I have no excuses for allowing these small, yet important, bits of card cluttering up my desk; it is a task that should have been completed months ago. Action must be taken now!

The Impact of a Mess

According to Lisa Johnson Mandell desktop clutter can cut careers. She suggests that “messy work spaces may be shaping the way your co-workers and supervisors perceive you.” I guess that having no co-workers has allowed me to become sloppy over the last few months. Apparently as many as 66% of us admit that our organisational skills are lacking – quite a damning figure if you think about it. Yet if I think about those cards taking 5 minutes after a meeting to record the information into my electronic contacts file and place them into the plastic file then I would feel much more organised today.

Trouble is we invent every excuse under the sun why we should not do that right now. Well this stops here and now. By the end of today each one will be recorded and filed correctly and there will be no future build up.

Lisa Johnson Mandell also “If you have piles of paper and a to-do list filled with items that keep getting perpetually pushed back, think about how these examples of procrastination impact your productivity” I agree that procrastination is a killer in the work environment. It is important to make a decision whether to take an action or not, then move on – put the papers away (preferably into the round file in the corner of your workspace) and get on with the next task.

Do Computer Programs Assist in De-cluttering your Desktop?

There are several applications that are supposed to reduce desktop clutter. They allow you to scan you work and hold electronic copies of the various things that you have on your desk. Trouble is that you could simply be moving the clutter from one location to another, not a wise idea!

Ideally the computer program will not only record the item either as text or as an image but also tell you when you need to complete associated actions (even if that is a year from now). Ultimately the only reason to keep something is:

• for historical significance
• because it will assist in a future project, or
• bacause we like it.

Part of the problem we face today is that in addition to the physical clutter we also have a large amount of electronic clutter, that in some respects is hidden in the inner recesses of your computer’s hard drive, to be ignored forever.

Organisation Tips

Having performed several Google searches in researching this article I do recommend that readers take a look at the following two sites:

• 12 Tips for an Organized Desk by Mark Shead

• 30 Day Cut the Clutter Challenge: My Desk by Jo-Lynn Shane.

I like the idea of getting rid of the pens and pencils that you do not need, so basic yet so important.

Decisions

Ultimately if you are not going to use something, then chances are it is clutter and should be placed in the garbage pile. Trouble is we tend to want to cling onto things, like trophies of past successes and the offchance that it may be of some use in the future. Chances are if you are inclined to throw it out then you don’t need it.

In the same way as physical clutter, electronic or virtual clutter is taking up valuable space on your computer. if you don’t need it then delete it. However I think that there are greater opportunities to record past histories through our computers. Generally in the electronic world there are too many copies of a document floating around our hard drives – it is these we need to tidy up first. You can safely delete an email becasue usually someone else will have a copy if they believe it to have some importance.

The point is that you need to decide whether to keep an item or not. Once you no longer need it then dispose of it, or delete it.

Call to Action

So now it is time for you to take a look around your desk and ask if you really need it. Resulting actions should be to file each item or dispose of it. The end result should be a tidy desk.

Another useful thing that I do is if you have an important deadline for something I will use post it notes and usually post on my computer as a reminder I put mine on my computer because it’s where Im at most of the time. For someone else it could be another place or another useful thing is if you have a cell phone that has this option you can put in your calendar and set to have an alarm go off to remind you.

Whether your running a busy household or an office the key is to know what your doing when your doing it and where your going when your suppose to be going.