Work productivity, time management, organization, tools and tips

If your motto is “a place for everything and everything all over the place”, you’re probably wasting precious time searching instead of working.  How’s that workin’ for ya?  Why not try organization? 

The toughest and the most distasteful but the most obvious place to start is the desk and those piles of stuff on and around it.  Oh yes, I know all about those stacks of files and papers on the floor; been there, did that. 

The truth is that a tidy desk reflects a tidy mind, and you'll have much better luck being creative if you aren't distracted by the piles of paper staring you in the face every time you sit down at your desk. –Sharon Sarmiento, Write now is good, “Organizing the Writing Life” Day 1: The Maximum-Efficiency Desk 

The only things we absolutely need on the desk are things that deal with current projects.  The dictionary, the thesaurus, any other reference books will be very happy on a shelf where they won’t be buried under piles of papers.  Those piles of papers need to be sorted:  keep and file or throw away.  The filed papers belong in, yep, a filing cabinet.  If you don’t have a filing cabinet, a box will work.  The trash can belongs where those piles used to be. 

Be quick and be ruthless when it comes to trashing.  We have the Internet now.  There aren’t too many things that can’t be retrieved, if we toss something by mistake.  Too many hours are wasted if we need to wade through a bunch of useless junk. 

Make faster decisions. Clutter happens when you put off making decisions. Try to get into the habit of quickly deciding whether you should keep paper, mail and other items. The faster you can make confident decisions, the faster you'll keep things moving through your life, which prevents backlog. –from Life Organizers.com 

The time taken to streamline the work area is time well spent; the result is streamlined work.