In defense of a messy desk — The Economist

If you keep a cluttered desk, you’ll love this article from The Economist. This piece is near and dear to my heart, but a warning: it’s pretty long. And it was written 11 years ago, so some of the specifics may be dated; after all, a lot of organizational resources – and even the iPhone – weren’t present in 2002. Here is a teaser: “Work by Steve Whittaker and Julia Hirschberg of ATT Labs-Research, however, suggest that clutter may actually be quite an efficient organizing principle…There is a ‘warm’ area, of stuff that needs to be got through in the next few days: it may be there, in part, as a prompt. And there is a ‘cold’ area, at the edges of the desk, of stuff which could just as well be in an archive (or, often, the bin).” Take that, chronic organizers!

Executives learn the basics in social media — Wall Street Journal

CEOs and other high-level executives are paying as much as $60,000 for a two-day course to learn the basics of social media. And you might be surprised how basic these basics are, such as teaching the difference between a Facebook “like” and “share.” The class gets into much more detail and ultimately hits on complex marketing strategies involving social media, but it’s surprising to learn how little some executives know about something that is second nature to workers in their 20s and 30s. And that suggests again how beneficial a “reverse mentoring” program would be for some companies. I linked to an article about the practice in my first blog on November 13.