Why should anyone like a disorganized workspace when an organized workspace offers so much more?
Apart from visual appeal, an organized workspace reduces stress. Your brain receives a signal that there is a lot to do, because of the appearance of a cluttered workspace or environment. This triggers it to respond to stress.
An organized workspace helps you become more efficient while also reducing the rate at which the brain responds to stress. So, organizing your workspace is essential, if you want to stay a top performer.
We know this can be really tiring knowing that there’s a chance it could get messy again. So here some tools that can help maintain a neat workspace.
1. Arrange Your Things (Use A Tool Cart)
To reach your goal of staying organized, make a label marker on the file cabinet. Labeling a cabinet or file will save you from frustration, waste of time, and unnecessary interruption. Your colleagues won’t have to ask you about the whereabouts of the printing paper if you stamp a label- Printer Paper on the drawer.
Depending on what kind of work you do, you can use tool carts to keep things further organized. If your work required physical labor, then you would surely need a place to keep all your working materials.
2. Automate Recurring Task
If there are so many tasks you do regularly that take much of your time, automating them would be helpful. This will help you manage the time frame for a single task.
If your job demands that you get certain things done daily, Calendly can help you with scheduling events. And this will make you more productive most especially if you find it convenient to move to the next task when time elapses.
Also, we tend to get distracted by news from our colleagues or website adverts that pop up on our computer screen. Going through all these during working hours will only help you waste more time.
As the productive energy that would have brought more positive results is channeled to something else. So do well to work according to your schedule and plans.
3. Go Paperless
Have you ever had so much to do in a day that when you are done, you see papers scattered everywhere, leaving you to wonder how it all got messy in the first place? Don’t worry, you are not alone here. We have discovered an amazing way to sort this out.
Simply go paperless. Get rid of the errand post, sticky notes, messy notes, and random scraps of paper littering the whole place. Interesting Apps like Bear, Evernotes, Google Keep, etc can make note-taking super interesting.
Evernote helps take notes that are cloud-based, thus helping you gain access to them from anywhere. Dropbox and Box are also an excellent tool that helps with decreasing paper clutter and file cabinets disaster.
4. Organize Your Inbox
Have you noticed that every morning, you spend so much time reading emails? And some of them are not even necessary. Not forgetting that your physical workspace doesn’t wear the best look, a messy inbox can further overwhelm you. And using complicated labeling can create just more work for you. So here’s what to do.
If you’re using Gmail, switch your inbox to priority mode. Quickly unsubscribe from irrelevant emails that add no value to you and create filters for some of them, like the ones with loads of messages.
5. Hide Your Cords
Computer devices like your mouse, monitors, etc can make the work table a mess as the wires face the opposite direction. Hiding these kinds of stuff in a single place will reduce your stress. Simply use binder clips to put them out of sight. With these, you don’t have to be having wires scattered all around the whole place.
And if you have had this experience of your monitor going blank in the middle of work, you panic or think it’s broken down and makes you think your work is gone, you may be surprised to find that it’s just a wire that has been unplugged.
Don’t let this happen again if it has already created a “do it yourself” label for all the vital cords. You even use colored tape to separate all your cords from that of your neighbors.
Conclusion
Arranging and organizing stuff takes a lot of time. You can start off by first of all decluttering all that you have to organize as this allows you to save the time you would use in arranging things you won’t be using.
So, take your time to ensure that everything is in place and that you are satisfied with the new look of your workspace. Pay more attention to items duplicating themselves or such items that have duplicating functions. For instance, you have to keep two-color pens or three mechanical pencils that you’re never going to use, pick out the ones you use frequently and donate rest rather than allowing it to suck up space.
