Order – and the virtue of orderliness – can help us meet our targets and pursue our strategic priorities more effectively. With order, we can get there faster. With disorder, we can lose our way, or we can take a very long time to get to our targets.

As common experience shows, order entails our putting everything  in place and having a place for everything. With respect to time, it entails doing everything on time, and having a time for everything. This is a prescriptionmuch easier to preach than practice. Nonetheless, it makes clear why order and orderliness make for effectiveness.

Having a place and a time for everything refers mainly to the external, material order. The limitations of space and time impose on us the imperative of using them well and of recognizing in actual practice their scarcity value. Thus, it is necessary to use both time and space efficiently.

Order, however, is not limited to the material order, particularly to the use of time and space. It points to a much broader and deeper value, which calls on all of us to keep an inner order and harmony.

In what does this consist? What does it refer to?

This refers to something more internal, more deeply embedded in our natural make-up as individual persons. It points to the need for orienting all of our work and all of our life towards the goal of self-development and self-realization.

First, the over-riding goal is nothing less than the actualization of the potentials we have. We have to tap into them with a view of achieving the highest possible level of personal development. We have to use all our talents so we become the best that we can be, despite our limitations and the other constraintswe face.

Second, the manner of getting to our goal has to be comprehensive. It includes everything that we do. It demands coordination of all our work and our other activities so they reinforce one another towards the achievement of our total personal development. It allows for no distraction and no frittering away of opportunity: Indeed, we have to seize every opportunity by which we can keep progressing, as rapidly as possible, towards our self-realization.

Third, there has to be balance and harmony in the process of carrying out our work and living out our life. We disregard no single facet of our life: We have to give due importance to all facets of our life and of our work. We also have to strike the proper balance and give due proportion of our time and efforts to the different strategic priorities we have to keep pursuing.

In sum, we keep a laser-focus on the big-picture goal of total, comprehensive personal development. We throw all our energy towards achieving that goal. We take care so there is harmony and proportion in our way of getting to that goal. All this is clearly much broader and deeper than our usual conception of what order and orderliness entail, which we generally limit to the good and proper use of time and space.