Productivity501: A few months ago we put out a request for tips on keeping a desk organized. Here are the tips that were submitted.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Tips For An Organized Desk
Productivity501: A few months ago we put out a request for tips on keeping a desk organized. Here are the tips that were submitted.
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This article just says the same thing 50 times. GET CLUTTER OFF YOUR DESK. Okay, we get it. There are some decent strategies for doing this but basically if you get everything off of your desk except what you need and what you need only you will then have a happy desk. This format for an article is confusing as well. It is just a series of quotes from a lot of different people and each person just mentions the same general thing over and over but there are a few gems here and there and I think that after writing this comment I am going to clean off my desk.
Thank you for letting me know that if there are and excessive amount things on my desk than it is messy, and if there are not, then it is clean. Clean desks are great, and I think many people agree about that. It's clear from this article that they do, actually. Yes, it can improve productivity and increase the general "feng shui" of life. Keep the things you need, throw away the things you don't. I know from personal experience that this can actually help a lot (or alternatively just help me to procrastinate while still making me feel like I am accomplishing something......) Overall, good plans are mentioned for general desk organization, but the article was very "state the obvious," and didn't really tell me anything new.
Jackson is right. We only need to hear this once to have the point made. Although it is true. A clean, un-cluttered desk will always result in better would than would be churned out if it were dirty. There is no need for me to continue on saying the same two as the other two. Keep your desk clean. Get work done.
The most important piece of advice I got from this article was to keep your desk clean and only leave the essentials on top. I do this on my desk at home as well as in the studio. Being able to walk in to start working on something and not have to shove stuff off of my desk to make room is really nice and helps me get straight to work without getting distracted. I would disagree with the suggestion of a smaller desk that "forces you to keep organized". I love having a large surface to work on and spread all of my work out on so I don't have things stacked on each other.
As brought up by Jackson and others, the point of keeping the top of your desk clear was incredibly redundant. Other advice, such as "Whenever possible delegate things that are not the best use of your talents to others with applicable strengths." is good advice, but not relevant at all to the article. There were a few people that put a lot of emphasis on going paperless to help keep your desk clean, which I feel is good advice, but maybe not right for every demographic, job, or age group. The other issue with going paperless is that while it does lessen the amount of paper on your desk, you then have to have a system of keeping all the files organized in your computer and have them backed up thoroughly. Now, this isn't a particularly difficult task once you get your system set up, but it does need constant maintenance to keep it useful.
I agree that this article is overly repetitive in the things we should all know to well- just be a neat person! Over the 17 years of my existence as a human being, I have been anything but neat- my desk is mostly cluttered with do-dads and past assignments. I realize that this does not help my productivity in the least bit- having a fresh working environment is important in having well organized, tidy work, and therefor a better product. Nevertheless, I feel that some amount of clutter, inspiration, or at least a group of interesting/ useful objects on your desk can make the task of working a little less lonely. I will take from this article the useful fact of- the smaller the desk is, the better- other than that, nothing new.
I always seem to have trouble keeping a neat desk in my dorm or in the studio. I had opened this article to hope to get some good advice that I could maybe go apply to myself, but instead just got them telling me what not to do or what is already the obvious. It was like listening to a broken record, it was nothing new that I haven't already heard before. Sure, some of the points made like a less cluttered desk helps you be more on task is true and all but nothing we haven't all heard at some point. The one thing they did actually go to make a new idea about was to possibly get a smaller desk, and have that be a method to force you to be more organized due to lack of space. That I feel was something that most people would have a problem with since to work you need to be in a comfortable and open environment that you don't feel cramped in.
I feel like in college I've adjusted to not even having a desk. I have one at home, but I mostly use it to store pens, pencils and bills. In general I carry most of the things I need in my bag. As long as you have a way to organize your tasks and computer I think that's all you need.
What I found useful in this article was the suggestion that for one week you should "...remove everything from your desk…" and that all the things that you don't use over that week should be permanently removed form your desk. I think there's some validity to that, despite the fact that the rest of this article is simply redundant and vague. Often I find my desk to be filled with things I don't use with great frequency, but need a place to stash, and the things I do need (like paper) are a half-a-dozen or so yards away. (Though walking a 10 second round-trip won't kill me, it will disrupt my work flow, especially if I'm "in the zone," or whatever.)
Though I think a clean desk, table, work-space, etc. is generally conducive to productivity, I would also argue that think that sometimes, especially for intensely creative projects where multiple types of messy medium are involved (coughcough, shoe project, coughcough) it might be more helpful to leave the mess out while you're in the process. Putting everything away and then taking it back out again might take more time than its worth.
Some of these comments could prove helpful ("Develop a plan for how you plan on getting organized, and then break the plan down into manageable chunks.", or specifying what to label your folders or using a corkboard to help remove the paper from the actual desk) but some are truly pointless. Just as a messy desk has important items that cannot be found among the clutter, this article has useful tips that cannot be found among the ridiculous ones such as just buying a small desk or "having as few things as possible so you don't need to organize." Stating "get rid of clutter" or "clutter causes stress" is completely useless. People reading this article already know these things, that is why they are reading the article. They want solutions, and hopefully they can find them among the meaningless commentary.
While this article was not helpful in the slightest, it goes to show that everyone needs to develop their own organizational system and arrange their desk in the way that works best for them personally. Besides having a clutter free desk, there's no advice that can help everyone. I arrange my desk carefully to suit my needs, but that may not apply to someone else. There's absolutely no overarching desk organization tip besides controlling clutter. It's too personal.
A common theme in this article seems to be to put less stuff on your desk. This is not so much advice as it is reiterating the issue with disorganized desks. More helpful advice would have suggested different methods of organizing and storing the stuff that is on your desk that you use regularly.
"Have as few things as possible" does not seem like a very good piece of advice to me. I think that the idea to organizing any space would involve a proper method of maintaining and clearing away the things that you do have. For example, keep trash, old papers, or things you don't need anymore away from your desk space, and possibly discard them, but you can't simply tell people to not have things. To me this implies that you wouldn't have a lot of work in the first place (although a lot of our work can be done on computers), which means that you would have less of a motive to keep your desk clean anyway.
I make a point of completely emptying my desk every night. This way, I am better able to sort through what I have accomplished and what I still have to do.
While I am definitely not a neat freak, the environment in which I work most definitely affect the efficiency of the work. And I believe that for me as materials on the desk increases, so does time wasted. I would much rather have to reference things on a separate monitor than have a stack of files on my desk.
All you need on this article is a link to The Container Store. AND the Elfa sale is in January. They would have everything you need to separate different papers into folder, files, or boxes. They have unique shelving and containers for desk organization specifically, and they offer many little tools that will make you're workspace more efficient. Elfa is a company that can customize you're drawers and shelves to fit exactly what you need to optimize your space and organization. And they are removable so you could bring it with you from office to office. Anyone with with a cluttered, disorganized, or inefficient working space need only one single trip to The Container Store and you won't know how you were ever able to work before.
So many comments saying the same thing, "clean off yo desk!" Of course they need to clean it off, but how is that actually going to happen? Commenting on a picture sure isn't. However if instead of making this article, they took the time to clean, then they might be in a better place.
I find that a clean desk and clean room make for a much more effective use of my time. Even if I have to take ten minutes cleaning before I work, that work will be more productive negating the time I lost cleaning. You just have to manage your time.
This was a waste of time to read. I could have read the first "tip" and then clicked out and commented on this article. What an incredible dysfunctional article. Its simple that if you have a place for everything at your work area, and you put it where it goes, your desk will be clean. A clean desk is more about discipline rather than tips and secrets. Take five seconds and put your stuff where it goes.
There were some helpful tips but most of the comments just say that the best way to organize is to organize and that is extremely unhelpful. Also due to the fact that is seems to just be what people posted about the topic there is a lot of repetition and is fairly confusing. It would have been nice if someone had taken all of the comments and condensed them and made the format clearer.
I think i get it... I need to get all the crap off of my desk. Good to know, I never knew that having last weeks food wrappers ontop of my old essays and excess syllabus from classes was the reason why I'm so unorganized. This article was no help, almost every single tip was "clear off your desk." Articles like these in my opinion are worthless. Anyone can say "Hey whats your opinion on throwing a party at school" and then post the 400 comments that either say "do it and get expelled" or "better have a drink for me or else you'll get expelled." If your gonna ask for anyone and everyones opinion you then need to go through and pick out the most common and or your opinion of the most insightful comments.
Okay, I get it: get rid of clutter. Keep useful things in an easily reachable place. Be as paperless as possible, and when you can't be, keep organized files. Don't keep useless things. Without distractions, you're more likely to be a more productive person. I wish this website took these suggestions and made an article formatted with the most recommended tips at the beginning and interesting tips and/or alternatives toward the end. That way, we don't have to read the same things a million times.
I like to call a cluttered desk one with charm. My desk, both in the studio and at home/my dorm are like a safe place for me. I want to keep them clean but still inject my personality into it, adorn it with little trinkets or things that remind me of fun memories or stickers that I have designed. Some may call my desk cluttered or disorganized, but as long as I know where everything is, it's fine right? This article essentially regurgitates the same information many times, basically saying “keep your desk clean! Get rid of stuff!” Yeah we get it. In my eyes, if your workspace is keeping you inspired and keeping you in the right mindset to continue focus, there is nothing wrong with that. Some things I like to keep on my desk are a butterfly calendar (or something relating to butterflies,) a plant of some sort, photos or stickers, and a cute mug full of writing utensils. It must always be a cute mug.
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