How Messy are Print Buyers’ Desks?

Earlier this month in a Print Buyer Online.com Quick Poll survey, we asked our print buyer members “How messy is your desk?” It sounds like a silly question, I admit, but if you dig deeper, you will understand the importance of organization with the myriad projects a buyer handles on any given day. Here are the results of the survey:

• 13% of print buyers said, “Messy? Never! I’m super organized and my desk is almost always cleaned off by the end of the day.”

• 52% of print buyers said, “Somewhat cluttered. I vacillate between being super neat and being messy. (Perhaps a sign of my frame of mind?)”

• 34% of print buyers said, “Very messy, but hey, I know where everything is! Messiness doesn’t mean disorganization.”

• 1% of print buyers said, “Messy or neat — (sigh) I can never seem to find things.”

Of the 116 respondents, several used this question as a platform to provide us with some very interesting comments:

“I have found that the minute my desk becomes disorganized, I lose something of importance.”

“I can always tell when I am getting behind by the state of my desk top. When it gets too messy, it means I will be losing my weekend to catch up. What is amazing is that from the first symptom of ‘behindness’ to a lost weekend is a very short time-frame.”

“It depends on how many projects I am juggling at the time. There may be a lot on my desk - and sometimes on the floor, but I know where everything is!”

“It is much easier to start out organized then to try and become so. I try to use this rule: pick it up and either toss it, file it, or work on it.”