Top Time Tip #100
An Easy Method To Keep Your Desk Clear of "Stuff"
6th March 2008
I'm penning this note to you on a flight from Dubai to Paris. The steward has just announced that we can send email and SMS messages from our seat. On one hand I can appreciate there are times this could be really useful. However, a major part of me laments that one more bastion of unavailability is being eroded. Just because we can doesn't mean we should! We need times when we're unavailable.
Let's take this flight as an example. For some time now I've been refining a new programme for CEOs and senior business people. One of the things I love about a long flight is the headspace for fresh thinking – time to read, snooze, think and process ideas – with not a phone or email in sight.
The last 20 hours, since leaving New Zealand, have (literally) flown by. My brain is buzzing – I've got enough content for a whole book, let alone a seminar!
Let's start a revolution - slow down instead of cramming more in! In fact, my friend Lothar Seiwert, leading German time management specialist (whose books have sold over 4 million copies in 30 languages) has just written another book on just this topic, called ‘Slow Down to Speed Up'. Here's one of his pearls of wisdom:
‘Those who reduce their pace don't work slower; they work more effectively and efficiently. In addition, they enjoy life more and have more satisfaction in what they do.'
And why am I swanning off to France, you wonder? Just for fun I've decided to learn French. Apparently small chunks of full immersion are very effective, so language school at Montpellier (in the South of France), here I come. And then next week it's off to the UK for work.
Au revoir, mes amis!
(With thanks to my wonderful team who are sending this ezine out whilst I bend my brain learning to conjugate French verbs!)
An Easy Method to Keep Your Desk Clear Of 'Stuff'
I was speaking at the conference of a Marketing Department recently on how to manage their office environment and overload of paper and information. Since their Manager had read ‘Getting a grip on the paper war' she'd been trying to convert her staff, but decided when the book got lost on someone's desk that she'd better get me in to help reinforce the message!
I asked: 'Who regards themselves as tidy and organised....' (Before the question was finished, most hands went up.) ... with their desks?'
A laugh went round the room, most hands went down, and some folk looked embarrassed.
That's a typical response. Most professionals, especially highly educated ones, haven't been taught simple methods to keep the desk tamed, and so that wonderful stress-reducer - a clear desk - is missed.
Seems to me it's so obvious that it's slipped under the radar.
Here's a simple desk-management technique to help you get through the mass of 'stuff' waiting for your quick action.
Chunk your 'put-away' tasks
Develop a 'Put it away as you go' habit, but don't be ruled by it. Chunk it.
What do I mean by that? Imagine yourself working at the desk. You finish with a file, or a paper out of a file. If you were to rigidly apply the ‘put away as you go' principle, you'd jump up, walk over to the filing cabinet, and replace it. Or maybe you borrowed scissors from the receptionist. She threatened you with early death if you don't return them, so the minute you're finished you do as you were told. Then, (if you're lucky and don't get distracted), back you go to your desk to start on the next activity.
Two possible things can happen here:
- You spend many minutes per day jumping up and down, interrupting the momentum you'd created at your desk.
- Because you've completed something and not yet begun the next task there isn't as strong a subliminal pull back to your desk. You're therefore more liable to be distracted by some interesting little by-way, a file that catches your eye, or someone else walking past.
To overcome that scenario, try this one instead. You finish a task and put the completed materials either on the furthest away point of your desk out of your immediate visual range, or maybe (as long as it doesn't cause a traffic jam!) on the floor beside or behind your chair. The next time you stand up, instead of stepping over the seeming clutter on the floor you ALWAYS bend down, pick it up, and put it away.
I learned this technique as a mother, trying to stay sane raising six children. (Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that one day these principles would be shared with business people!).
Whilst the children were little, (and anyone who's lived with children knows they have a profound disregard for tidiness) I found that, in a drive to keep the house looking a few notches above a war zone, a silly amount of the day seemed to be consumed in putting things away! Eventually I learnt to make piles 'to be put away in another room' by the door of any room being worked in. Then, as I walked out the door I'd pick up the pile, quickly zip around the house by the shortest possible route (implementing a simple time and motion exercise) and put everything away. It was vastly more efficient than running around the house with each separate item.
Apply the same technique in your office, no matter how large or small, and you'll gain great time-savings. It may seem a slightly untidy way of working but in fact it's very efficient.
Even though there is a slight delay, you are still putting things away as you go - whilst they're fresh in your mind. It's rarely longer than 30 minutes before you put away your current crop of 'stuff'. You never end up with an intimidating pile of filing (and I've seen some mountains!). Over a year many hours are saved - you don't walk around unnecessarily. If it's filing, you don't need to spend time re-familiarising yourself with the item or paper in hand, but it hasn't interrupted your flow of activity.
Bottom line - it saves you spending 'the term of your natural life' majoring in minor things.
If you want to know more about managing the paper war, check out our Office Sanity Pack.
The pack consists of my book ‘Getting a grip on the paper war' and the very popular Quefile.
The book offers practical and easy to follow solutions for managing the deluge of information, either on paper or on electronic medium.
The Quefile is a highly efficient tool to keep papers you're currently working on close at hand, neat and tidy and easy to find. It's better than an in-tray and works well for anyone scared to put their paperwork out of sight. For more information check out: www.gettingagrip.com/products/bundles/
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