Are you a spreader or a nester? Professional organizer identifies four workplace types

Office workers fall into four main categories when it comes to arranging desk and drawer space, says a Toronto professional organizer.

“There is no point for an organizer to come in and say, ‘Do it this way,’” says Isolde O’Neill, who works with small- and medium-business entrepreneurs.

“People will not stick to a solution if it doesn’t match how their mind works,” she said in an interview Friday.

She identifies four main personality types.

The Spreader: Often highly intelligent, with a head full of ideas, such as artists and professors.

Spreaders let their belongings migrate. Open a drawer, look under a desk — their stuff is everywhere. If they put anything away it’s only to lump everything into a cluttered mess.

Tip: “They stick to systems, they just can’t create them,” O’Neill said. “You need to say, ‘This is where you put books. This is where you put pencils. Develop the habit of putting items back after use.”

The Nester: Likes to personalize.

Under the guise of making a workplace welcoming, this type of employee can sabotage a professional atmosphere. Photos, clothes, food, holiday snapshots, children’s artwork — the office space becomes a home away from home.

“You might be focused, maybe better focused with your family presence giving you a sense of purpose, but that’s not how you’re perceived,” O’Neill said.

Tip: Confine yourself to personal touches that everybody can enjoy. A digital photo frame can display hundreds of rotating photos of family, pets and children’s artwork in one eye-catching location.

The Filer: Often the life-blood of a smooth-running organization.

Efficient, productive and agreeable, employees in this category have one downside — a perception of being resistant to change.

“They have a system that has worked for them since were 12 years,” O’Neill said. “The filer is perceived as stuck in a pre-digital age.”

Tip: Purge. Do you really need every annual report back to 1987?

The Piler: A master of multi-tasking, involved with every kind of group.

Distrustful of systems and afraid to discard anything, pilers stack things on the desk, the floor, the window ledge — on any flat surface that keeps their material apparently in sight and close at hand.

Tip: Create an “action folder” of priority work at the front of the nearest drawer. Organize other papers into trays marked, “work in progress” and “to file.” Do not let the second tray exceed two inches high before material really is put away in filing cabinets.

“Pilers don’t think alphabetically, they think chronologically,” O’Neill said. “You have to reinvent what a filing system is to them and there are a million ways of doing that.”

Part of a relatively new field, a dozen or so years old, O’Neill holds membership in the 500-strong Professional Organizers of Canada, reachable through the website www. organizersinCanada.com

The Toronto Star
John Goddard      
Business Reporter