Think about your work station or where you complete most of your work tasks…
How does that area look? Do you enjoy working in that area? Given the opportunity, how would you improve that work area? If your responses are favorable to these questions, congratulations! It sounds like you are satisfied with your work area. If your responses were not so favorable, let’s work together to see if we can change those answers.
Marie Kondo, star of Netflix’s Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, states that “tidying isn’t just a physical thing, it’s an emotional thing. You face things around you, and you face your inner self”. Does your work space reflect where you are emotionally, and are you prepared to challenge yourself to essentially ‘reset’ that space and start over?
Here are some ways to improve your work space:
Invest in a calendar
Some people prefer writing information on sticky notes, but what happens to those sticky notes when they are accidentally thrown away or misplaced? We lose that information that we were wanting to keep! Having a calendar where you can write your daily events and ‘to-do’ list helps you stay on track and remained focus during the day.
Ditch the unusable or broken items in your space
Many pens, pencils, highlighters, staplers, and white out tape dispensers have served us all, and, for that, we thank them. BUT, honoring their efforts by keeping them on your desk or shoved in a drawer does not serve you and your workspace. This rule should go for any object that simply does not work anymore. Discard the items (recycling, preferred!) and clear up more of your area.
Compartmentalize your space!
When we say “compartmentalize”, we mean filing, finding places for important things, and recycling or discarding items that you no longer need. Do you have documents that you absolutely NEED to keep? OK, file those! Grab a folder (any one will do!), label it, and place those particular documents in that folder. If you want to get real fancy, you can have different folders for different documents so you don’t have to go rifling through one folder for a specific document.
What if we receive mail that tells me that I ought to think about applying for a credit card because I was pre-approved for one even though I did not ask for it? While that was very kind of that company to do that for you, we will consider that junk mail. Take those documents and either shred them or discard appropriately. This just causes more clutter that you do not need!
Ask yourself again!
Remember those three questions at the beginning of this post? Consider those changes that you made to your work area and ask yourself those questions again. Are the answers any different than what they were before? It’s important to keep asking yourself these questions as you go through physically organizing your work area. It can be hard to part with certain items as they may hold value or some emotional sentiment to you. However, it is important that you are happy in the conditions that you are working in as this will increase productivity, improve your relationships with your coworkers and supervisors, and keep you on your “A” game all day.
We hope you implement these organizational skills into your daily work routine! You spend 1/3 of your life at work, so why not make it a place that you enjoy going to daily? I will be creating more organizational skills content, so be on the lookout for future organizing posts from yours truly.