Paper

I can't keep on top of it. My colleague has a clear desk and a few neat, ordered piles on the periphery. I can barely get to my keyboard to type this. I have a to do list and keep ticking things off but it doesn't seem to diminish the amount I have to do as I keep having to add things to it. "Tidy Desk" always seems so unimportant compared to the other things and, anyway, I don't really know how to tidy my desk. It sounds stupid but it's part psychological, part cognitive dysfuntion I think. I like order. I like tidyness. BUT I am not naturally inclined to achieving that. If literal suffocation or drowning in paper were possible I'd have been dead long ago. Instead I plough on with a permanent sense of foreboding whilst dressing frequent paper cuts.

Werner Von Braun said: "We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming". My 'gravity' is teaching. I'm pretty good at that.