Productivity starts with cleaning your workplace

“If you wanna change the world, start off by making your bed”- W.H.McRaven

Just as the day starts with making your bed, productivity starts from an organized desk.

Did you know that an average office worker spends 76 hours per year looking for different emails, searching for digital and paper documents and office supplies (C. Sutton 2020)? Other research claims that on average, we spend 4,5 hours per week looking for documents. In addition to searching, we also recreate documents, which in reality are already existing "somewhere in a safe place" (A. Syal 2017)

And this is not where it ends, in addition to that, we also look for missing items in our homes for approximately 5000 hours within a lifetime: it is more than 6,5 months of searching (Ikea 2017).

What is the next step?

Book yourself 1-3 hours without interruptions.

1. Clear your workplace: go through all the paper that is on your desk, clean drawers, clean laptop bag, dust, eliminate items that you do not use, make sure that stationery (e.g. pen, notebook etc.) that you use for everyday work is there and working properly.

2. Clear all the computer files: delete files that you do not use, check out the folders and the documents and other files that are inside the folders, manage shortcuts, eliminate programs that you do not use - keep it simple.

Keep the notes and documents, that you use on a specific day, on your desk. We cannot handle all the topics at once within one day. Keeping topical documents and activities that must be proceeded (e.g. notepapers acting as a to do list) on the desk does not create additional value, rather they remind you of the tasks, what you have not completed yet (K. Gleesson 2008).