If you are reading this article at your workplace – look around, what surrounds your monitor on your desk right now? Do you know what each place on your desk is for, can you find everything at once? And the drawers? Is everything in them really important to have at your fingertips?
Let’s figure out how important workplace organization is, and how to free your desk from clutter. Most students don’t think about it. Many students can write paper, and the desk can be a mess, and no one notices it, because the priority is something else entirely. But that’s not quite right.
Why is workplace organization important?
First of all, the order on the desk really affects the productivity of the employee. Of course, we know of stories of thinkers who had clutter on their desks every day, and it never bothered them.
Albert Einstein once even said: “If a cluttered desk is evidence of an orderly mind, then what is an empty desk evidence of?” Indeed, the desk certainly shouldn’t be empty, because active work activities force us to leave reminders and notes, to surround ourselves with items of office life. But cluttered workspace dissipates attention. Scientists have long been proven that visually a person does not perceive more than five things in front of him.
When there are a huge number of objects on the desktop, the concentration of attention literally goes crazy. What to look at? What to focus on? In the head there is chaos, you feel tired, irritable, unable to concentrate on work tasks. According to a study by scientists at Princeton University, the organization of the workplace determines about 38% of the weight of concentration, which, you’ll agree, is not insignificant. We may not notice it, but try to unload the table from excess paper, old diaries and other unnecessary waste and you will feel relieved, and will be able to concentrate faster and respond to business challenges.
Where do you start? As usual, with a strategy of action. Simply throwing out everything from the table is not very constructive, it is necessary, first of all, to make the office space convenient for use.
Let’s start cleaning: 5 simple rules of Marie Kondo
1.Picture a picture of your ideal desk when you’re ready to start cleaning. Fantasize, ask yourself what you would like to see every day at work. Maybe it’s time to get a corkboard for notes. Or buy a desk lamp? A new nightstand or computer chair with a more comfortable backrest, a posture cushion can all be implemented in your workplace for personal comfort. It’s time to order a couple of little things for comfort and convenience right with delivery to your office, in the age of e-commerce it won’t take more than half an hour.
2.Start sorting things in the workplace. Arrange everything in your nightstand and on your desk according to the principle of “need” and “don’t need.” If you can’t decide how you feel about this or that thing, it means you do not need it. If you cannot do it yourself, you can hire a service like office clearance london to sort out the mess.
3. A nightstand or drawer is not a place for the essentials and hygiene items. Lipstick, comb, hand sanitizer and wet wipes are needed in the workplace very often, but are they so necessary on your desk? An interesting book to read at lunch, business cards, and a calculator are also important things, but they are not needed every minute. If you use them less than 3 times a day, it’s best to put them away in a drawer and not clutter up the space. Consumable stationery in the form of paper clips, erasers, scissors, etc. will also find their place in a separate drawer. Sort non-essential items by category.
4.It is important to understand that you choose when cleaning what you want to keep, not what you want to get rid of. This simple principle will help you to select the items you need the most and remove more junk.
5. If you have little space, and you want more, try placing things vertically. Placing things horizontally takes up a lot of space, and makes your desk look cluttered. Try to put diaries and notebooks into vertical paper holders. Place stacks of irrelevant documents that you may need in the future in files in ring binders and put them in a separate drawer. Space for pens and markers in a pen stand. Cork board – for notes and reminders on post-it notes. You’ll see how much cleaner your office space becomes around you.
Principles of workspace organization
On the other hand, your desk is your personal comfort zone. And if you want this area to have unusual for the workplace items that warm your soul, whether it is photos of children, souvenirs from the vacation or a small flower from home – let them continue to warm your soul.
Just try not to clutter up all the work surfaces with them – leave most of these things for home decoration. Try to see the percentage of these things in your workplace: it will be more useful for concentration if it is not more than 20% of the total area.
Often an employee’s desk is a reflection of the image he wants to form for his colleagues around him. This may be a desire to show status (expensive pens, business card holders) or to emphasize his formality and busyness (papers, folders, tablets). One should not criticize someone else’s workplace: for everyone it is created according to the principle “my home is my fortress,” and the employee’s desk may not have any chaos, in his opinion – he is just a creative person.
Cleaning and organizing the workplace is, in general, a purely individual matter. Listen to yourself, and if you feel discomfort and inability to focus on the tasks, take action.
