Organization of Backpacks: Philosophy of organizing my daily backpack
Since Iv ramped up the backpack reviews, releasing a whomping 3 reviews last year, I have put a large emphasis on organization and how these bags met my organizational needs. Organization has been a large part of my life, going as far as saying it is a passion of mine, and was one of my roles as a manufacturing/industrial engineering intern at a military contracted aerospace engineering firm.
You might not realize it, or care, but the act of doing a repetitive task that does not achieve a useful outcome is a waste of the time you have on this earth. Learning or implementing organization skills in everyday life can free up so much time and relieve so much stress. Let me go into two examples, one that is not so relatable and the other that is specific to backpacks.
Repetitive tasks add up (skip to go to the backpack section)
The first is what I observed as an engineering intern those faithful years ago. I was tasked to improve the production efficiency of the factory. While examining the CNC machine - a computerized milling machine used to cut metal into intricate shapes - I noticed that the machine ran for only a fraction of the time that the machinist spent making a part. To be specific, it was about %30 of the time.
This was critical since the shop only had a few of these incredibly expensive machines that should be running continuously. This machine should be running %100 of the time since it was an important step of making a part from scrap.
Was the machinist slacking off? No way. This was the smartest and hardest working machinist in the shop pumping out more parts than anyone. So what was going on?
Turns out time was being lost when a finished part was to be removed and cleaned from inside the CNC and raw material to be placed and calibrated into the machine for the next part. Critical step, but a waste of this million dollar machine.
The time it took to open a door, clean the part, unclamp a part, remove it, add another part, clamp it down, and calibrate the machine wasted %70 of the work day. Each one of these steps only took a few minutes, at most 10 in the hands of a skilled machinist, but because the machinist had to do this many many times a day meant most of the 8 hour work day was lost to these non-productive tasks. This was the first time I understood how allowing yourself or a process to maintain such “non-value adding tasks”, even if they only take a second, can slow down the process of completing a task by so much.
For those wondering, the solution was to add a conveyer that would automatically change the completed part inside the machine for a pre-placed and pre-calibrated raw material block that was outside the machine and letting the machine self calibrate with probes. These two additions, the conveyer and probe, increased the time the machine was running by incredible amounts. This then freed up the machinist so he could operate another machine and increase his output by roughly 2-4 times.
I thought this was about backpacks?
Why does this relate to backpack organization? The same meager tasks can be brought to daily use of a backpack if we let it. If there is an item in your pack that you use multiple times a day, lets say a pencil, then adding that pencil between 3 sets of zippers might not seem like its wasting your time, but these small tasks adds up.
Lets do the math. If it takes 3 seconds to open the zippers, not much time at all, and you use the pencil 5 times a day then you use 15 seconds of the day opening those zipper for a pencil. Now you look at 15 seconds and think “that is nothing”, but did you ever wonder how much time your actually wasting of your life? If there are 260 weekdays in a year and you use the pencil all those weekdays then you used 3,900 seconds or 65 minutes or over one hour of your life that year opening up zippers.
65 minutes might not seem like a lot to one but think about this, If you are willingly to waste 65 minutes then you might also be allowing yourself to waste minutes in other areas of your routine, and ultimately your life. Just like all the actions of opening up the zippers added up, so would other actions add to this surplus of wasted time. Ones grand total could be days lost a year of things that they could have avoided with a change in methodology, a removal of a useless step, or with the use of a product.
These ideas come from many different organizational ideas, such as 5S (which I will not explain here), and are vital to an efficient working, well, anything; program, factory, structure of a book or essay, any user interface, mechanical system, running a company, planning a trip, cooking, household budgeting, morning routine before work, packing, reducing the amount of cleaning after baking a cake, managing to get the highest return on your taxes, etc.
What I'm I looking for in backpack organization
I have my own idea of organization and this includes three concepts. The first refers to a common phrase “A place for everything, and everything in its place”. All my items get put pack in the same place every time and every pocket gets its own “identity”.
I want a pocket for an idea, like charging or writing. I dont want to reach into that one pocket and pull out a mouse or allergy medicine when I want a pencil. Each pocket shouldn't be a lottery.
The second idea is that I dont want to open more zippers than I need to for one item or a group of common items, especially if I use it often. I dont want to open the main compartment, then the mesh compartment, take out a pouch, open the pouch, and then pull out a pen that I will need to use 5 times a day. This is not even including the action of putting the pen and pouch back. That small action takes up so much time and requires more than necessary amount of brain power.
One pocket for one idea. I open the main compartment of my CPL24 backpack and access everything I would need to sit down and start working. I can then reach into the already open top pocket and pull out a charger and its cables, but also pull out my ipad with the keyboard and apple pencil attached out of the elastic pocket, and lastly pull out the notebook thats sitting in the main compartment, so that I can get working as soon as I sit down at the cafe. Opened one zipper to pull out everything I need for that morning cafe work session.
The second idea can be expanded to create my third idea. I dont want a bag with hundreds of pockets so I can keep every little thing in a separate pocket. When I get to the library I need my agenda book, folder for my class, writing implements, eraser, ipad, calculator, and charger. I had a bag where everything was in a separate pocket, and while it “felt” organized, it was really a chore to sit down and start working.
On the contrary I dont want a sack with no organization. In this case people start to introduce pouches or just dump everything into the minimal amount of organization the pack has. Just like the 100 hundred zipper backpack adds time to a simple task so does adding the additional pouches or having to search one pocket that everything was dumbed into.
This is the line that we try to walk across. Not too tedious but too sparse. Not too many individual pockets but not an empty sack. Do I want a pocket for each cable or all the cables in one pocket or the cables packed with their respective chargers? Heavy pack will give me back problems but I still need all my items to get work done. What lets me make these dicisions is what Im willing to deal with.
You see the line I draw is not set in stone. It can be moved based needs, backpack, and what Im willing to allow myself to get away with. Maybe you have an item that you dont use often enough and you keep it in a specific pouch and are willing to deal with this system because maybe your backpack is one pocket shy of what you need. Or maybe you are a die hard minimalist and remove items that you might use, but wont use often enough that you are willing to just borrow one or buy it on the spot when its needed. That threshold that your willing to get away with needs to be found.
Conclusion
Of course this is just personal preference and I do not hold the best nor the most efficient organization system. I use one that works for me. One that provides a good level of organization such as a limited amount of non-value added tasks, grouping of items, and quantity of items.
There is still a lot of non-value added tasks in my setup, but I live with them because of what I would need to sacrifice to get ride of them. There is always a balance between what you are willing to sacrifice verses what makes you more efficient. I call this the luxury vs efficiency problem and its something I struggle with every time I dive into a new bag.
This is one of the reasons I like backpacks so much; they are a gateway into practicing and implementing my organizational techniques. Its the thrill of efficiency and knowing that all I ever need is on my back. If there is something I missed or something else you want me to talk about then add a comment.
