LMDTFY News

Clear your desk, clear your head, see straight, think straight!

Is the place you work neck deep in clutter? Is your desk awash with paperwork?

If so it's time to get down and dirty, wade through all the rubbish and organise yourself. Why? Because a tidy working area is about much more than aesthetics. It's all about power. Clutter is a dead weight. It drags you down. It takes longer to find stuff. There's no room to work freely. It drains your power. You're less efficient, imaginative, creative, inventive and innovative. 

Here's a list of the worst offenders: 

• Groaning filing cabinets and drawers bulging with stuff you don't really need to keep
• Heaps of trade magazines you've never had time to read... and probably won't ever have time to read!
• Piles of printed-out web pages you once liked the look of
• Reams of ancient correspondence from years ago that's no longer any use to man nor beast
• A computer filing system that's so multi-layered you can't remember where to file things
• An inbox full to capacity with old emails

If you're an office hoarder, you're not alone. Plenty of us like to keep all sorts of rubbish 'just in case'. It makes us feel safe, especially in a business context. But clutter doesn't help you get to grips with growing your business and making a success of it. Quite the opposite. 

If you're swimming around in tons of junk - admit it, most of it is junk - it's time to drop a few pounds (or tons) and let yourself swim freely and unencumbered through those shark infested business waters!

• Make space in your diary for a blitz and stick to it
• Enlist a brutally honest non-hoarder to help you
• Attack your paper mountains first. You'll feel much better when the visible clutter disappears and it'll motivate you to keep going
• Make rules: if you haven't used it or looked at it for a year, chuck it out. If you can't remember why you kept it, ditch it. If it's no longer relevant, take a deep breath and file it in the bin...
• And stick to your rules with absolutely no exceptions. Or you'll never achieve that lovely state of mental clarity!

Next, your filing cabinets and drawers.

• If you have one or more files called 'misc', throw them away. If something is miscellaneous it ain't worth having!
• Discard catalogues for office furniture, business technology and corporate gifts. If you ever need the information you can find it online in seconds

Finally, your electronic filing system and emails.

• Prepare to spend at least half a day getting things sorted
• Create a clean, clear, logical new file structure from scratch
• Move current and useful materials to their new homes
• Get rid of everything you don't need, using the same rules as you used for your paperwork mountains
• Delete all your old emails, filing those you genuinely need in your new electronic filing system

OK. That's half the battle. You probably didn't enjoy that much, although you're delighted it's sorted. The best way to avoid having to de-clutter in future is to keep up the good work and maintain your new systems on a daily basis. Chuck out unwanted emails at the end of every day, file your electronic files, sort your paperwork and go home in the evenings with a nice empty head! 

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