Well… I didn’t get my assignment done on time. It wasn’t that didn’t have time or some emergency came up; I just completely forgot. Which brings me to the topic that I would like to discuss in this blog post: the importance of organization in the workplace.

I can remember my very first job interview out of college, the Eastman chemical company. The interview went fine, but something one of the interviewers asked me stuck with me: ‘How do you keep track of your tasks?’. I can’t remember what I said, but I 100% exaggerated my organizational prowess. I never even really took notes in college, much less having an outline of my day, my homework due dates, etc.

Anyways, I got a job with a different company, but that man’s wisdom became painfully apparent when my inability to structure my work (long term deliverables, action items, meeting preparedness, etc.) started to show. You can only use the “I’m sorry, I’m new here” excuse for so long (for those curious, I would say you can ride that wave for about 6 months). Co-workers started getting angry with me, leadership started to notice… it was bad. It was frustrating for me as well. I had always done really well in school and, outside of the organizational issues, I was doing really well at work too. So, for me, it was frustrating to be tripping up on these “insignificant” organizational issues, when I was performing so well at the technical aspect of my job.

I think it was my second yearly performance review when it occurred to me that I had an issue that needed to be fixed. I had done really well at some technical aspect of the job, but I still got an average rating for my yearly review. I was upset because I thought I was outperforming my peers and didn’t understand why they were getting higher ratings. That was when my leader at the time gave me very open and honest feedback that I was performing very poorly in “the little things”, as she called it. She went on to say that in a big company with large teams, it is important to get these little things completed because everyone else is typically relying on others to get their work done as well. She gave the example, if I don’t update my environmental records on time, the environmental technician can’t get their report submitted to their boss on time, which means the boss can’t report to the government agencies the appropriate numbers. In large teams, everything is connected and, no matter how good at technical problem solving you are, you are never going to out output the team collectively.

This really resonated with me. With an understanding of the importance of managing these smaller tasks, I started to put effort into organizing my work. However, organization is habitual and it took awhile for me to get better at it. I realized along the way that that interviewer’s question was right all along. You have to have a system to keep track of your tasks. I’ve tried several different methods throughout the years, and I honestly think it doesn’t really matter the method that you choose to organize your tasks. Whether it be OneNote or a physical notebook, I don’t think it really matters. What is important is to have a system. Some way to remember all of the tasks and routinely revisit them so that none fall through the cracks. I feel like I learned this lesson too late in my professional career and for the first few year it hurt my performance. I hope that this post might help others to not make the same mistakes!

Nate