Peace of Mind Organizing

Rededicating myself to the clean desk

5 February 2013

On January 5, 2008, I cleared off my desk. And I kept it cleared off, on a daily basis, for about four years. I’ve blogged about the effort and the rewards of maintaining a clean desk. I’m a huge advocate.

Then something happened in 2012. Disorder started to creep in on my desk. I allowed myself to use the lower left corner to store current papers, which just turned into an ugly pile. My pen collection outgrew my pen holder and random pens would lie around on the desk, but I still considered it cleared off. This unruly “clear” desk didn’t give me the productivity boost in the morning that the truly clear desk had. So then I stopped even trying and I’d come downstairs to my office in the morning to an unsightly desk.

After four years of success, I backslid in a big way. That made my mornings more difficult. It actually made making time for family history research more difficult.

So this past weekend, I decided to do something about it. I went through that unruly pile on my desk. And I went through the file sorter on the radiator next to my desk, a logical place for me to store the papers that formerly resided on the lower left corner of my desk. Once the file sorter was emptied (some of those papers, which had languished there for about a year, went into my file cart, but most were tossed), I put the active papers, like tomorrow’s to-do list and social-media checklist I’d created for myself, right in front of the file sorter.

Here’s a photo of the file sorter with my to-do notebook and my clipboard with social media checklist and my daily task list forms right in the front of the file sorter. I also decided to add my To-Do List Bingo board next to it. I think it looks nice and it’s very handy, since the radiator is within arm’s reach of my desk.

So each night as I clear my desk, I put those papers away in the file sorter. I know they’re there. They’re in sight. Nothing’s getting lost. And everything looks nice.

It’s feeling good. Yesterday, I had a very busy day and I needed to go upstairs for dinner. But I took two minutes to clear off my desk. It was so easy to put everything away. And it was so wonderful to be greeted by a clean desk this morning.

Clearing off your desk at the end of each work day is one of those daily habits (like running and emptying the dishwasher daily, in my world) that reaps huge dividends. It’s interesting to me that I’d let it slide. But the reward is so instant that I’m going to consciously make the effort—just like I did back in 2008—to keep it going.

If your work gets off to a slow start in the morning because your desk is a mess, I encourage you to try implementing this habit! It also makes work throughout the day easier, because you only have a day’s worth of stuff, at maximum, to negotiate around.

Tagged with: clean desk, habits, motivation, productivity

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