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Comment by switchbak | Hacker News Reader

Is this just OCD, or is there an actual benefit to Knolling?

My gut reaction to this is that it's distracting compulsive behaviour, but I could be wrong. I've found organization for a workshop to be of unexpectedly huge value, so I could be wrong here too.

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I'm looking at my very much un-knolled desk, which has more piles than I would prefer it to, and it strikes me that if I regularly knolled this desk it would compel me to decide that maybe some of these things really don't belong on it, maybe some of them don't even need to stick around my life at all.

I mean clearly the toy dragon princess standing atop a pile of stray cash and a few doubloons is an important part of my desk and does not need to move. But does this wireless kit I'm never gonna attach to my drawing tablet need to be here? What about that badly-laid-out paperback copy of "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" that I quit reading in favor of a hardback copy a friend gave me? What about the dust jacket for that hardback? That probably belongs on the book sitting in my To Read pile with a bookmark a fifth of the way through it, not on my desk. And while pens are good to have maybe I only need one or two of them, not sixteen? Would I have accumulated even a quarter as much stuff on this desk if I knolled it every morning?

Knolling is starting to feel like a way of stopping clutter before it starts.

Stacking is vertical knolling.

These are not stacks. These are piles.

Perhaps they may even qualify as mounds.

My desk is trashed everyday and tidied at night with only the things I'll need for the next day left (knolled though I hadn't heard the term).

The top sheet of the pad has a context dump of what I was working on when I left, where I was stuck etc and a single action to take (usually an easy win).

I find that knowing exactly where to start the next day makes momentum easier to pick up and the process of deciding on what to do next morning gets work out my head so I can leave without dwelling on work.

Colleagues sometimes jok about it but their desks look like a grenade hit them and they often can't find anything so I'll take my approach.

I have my own office at work so I make sure that's tidy as well, th cleaners have been asked not to touch it (I prefer they don't move my stuff around)

Implementing strict organization can turn O(n^2) tasks to O(n), by removing the "look through my n tools to find the one I need" step.

That is, if you need n tools or parts for an assembly process, and if at each step you have to scan through these tools and parts to find the one needed, you have created an O(n^2) algorithm.

At least, this is how I conceptualize the value of workshop organization.

I've worked in both kinds of shops. Some shops are the worst piles of disorganization and others are shrines of kaizen. Ive spent a lot of time thinking about both and feel like those shops that are religiously organized tend to be the places where production and output is the primary goal where the less organized ones tend to be the ones where creativity is prioritized, but I'm not sure there's a direct correlation. I'm interested in other's thoughts on this.

It seems that it's really easy to find stuff. Like in this [1] picture, it's really clear where the sledge hammer is, but if things were arranged randomly it would be more difficult

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knolling#/media/File:Ten_Bulle...

That seems like a very interesting and useful application of theories in pre-attentive processing. When everything is aligned to the same orientation then the attribute of orientation may become almost effortless to perceive and cognitive resources can be devoted to more targeted feature recognition. There is a section of chapter 5 in the book "Information Visualization: Perception for Design" by Colin Ware [1] called "preattentive processing and ease of search" that goes into nice detail on considerations such as this. (See also [2])

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Information-Visualization-Third-Inter...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-attentive_processing

Sorting by shape and size instead of more abstract aspects like function, type, usage frequency is inefficient.

That image was removed from Wikipedia due to copyright violations, but the "How to knoll" bullets are the first image in https://www.curbed.com/2016/7/18/12215158/always-be-knolling...

If you are fiddling with lots of tiny pieces (imagine Lego, or watch components), you necessarily need to find every piece you use. If they are organized beforehand then it is much more satisfying and efficient to assemble since all the searching is done beforehand. Think of how it is sometimes much easier to process a list after sorting it.

Organizing Lego as it comes out of the box moves all of the frustration in model building to the beginning of the experience, and removes it from all the rest.

I'm not disciplined enough for "Knolling", but I can certainly say that such a practice forces you to put away things you cannot fit on your work surface, so you'd avoid the desk/workbench overflowing with materials and tools that is all too easy to have happen in non-computer activities.

I don't really do non-computer activities at my desk but I still have way too much stuff: drives/flash drives, a cpu fan, cables, adapters, notes (I like to sometimes use pen and paper when programming), a broken microphone...

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