and most influential corporations; Hillary Clinton, patiently mastering the minutiae and intricacies of a seemingly intractable conflict as she engages Palestinians and Israelis at the bargaining table. And the ranks of the super-organized are not limited to government, big business or the pressure cooker of professional sports: how about J.K. Rowling, whose disciplined imagination enabled her to create the Harry Potter world? (Imagine how organized she had to be to keep track of, much less create, the Hogwarts faculty and their complex histories.)
There are numerous examples of famous people whose achievements lie, at least to some degree, in their ability to stay calm, focused and organized, especially in the midst of crisis. There are many other very successful people whose names might not make headlines but who have, through both innate and learned skills, managed to harness their cognitive powers in a way that makes them extraordinarily productive, both on the job and at home.
Let’s meet two of them.
ORGANIZED MINDS AT WORK AND PLAY
By 8:30 am most mornings, Rob Shmerling has already exercised for an hour, has caught up on world and national news, and is well into responding to his e-mails.
For two hours, he exchanges messages with colleagues and scours various websites for the latest medical news. Dr. Shmerling is a physician and the clinical chief of the division of rheumatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
It’s a big administrative job at one of the country’s leading hospitals—but it’s not all that he does. Shmerling, fifty-four, also writes and does research—he has authored a total of forty-one journal articles, book chapters or reviews, as well as numerous web stories for nonexpert audiences. He also teaches and mentors medical students and residents. He is a husband and a father of two daughters. He volunteers at a women’s shelter once a week. He and his wife belong to a book club (Janice Y.K. Lee’s The Piano Teacher and Kathryn Stockett’s The Help are two recent novels they’ve enjoyed). He also “hacks away” at the piano, is an amateur photographer and, on weekends, enjoys long bike rides in the Massachusetts countryside.
Oh, and he washes and folds socks, too.
“I’m the laundry guy,” he says proudly. “Everybody in our house has their job, and that one’s mine.”
Actually it’s one of many jobs, as you can see.
How does Shmerling cram it all into one day, one week, one life, and make it look easy?
He admits that he is a creature of habit and was always fairly structured. “I can recall organizing the crayons by color in those sixty-four-Crayola packs as a little kid,” he says with a laugh. But, he’s quick to add, a lot of the skills that help keep him organized he learned because he had to. And he’s still learning. “I’ve gotten better at ignoring things,” he said. For example, “We have this e-mail system where a quick preview of the e-mail comes up on your screen, and at first it was distracting. Now I’ve gotten better at sticking with the matter at hand. If it’s a really important message, I can attend to it, but I don’t let them distract me as they pop up.”
In the hospital, things come at Dr. Shmerling fast and furious. A patient’s condition might change. An administrative problem may arise. A resident or a nurse or a colleague may need an immediate answer. And sometimes the decisions really are a matter of life and death. “I used to get more easily flustered when several things were coming at me,” he says. “Now I’ve learned how to deal with it. Now I can shift pretty quickly from one thing to another and prioritize.”
The problems that do come up are often complex ones—what course of action to prescribe to someone with arthritis, lupus or osteoporosis; dealing with patient complaints or concerns; helping to mediate or referee internal problems that arise, whether with staff or fellow physicians. He knows how to act, but he also knows how to think before he acts. “I try to imagine the range of options for a given situation and figure out fairly quickly if this is something I’ve seen before,” he explains. “If not, if it’s something better done by someone else, or if I’m going to need someone else’s help solving this, I mentally file it away, putting it aside for later.”
Putting his attention on and pulling it off, deftly and smoothly, as the need arises—that’s a sign, as we’ll see, of an organized mind. Dr. Shmerling does it with a range of tools, some high-tech, some not. “If I have to jump off something, I’ll bookmark what I was working on,” he says. “Either with a mental or actual Post-it note so I can return to the right place quickly later on.” He also has a nice trick for keeping track of his reading (and in his job, he does a lot of it—reports, memos, articles). If he’s reading a Word document on the computer, “I’ll yellow-highlight the line I’m on so I can get right back to the page and the line I was on, without wasting time scanning through the document, going ‘where was I?’”
Shmerling uses a PalmPilot to keep track of appointments and to have other important information at a glance when he needs it, even though, he admits, “I’m regularly laughed at for using a device so ancient.” And while you might think someone being held up as an exemplar of efficient organization would have an empty, ordered desk at the end of each day, it’s not the case. Dr. Shmerling’s offices at home and at the hospital are filled with stacks of books and papers—but, he says, “While it might not look organized to you, I know exactly where everything is.”
The efficiency allows him some simple pleasures during the work day. People who feel overworked often claim they have no time to read anything but e-mails or work-related documents. Shmerling not only finds time to read The Boston Globe every morning online, he spends an extra few minutes doing the popular Sudoku numbers puzzle; and is a diligent fan of Doonesbury and Dilbert (“Another efficient office guy!” he jokes). Indeed, while he is a hard-working professional and leads a busy life, Dr. Shmerling is not some obsessed workaholic, constantly looking to squeeze another hour out of his life to devote to work. He likes to have fun, he likes to laugh, he has a rich and satisfying personal life and, oh yes, some of that time he manages to save by being efficient and organized, he likes to waste.
Here’s an example: “I like to stop sometimes on my way to work and have Starbucks. If I was really trying to be a time management-efficiency nut, I could save a few minutes by making the coffee at home or grabbing it at the hospital cafeteria. But I like stopping at the coffee shop. It makes the ride more pleasant. Nothing wrong with a little down time.”
A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Shmerling is obviously a smart guy. But he is quick to point out that his academic pedigree has nothing whatsoever to do with his ability to be efficient. “There’s nothing I learned at Harvard or anywhere else specifically that taught me any of this,” he says. “None of it requires any particular advanced degree. The measures I take to keep organized could certainly be adopted by others.”
Some of those are common sense and can be found in any of the dozens of books about organization. “Make a list of what you need to do tomorrow, at the end of each day.” Fine. Good tip. But there’s more at play here. The skills that Shmerling demonstrates—his ability to shift from one problem or stimulus to another, to sustain his focus, to attend to several things at once while prioritizing quickly the one that is most demanding of his attention and to do it with ease and grace while maintaining composure and good humor—speak to qualities that are linked not to the layout of his office but the make-up of his mind.
It’s an organized mind and, while he may have certainly nurtured it, nature created it that way. We all have the systems, the functions in our mind that enable us to become better organized, whether our job involves, as Dr. Shmerling’s does, people’s lives—or our life savings, as is the case with our next organized role model.
Let’s take a peek at a typical day for another organized person.
Catherine Smith starts her morning on the roads and trails outside her Connecticut home. Her daily, three-mile run is not only good for her heart but also her head. “It’s a re-energizing time,” she says, “but I also use it to clear my head, to think and to reflect.” Thinking! What a concept. Who has the time? But using that time to plan and reflect may be one of the keys to Smith’s success—and