Never mind spring cleaning at home, you need to think about decluttering your office. A tidy workplace gives you peace of mind and can lead to more productivity.
Start with these five easy steps:
1. Get your filing system right. Take a good look in your filing cabinet. Do you really need all that paper? Be ruthless and throw out what you don’t need. Then archive what you need to keep but don’t need to hand.
2. Look at your desk. Mounds of paper? Get ready to get stuck in! An old boss of mine regularly printed of stacks of emails. You don’t need them if you have them saved online so bin them. Keep anything relevant for day to day business close at hand.
3. Don’t blitz it. Resist the temptation to get it all done in one fell swoop. Instead do bite size clear ups over a period of days.
4. File regularly. It is an excellent habit to get into. Try using the last fifteen to twenty minutes of each day to file that day’s work. Get your desk tidy to start work again in the morning.
5. Organise those cables. Unless you are lucky enough to be totally wireless, you will have a host of monitor and computer leads together with charger cables all adding to the chaos on your desk. Get them organised using zip ties or one of those wonderful cable management solutions.
Welcome to your new clutter-free world.