Tidy Workspaces
By Tana M. Mann Easton, Lead Efficiency Engineer
Our surroundings can pull us toward our intentions or away from them. For example, if you’re trying to eat better, you want to get all of the junk food out of your house. If there is junk food in your house/your environment, then your surroundings are helping to set you up to fail in your intention to eat better.
Your work environment can also help or hinder your intentions. If your physical desk and/or computer desktop are unregulated messes, you are most likely losing time and energy to your environment. I once had a client who worked with many piles of papers on his desk. He talked about the fact that multiple times every day, his eyes would land on those piles and start thinking about them. What are in the piles again? Do I need to do something with them today? Each time his brain latched onto these convenient distractions to avoid the harder work he was supposed to be doing, he paid many valuable minutes trying to get back to work.
If you find yourself distracted by your workspace, there are some rules that I developed for myself throughout the years that have kept my surroundings sparce and clean.
First of all, I scan in paperwork, and keep it filed digitally. I almost never have hard copy paperwork at my physical desk. It is always stored digitally. If I need to use hard copy paperwork, I keep that in file folders in a drawer and out of sight until I actually need to work on it. Once I take the hard copy paperwork out, I work on it until I’m done, and then it goes right back to where it permanently resides. I don’t let paperwork pile up all day or all week. I use it and promptly put it away.
Number two, I keep supplies on my desk to a minimum. I usually only have one pen and one notebook on my desk. If you regularly use more supplies than that, have one of those on your desk too. I have a back-up pen and notebook in my desk drawer so if my pen runs out of ink, I know another one is close at hand. I use my one notebook very sparingly to take phone messages if my computer isn’t already booted up, and then I immediately enter a digital phone message once my computer is up and running. I don’t have multiple notebooks that I need to page through in order to find information. There’s always only one, and most of that information is digitized if it needs to be used in the future.
Next, I keep digital post it notes as opposed to hard copy post it notes on my desk. Google Keep and Outlook Notes are both places that I’ve used to take notes digitally as opposed to using actual post its.
I keep the desktop of my actual computer clean too. E-files aren’t saved on my computer’s desktop. I close programs and web tabs when I’m finished working on them.
Finally, before I shut down my work every evening, I reset my desk by putting all remaining paperwork and supplies away before I’m done for the day. So when I start again in the morning, I have a clean slate to start a new day.
Every time you can’t find something on a messy desk or your brain is distracted by an item on your desk, that distraction can add up to real time and energy that could have been better used in accomplishing the objectives you have for your day. I’m sure there are people who can function in messy environments. There are exceptions to every rule. But for the majority of people, doing a big one time clean/minimalization of the items on and in their desks and daily upkeep can free up mental space that can be better spent elsewhere.
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Productively Yours,
Focus to Evolve Team