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<\/a><\/p>\nMy office this Sunday afternoon, as I battle with the mountain of paperwork that represents the REF to me.<\/em><\/p>\n But, easy though it is to blame the REF, that can only explain away the piles on the table. My desk, the other ample surface in my room, no, that is my responsibility and is customarily little better. So what is my excuse for this? As a child I was a floor dweller. I used to do my homework on my bedroom floor and I always knew which pile of books corresponded to which subject. Once a week I had to pick them up and place them on some surface so the floor could be vacuumed, but immediately thereafter everything would return to their proper place on the carpet.\u00a0 Unfortunately, that is not a sustainable way of working in an office environment. Nevertheless, I still try to work by piles \u2013 the separate piles corresponding to papers associated with different research topics, for instance \u2013 but, since they are on my fairly large desk and no one dusts its surface, they never need to get moved.\u00a0 Then there is the post (not much of that these days, but still some) that I\u2019m always going to answer but since I haven\u2019t worked out what the answer is yet, it can linger on my desk a little longer. Indeed, each letter or invitation can linger there until it\u2019s past its sell by date and when I next encounter it I can throw it away with a clear conscience. There\u2019s the teaching material, the stuff I\u2019ve come across I want to incorporate next year or lists of tweaks I want to make to existing slides; these notes can sit around from the end of one course to the start of its successor a year later. Finally, there are the papers associated with committees. These do get moved along quite fast, since I have to take them to the committee meetings and then they can get either shredded\/chucked or filed, depending on circumstances.<\/p>\n What this indicates, of course, is that I haven\u2019t caught up with a paperless office. I am still trying to adjust to using an iPad for committee meetings, as previously directed<\/a>, and having tried for a year or so I am firmly of the opinion that I can\u2019t operate that way when I am chairing meetings.\u00a0 I can\u2019t switch fast enough between the different agenda papers when they\u2019re virtual, or keep track of where the agenda is going. Some committees likewise haven\u2019t caught up with the electronic age and insist on sending papers in envelopes. Emails I can usually handle without generating any paper copy. Unless, that is, I want to remind myself of their content on a train (when 3G may still not be sufficiently reliable to permit instant access) in which case they get printed out for ease of reference. I still prefer to annotate student papers and draft theses in hard copy if I can, so that is another form of paperwork that spreads around. Paperwork that I\u2019m going to work on during that next trip to London accumulates in its own happy pile, although not for long in this case since my trips are so frequent.<\/p>\n So what\u2019s the moral? Is the problem that I am just irredeemably untidy, or that I\u2019m trying to juggle too many balls? Is a clear desk policy, beloved of some organisations and meant to indicate that each task is successfully completed by the end of every day and no potential privacy issues can be breached by material being left accessible (in my locked office? Hmm.) really the ideal I should be striving for? I have always felt a clear desk is symbolic of nothing going on that takes more than a day to complete. Nothing in my life feels like that is an accurate description. I am sure a tidy office is a new trick this old dog can\u2019t be taught. I\u2019m sorry if visitors find it chaotic (even if quaintly so) but for myself I can\u2019t imagine another way of working despite now being armed with an iPad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What do our surroundings say about us? If we choose to work in an office strewn with bits of paper, open files, journals and other debris, is this a testament to the fact our minds are on higher things and … Continue reading