Desk organization can sometimes seem a difficult proposition. However, keeping your office desk organized is not the insurmountable task as it might appear at first glance. If you are facing a hard time completing your tasks at your workspace, you need to take a look around you and see if your work area is a mess. Moreover, this not only looks visually unpleasing but also having a disorganized desk makes it harder for you to process information and focus as clutter competes for your attention and results in anxiety, stress, and guilt. In short, it’s got to be cleaned and organized in any way.
Keeping your office desk organized is actually quite straightforward as long as you are ready to be thoroughgoing and committed and more importantly, you feel it is well worth in the long run as well. You can start with the following easy office desk organization tips that will help you tidy up your workspace surfaces and provide you more physical space, greater productivity, a clearer mind and a stress-free spot to get things done in no time.
Make space for personal items
There are certain things for example purse, phone, wallet, keys that you bring to the office every day and they require to be placed somewhere. Instead of chucking them on your office desk, you can designate a specific area for these essential but frequently clutter-promoting items. Additionally, you can also keep your phone out of sight whenever possible which in turn, also reduces the distraction you experience at your office desk.
Organize your computer desktop
Digital mess is counted as clutter too and can be a surprisingly distracting factor when you are trying to focus on your work. There is still work to be done if you probably have an absolutely spotless desk but if your computer screen is nothing more than a disturbing maze of unsorted files and icons. This problem can be resolved if you clean at least once a week any stray files present on your desktop and any nestle folders in other folders in order to streamline your home screen.
Do a Purge and a daily wipe down
If you want to organize your office desk you have to do a purge and go through every item present on your desk with the intention to see if you really need it. You can keep the stuff you want and remove the others that you don’t. By doing it right the first time you can make a significant advancement towards a more calm and organized office desk. Moreover, you should take the time at the end of every day to wipe down your desk to put away anything left on your desktop and start your next morning with a clean desk.
Hang a shelf over the desk
You can expand your workspace with only a few taps of a hammer that allows you to make room for storing extra books or tech items. In addition to that, it is also a clever way to display some artwork. You can swap in new layer pieces or frames of your choice, easily.
Put accessories off to one side
Every office desk requires a pencil cup, a lamp and a gewgaw or two. But it may get difficult to get to work if everything is strewn across your desktop. You should make sure that there is enough clear space to place your computer and a lot of empty desk space to spread out and write conveniently.
Focus only on your current task
You should always try to have only one item in front of you whenever it is possible. A lot of people are of a belief that they can work more effectively with a cluttered desk in messy work surroundings. Nonetheless, every study performed on such people indicates that their productivity multiplies twofold and threefold usually overnight when they are forced to tidy up their workspace in order to have only one task in front of them.
Color code the files
You can keep your important papers and files but you can take an extra step for your ease and divide them into different sections along with colored folders. For example, you can assign red folders for marketing, blue for design/creative, green for sales and yellow for reports and so on. In this way, you can quickly recognize a color when you require a specific item.
Use drawer dividers
Lastly, you can conquer the desk drawer junk with the help of drawer dividers. You can keep business cards, flash drives, and sticky notes in its compartments that allow you to easily grab them when you need them. Moreover, you can also make a spot in the desk drawers to place your office supplies. By using a utensil tray you can keep these things in place and your office desk organized.
Sort papers every day
By the end of the day, you should sort all of your papers to determine which of them need to be filed, shredded or scanned and then do that before you leave. This might cause a little pain the first time but if you make it a habit to maintain an organized office desk, this will take less than 5 minutes.
Keep a notebook handy
Since it is not realistic to put everything directly on your phone, you should keep a notebook on hand for jotting down things such as reminders and phone numbers. However, adding another item to your office desk may seem counterintuitive, but having a notepad handy will keep all the important ideas and information pieces consolidated instead of being splayed across your desk on scrap papers, menus, and envelopes.
Hang a Pinboard or keep a weekly planner handy
Bulletin boards are not only used just for school. A well-placed pinboard offers you to stay organized by presenting essential reminders and numbers within your eyesight. You can also hang a planner on your office wall to see your to-do list easily and keep yourself on track for daily events.
Finish your tasks as soon as possible
To avoid procrastination, you should do the work right now if something takes less than 2 minutes. You should finish the project as soon as possible to get it filed and out of your way both physically and mentally. In this way, the sooner you finish a task, the sooner it will stop distracting you and the quicker it will leave the precious space of your office desk.
