Living in Florida means that I occasionally visit Disney World. If you have been to a Disney park, there is something that you might not have noticed, mostly because it is not there – TRASH! Disney parks are kept to a very high cleanliness standard. Walt Disney himself observed that if trash is left accumulate, it will quickly sour the experience. He figured out that by keeping garbage cans no more than 30 feet apart, the public would naturally throw out their trash.
So, what does this have to do with efficiency? David Allen used this fact as a jumping off point for an observation on his blog about how keeping a high standard is actually easier to maintain than it would first seem.
“That’s true around our houses and offices, too. If you’ve already broken the code, and left unclarified, unorganized “stuff” lying around, you’ll easily (let’s say even automatically and unconsciously) leave more of it.
“When my inbox is at zero, it’s so much easier to keep it cleaned up. As soon as it starts to get semi-out-of-control, the chaos seems to speed up exponentially. …
“Keeping things sorted makes it a heck of a lot easier to keep on keeping things sorted.”
Read the rest on the Getting Things Done blog.
“You spend a quarter of your life at work, so shouldn’t you enjoy it? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant takes you inside some of the world’s most unusual workplaces to discover the keys to better work. Whether you’re learning how to love criticism or trust a co-worker you can’t stand, one thing’s for sure: You’ll never see your job the same way again.”
“Imagine for a moment the perfect organizational system. One that supported and enhanced the work you do, telling you exactly where to put a piece of information, and exactly where to find it when you needed it. … I believe I’ve developed a system for organizing digital information that meets all these requirements. After several years of introducing it to a wide variety of people, I’m confident that it works. In this post I will attempt to show you how.”
Charles Duhigg is a best selling author of two great books on productivity and efficiency: 
“Physical organization has a huge impact on how we work. For example, I have a habit of taking the pile of paper on my desk and cleaning it out before I work. When my physical surrounding is organized, I feel like my thinking is organized as well. Some people say they find that when they are doing creative work, some clutter on the desk can make them feel more productive. There is no one set way to be productive at work – the physical space primarily works as a cue to a habit, like getting to work in a productive mindset.”
Physical actions are visible to other people such as calling someone on the phone, typing an email, drafting a memo, or talking to a colleague. A common trap is to believe that “thinking” about an item is a next action. Thinking could be part of a next action if that process is accompanied by a physical movement to capture the ideas, such as drawing a mind map.
book that provides an answer to this dilemma. In 
Sometimes when we think about the effort it will take to get organized a negative reaction will arise. Is it really worth all the time and energy necessary to put things in their right spot? How about the constant practice of getting things out of your head – sounds like a pain! Can’t we just relax and have fun?
Why do I use the word “efficient” to describe this path of librarianship? In my article, 
