One Year to an Organized Work Life on Amazon, as well as at many brick-and-mortar book stores. It is published by Da Capo Press and weighs in at 304 pages. You can find more information about Regina at her personal website.
While I might not recommend Regina’s book for every reader, I do think it’s a good basic route to getting your work organized. If that’s one of your goals for 2009, One Year to an Organized Work Life will get you going.
译文:
组织2009年的工作
Regina Leeds是畅销书《有组织生活的一年：从你的书桌到你的最后期限》和《每周消除办公室压力指导》的作者，最近她又将出版一本新书，它能帮助你组织2009年的工作。这本书的名字是《组织工作生活的一年》——不同于大量自助和使自己井然有序的书。
我相信在这本书中有两个因素对任何人都非常有用。其中，最重要的是Regina的方法：她以Zen的组织者而被世人所知，她的书都是以Zen的方法使事情变得有条理。不要担心——那并不意味着她希望读者对文件夹在哪个抽屉过于敏感，相反，Regina从Zen中借鉴到是关注压力的消除。Zen的哲学是创造平静——不可能纠缠于杂乱的书桌或者混乱的日程安排。如果读者想达到Zen的境界，Regina可以帮助他们消除部分压力。
Regina的书特别突出的第二个因素是这本书把“工作”作为她的标题，进行了全盘分析。Regina明确的指明一个人如果无法使他或者她的工作井然有序，那么在家里仍然会游手好闲。她引用了Zen的谚语：
...从做一件事情中就能看到一个人做任何事情的样子。
综观全书，Regina提出给读者配备工具组织他们的整个生活，即使他们目前关注的是工作。毕竟每天晚上离开办公室，你也无法摆脱有组织的生活。
12个月指导
《组织工作生活的一年》编排了12个章节，一个章节对应一个月。每一章甚至细分到每星期。在每个月里，Regina为读者制定了发展工作习惯和家庭习惯的任务。以一月份为例，书里要求读者每天至少从工作中抽出5分钟在家里整理床铺。
乍一看，这些习惯看起来可能和使自己的生活井然有序没什么关系。即使工作习惯也是反直觉的：你会认为在书桌前做事，能更快的把事情做好。但是在Regina方法的背后有一个原因，开始书面工作几个小时后，你需要5分钟来振奋一下自己的身心——因为我们知道离开工作桌几分钟，可以减少处理事情中累积起来的压力。
但是为什么也需要家庭习惯呢？这本书主要讲的是工作，不是吗？Regina书中包括我提到的整体分析的一部分家庭习惯。如果家里井然有序且氛围轻松，那么它更有利我们在家庭和工作之间转换。在两个例子中，Regina提出了简单的相关的习惯。就发展新习惯，她也提供了一些简单的建议，包括在21天的每一天不断重复相同的行动，使之成为习惯性行为的建议。
每周任务
除了每月的习惯，Regina向读者提供了每周完成的小任务。这些任务有的能在30分钟里解决，而有的则需要2个小时。任务内容：有的需要设定目标，其他进行文件系统的回顾。Regina用数页对每个任务进行描述，以确保提供必要的工具帮助读者完成每一个任务，同时，她向读者说明为什么该任务非常有用。
我们在这里讨论52件单独的任务和24种习惯，虽然看起来工作量很大。我敢打赌有些读者已经在想这是否值得他们花一年的时间来实践《组织生活的一年》中的内容，但我认为它值得我们去实践，尽管：如果没有路标，着手使任何事情变得井然有序非常困难。你不得制定组织计划，但是在这个过程中，你却很容易遇到挫折。但是，Regina的这本书指明了一条清晰的道路。它可能不你计划中的方法，但是除去计划阶段，它能帮你更快的走上有组织的道路。
我认为Regina的生活背景为她提供了创建有序工作的逻辑途径：1988年，她就开始以一个职业组织者的身份开展工作。Regina做了大量组织家庭的工作，她也帮助很多贸易专业人士掌控工作顺利进行。虽然组织不可能是一门精密的学科，Regina却有机会在真实的世界中看到它是怎么运转的——找到缺陷在什么地方，因此书中的内容成了一个个解决问题的路标。
寻找这本书
你能在Amazon上找到《组织工作生活的一年》这本书，同样，你也能在实体书店中找到它。该书由Da Capo Press出版，总共304页。你能在Regina她的个人网站中获得更多的信息。
我可能不会向每一位读者推荐Regina这本书，不过我真的认为它能使你的工作井然有序很好的途径。如果这是你2009年中的一个目标，《组织工作生活的一年》对你来说非常有用。
Thursday Bram是一个自由新闻工作者，并拥有5年的工作经验。她在塔尔萨大学学习了传播学，目前正在传播设计领域攻读MA。她的工作主专企业话题。有关Thursday更多的信息，提供在thursdaybram.com上。
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