1/ There is a direct correlation between the amount of stationery a woman owns and the quality of her work.

This simple heuristic can save you a lot of time in the office. The more stationery a woman owns, the more incompetent she will be.

2/ It is overwhelmingly women who fall into stationery obsession. There may be some stationery-obsessed men out there but I’ve never met one.

In this thread I will attempt to explain the allure of stationery and why it creates an excess of mediocrity and incompetence.

3/ It’s my belief that stationery hoarding is what Ted Kaczynski would call a “surrogate activity”.

Ted: “We use the term “surrogate activity” to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal“

4/ Fussing over stationery is a way to avoid actual work. It’s procrastination over the preparation without ever committing to action. It’s the illusion of work. Instead of “doing” things it’s eternally debating which colour marker pen to draw a “mind map” in.

5/ Many of today’s Western women are eternally stuck in the mindset of high school. The office is just an extension of that time period.

Stationery madness begins in school and continues until retirement. The new notebooks and pens of each school year form a lifelong habit.

6/ The callback to school stationery use is the crux of the obsession. New notebooks and pens promise a fresh start with every purchase.

New stationery gives a false sense of new beginning and infinite potential, when in reality it’s used just to jot down notes from a meeting.

7/ It also offers the illusion of creativity: a feeling very important to many women. Rather than creating something truly original, the same feeling can be generated more easily by constantly buying more stationery. The blank page, the untouched pen... both promise great things.

8/ Some women truly believe that just the right combination of Mont Blanc pen or Moleskine notebook can unlock their hidden potential.

Yet I would wager that Shakespeare didn’t agonise over which brand of quill he should use.

He just got on with it.

9/ The right pen and the right paper brought into conjunction, runs the unspoken thought, cannot help but result in a sudden influx of bold, brilliant and original ideas.

No. Hard work, practice, perseverance, talent and knowledge creates brilliance. Not pens.

10/ The other allure of stationery is the promise of organisation.

Concertina files, ring binders, and plastic wallets all promise to help the muddled mind, clouded with fuzzy thinking and illogic, to reach new organisational heights and achieve more.

11/ Stationery really can help in organising things. This is doubtless. However, when too much time is spent focusing on the stationery itself rather than its usage, then the whole thing is meaningless.

17 newly-purchased Muji binders aren’t going to help you if they’re unused.

12/ Whether the purpose is creativity or organisation, the incompetency created by Obsessive Stationery Disorder is still the same.

It’s a surrogate activity.

It’s a replacement for action itself.

13/ It’s avoiding what really needs to be done but pretending you’re doing it. It’s putting an almost magical belief & faith in objects rather than confronting ones own strengths & weaknesses.

And that’s why the women in the office with the most stationery are the most useless.

14/ It’s also my belief that there is something very fundamental being expressed in female stationery obsession and that it is connected to both gender and genius.

This goes much deeper than a love for pretty pens.

15/ Edward Dutton ( @jollyheretic) and Bruce Charlton in their book The Genius Famine talk about the differences between “The Head Girl” and “The Genius”.

The genius is typically a high-IQ male loner with low social agreeableness but who is talented or compulsive in one area.

16/ The Head Girl is your average office female. An all-rounder with high social agreeableness and who cares deeply about what others think of her.

The Head Girl can never be a creative genius because she only does what other people want by the standards they most value.

17/ “She will work harder and at a higher standard in doing whatever it is that social pressure tells her to do - and she will do this by whatever social standards prevail, only more thoroughly.”

Stationery is this. It allows the Head Girl’s work to be “seen” by others.

18/ The bright colours of marker pens and Post-Its show those around her that she is “working” when really she isn’t.

Gathering around a flipchart and writing words in bubbles is really about social validation and intra-group cohesion building. Not work.

19/ The lone genius meanwhile doesn’t care about social validation so quietly grinds away without the need of stationery to announce his work.

This is how geniuses create great work.

This is how good workers get things done.

This is why the woman with 5,000 pens is useless.

20/ All the above said, I warn anyone reading this about confronting women at work over their Obsessive Stationery Disorder.

I have noticed that the compulsion can run so deep in some that criticism of their stationery is almost like a criticism of their soul or person.

21/ This is female bugmanism. Just as the male bugman builds his identity around his nerdy Funko Pop bobbleheads, the bugwoman sees stationery as an extension of her very identity. Calling her collection of Post-Its “excessive” is tantamount to saying she has an ugly face.

22/ If you’re a manager, understand the warning signs of Obsessive Stationery Disorder and delegate around those people who exhibit the symptoms. Look out for excessive stationery in interviews. Consider asking screening questions about how many ring binders they own.

23/ In particular be most wary of those who exhibit a penchant for bright multicoloured stationery. These are the same kind of people who coordinate their book shelves by colour. Insane people who are all surface and no substance. https://twitter.com/moldbugman/status/1079660162489638912

24/ Stationery has now also taken over most bookstores. Further proof if any was needed that stationery is a vehicle for endless introspective narcissism rather than genuine talent.

Stationery. Colour-coordinated bookshelves. Reusable tote bags.

They are all the same evil.

25/ I leave the final word on stationery to Dorothy Parker.