A common cause of stress and overwhelm at work is feeling like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done that needs doing. A disorganized workspace can contribute to this. If you’re already stressed about having too little time, wasting a good chunk of that time searching for important information can send your stress levels soaring. An organized workspace helps you to find things when you need them. It lowers your stress levels, and reduces the mental nagging of clutter, allowing you to focus better. But it only works if your organizational system matches your work style and personality. There is no single method for how to organize your workspace that will work for everyone.
Use Zones
You’re familiar with zones. Think of comfort zones in a home with multiple thermostats, the zone defense of a sports team, or the activity zones of your child’s preschool. Step one of how to organize your workspace is to apply the same idea to your workspace. You may not have a Silicon-Valley-style ball pit and bean bag chair “ideation space” just for thinking. But you can segregate your customer-support files, from your marketing files, from your product development files. Consider what you need to perform each task to the best of your abilities. Does the lighting need to be different? Do you need a small table to meet with someone, or a slanted desk for drawing? Do you require multiple computer monitors?
L-shaped or U-shaped desks can allow you to access multiple zones from the same swivel chair. What if you have a square or rectangular desk? Do some of your work at a secondary desk or small table. I know of one executive who had two separate offices, with two separate desks. One was for all of his customer-facing work, and one was for all of his internally focused work. Another innovative solution was the small business owner who took over a conference room. He assigned each seat at the table a specific function. Then he moved around the table as he needed to work on different things.
For a thorough description of work zones and how to organize your workspace using them, I recommend Julie Morgenstern’s Organizing From the Inside Out. I read this classic when it first came out. It was one of only three books on space utilization that I kept when I moved cross-country. This book totally changed my life when it came to making sense of space.
Create Dedicated Space
In the modern world of co-working space, working from home, and laptop lifestyle entrepreneurs, many workers lack dedicated workspace. How can you learn how to organize your workspace if you don’t have workspace to organize? If you work from home, give yourself dedicated workspace. It can be a fold-away desk and filing system that is only out when you’re working. Or it can be an entire office. The point is that you will be better able to segregate work time from leisure time — as will your family members. Reducing your work hours from 24/7 helps you to be more focused and productive during your active work time. And it allows you to physically separate yourself from your work when your day is done.
Co-workers and laptop lifestyle entrepreneurs also benefit from creating dedicated spaces for themselves. Although, in their case, they need to bring their space with them. Pop-up desk accessories can be stored in your laptop bag or a rolling file storage bag. When you get to your assigned desk space or coffee shop table, unpack your accessories and set them out. Even if your view changes from day to day, your workspace will remain consistent.
Once you know how to organize your workspace into zones, you can easily incorporate storage (such as in/out trays or file folder racks) and supplies (such as colored highlighters, sticky note dispensers, or binder clips) where they will be the most use, based on the activities they support. If you are a mobile worker, you may want to have an additional zone at home for long-term storage of material you don’t use every day. Routinely switch items from your bags to your home storage as you complete projects. Home workers should routinely move project files from an active area to an inactive area in the appropriate zone.
Organizing Is Not Decluttering
Decluttering is what you do when you are downsizing your business, pivoting, or taking a new job. You go through all of the things you have accumulated and determine whether they will still be relevant in your new business environment. If they are not relevant, you throw them out or give them to the person taking your old job.
Organizing assumes that you actually do need all of the things you have for your business. The goal of organizing is simply to help you find the things you need when you need them. It puts the material you use close to the place where you use it. If there is no specific use for certain information, it can be moved to a long-term storage area. One common example of this sort of “useless” information is business financial information you are legally required to retain for a fixed number of years.
Neat and Tidy Is Not Organized
Many people confuse being organized with being neat and tidy. Back when I still had a corporate office, we had a clean desk policy. The security guards would come around at night and confiscate anything they found out on your desk (other than office supplies). The next morning, you would have to endure a lecture and a note in your personnel file in order to ransom your work.
I, and many of my coworkers, solved this problem by designating the top drawer of our desk as the pile drawer. We would gather up the piles on top of our desk at the end of the day and stuff them into the drawer. Then we would take them out and spread them out on the desk the next morning. All of our desks were neat and tidy. But unless we knew exactly what was in each of those piles (and many people did), we were not organized. Stuffing papers and binders into decorative bins and file cabinets wherever they will fit makes your office look neat and tidy. If you can’t find them when you need them, you’re not organized.
How to Organize Your Workspace Each Day
The solution to staying organized while still being neat and tidy is to allocate no more than 15 minutes at the end of the day for the process. Did you finish any projects that day? Move the project materials from active to inactive. Did you take out any reference material? Put it back where it belongs. Did you pick up any business cards? Digitize them into your CRM and schedule any action items, then toss the physical card. Did you make notes from any meetings? Schedule any action items, then put the meeting notes into your short-term or long-term storage for that activity.
For those who worry that out of sight will be out of mind, leave a single sheet of paper on your desk. That paper lists every project that you are working on, its current status, and what you plan on doing about it next. That will be sufficient to remind you. You don’t need every piece of paper related to the project on your desk.
