CLUTTERED DESK, CLUTTERED MIND?

Cluttered desk, cluttered mind, or not!

Not too long ago, there was a popular expression “a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.” Or is it? It can also mean that “a cluttered desk is a sign of genius” and “a messy desk is only a sign of a messy desk.”

Many people see nothing wrong with piles of paper covering the desktop, even spilling on to the chair seats and office floor. I’m somewhere in the middle. When my desk, chairs, and tabletops are of full of paper, it means I’m in the middle of something important, or else I’m utilizing my creative potential and am writing. This is a good thing. But when I proceed to the next round of creativity without clearing off my clutter---that’s a problem!

What works for you?

The key is to work in a manner that allows you to be most effective. Almost everyone needs to get rid of some of the clutter. Here are a few ways to make your desk less cluttered and more efficient:

1) Keep, toss, or move. Find three containers. Label the smallest "keep." Label the largest "toss." Have another container labeled "move." The really vital stuff will go into your keep container to be sorted later. Anything that you want to take home from the office or give away goes into the move container. Everything else goes into the toss container. (Ideally your toss container will be two parts. One part will be trash to be disposed of. The other will be paper products, which can be recycled.)

2) Start with the oldest. You can tell by looking at them which pile is the oldest. Usually it is farthest from your chair. It will be the easiest to throw away items from this pile.

3) Evaluate each piece only once. Look at each item in the pile. Decide which container it will go into. You can't set it back on your desk for later, you have to decide now. Put everything into one of the three containers. There is no other option.

4) Ask yourself this... The first question is "do I have this somewhere else, or can I get it from someone?" If you have a copy in email, or in a report, or on the desk of the person who prepared the market analysis, etc., you don't need to keep a copy. Toss it. Then ask "why do I need this?" If the answer is a) to take action on it, b) to do something with it when I get more information from someone, or c) to refer to as I do other work, put it into the keep pile. (After you get rid of the clutter you will re-sort your keep pile by those three categories, so feel free to separate them now. It will save time later.) If your answer was anything else, toss that item.

5) Be ruthless. Be brave.  As you progress through each pile, getting closer and close to the things that just arrived, be ruthless in your decisions. Take no prisoners. If you really don't need it, toss it. And be brave. Don't hang on to something just because you might need it someday. (An old friend of mine used to keep stacks of newspapers in case she reads them one day; her entire house towered with stacks of newspapers and she never did read them. Mind you, she also had thirty-six stray cats! Hmmm. . .)

Hope that helps in your spring cleaning, which is anytime of the year!

MJM

Your Office Nanny to the Rescue!