Challenge: Organize Al Gore's Messy Office!

How fascinating!!  Dr. Amie Ragan, the brilliant mind behind the Psychology of Clutter blog posted this photo with a challenge to professional organizers including me to stage an intervention. What a great foto find, Amie. Thanks for the challenge!

Here's my response.  I would be absolutely thrilled to work with Al Gore!  I actually campaigned for the first Clinton/Gore campaign and met him very briefly back in 1987. I got to shake both of their hands.  It was so exciting!

I love his work, especially his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". He has accomplished so much and been so productive, I would actually pay him to let me work with him and learn first hand how he does what he does!  Then I would see if I could help him become even more efficient. I imagine he must have excellent time management strategies to have accomplished everything he has and I'm sure he could teach me a thing or two.

If I were so lucky as to have the chance to work with him, I would first focus on learning how he works and how his system works for him. I would only attempt to "fix" things that actually bother him AND that would truly save him time and improve his productivity. 

My guess is he has intense powers of concentration and can block out all the clutter rather easily.  He strikes me as having an excellent memory as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if he actually can find things in those piles.  Probably not everything, but probably most of what's important to him. My approach would be to make sure I don't try to over-organize him or change him too dramatically. After all why fix what isn't broken?  Just because it looks messy doesn't mean it's not working for him! 

I'm definitely jealous of his monitors. As someone who uses 2 monitors, I'm already wishing I had a third!  It makes it so much easier to research and write! 

Check out Dr. Amie's post to see what other organizers are saying!