Look in your purse or briefcase and ask, “What kind of a person would have a purse or briefcase like that?” Look at and in your car. Look in your closet.
Look in your house, your yard and your garage. Ask, “What kind of a person would live that way?”
Would you entrust that person with an important task? Why or why not?
Honestly evaluate yourself through the eyes of a neutral third party. What do you see?
In a series of interviews with senior executives, 50 out of 52 of the respondents said that they would not promote a person with a messy desk or a cluttered work environment. Even if that person was producing good work, these executives said that they would not trust a position of responsibility to 73
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a person who could not get himself or herself organized. Don’t let this happen to you.
3. Refuse to Make Excuses
Many people work in a messy environment use their intelligence against themselves. They use their cleverness to justify and excuse themselves for the messiness of their workspaces. They say things like, “I know where everything is.” Or they say non-humorous things like, “A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind.”
However, every time and motion study of efficiency in the workplace concludes that these are really exercises in self-delusion. A person who says he or she knows where everything is turns out to be using a large amount of their mental capacity and creative energies remembering where they placed things, rather than doing the job.
People who say they work well in a cluttered environment are usually wrong. If they worked in a neat, well-organized environment for any length of time, they would be surprised at how much more effective and productive they were. If you or a person you know has a tendency to justify and attempt to explain a cluttered desk or work area, challenge yourself, or the other person, to work with a clean desk for an entire day. The result will amaze you.
4. Work from a Clean Desk
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Direct mail entrepreneur Joe Sugarman once wrote a book explaining his five rules for success. One of his five principles was, “End every day with a clean desk.” He made this a rule throughout his organization. This policy forced everyone to work more efficiently and complete his or her work by the end of each day. It made a major contribution to his success.
When I learned this, I introduced it into my own company. I told everyone that they would be expected to clean up their desks and leave them neat and orderly at the end of each day. When they argued with me, I told them that if they didn’t follow this rule, after they left I would go from office to office and throw everything on their desks into the wastebasket to be taken away by the night time janitors. I only had to follow through on this threat once before everyone realized how serious I was.
One manager, probably the messiest executive in my company, gave me every excuse possible for working in a cluttered and chaotic environment.
But I refused to listen or compromise. He had no choice but to clean everything up and put it away before leaving at the end of each day. Within one week, he came to me and apologized. He said, “All my life, I have thought that I worked better in a messy environment. In the last week, I have accomplished two and three times as much as I ever accomplished at work before. I am absolutely astonished at how much more I get done when everything is put in its proper place throughout the day.”
Three Steps to Organizing Your Workspace
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Here are three things you can do to organize your workspace: 1. Clear Your Desk
Begin your process of getting organized by clearing your desk of everything but the one thing that you are working on at the moment. If necessary, place things in drawers, on the credenza behind you, in the wastebasket, in cupboards or even on the floor. Do whatever is necessary to turn your desk into a clear, clean, uncluttered work area, with just one thing, the most important thing before you, when you begin.
2. Assemble Everything You Need
Arrange to have everything you need at hand before you begin any task.
Like a good cook gets out all the ingredients necessary to prepare a dish before he or she begins, or a master craftsman arranges all of his tools, as a professional, you should assemble all the tools of your trade as well before you start on a particular job.
Get all the information and files you will need. Get pens, notepaper, stick-it notes, calculator, rule, Dictaphone, file folders, and everything else you can think of before you commence work. The rule is that you should be able to reach out and touch everything you need to do the job.
3. Handle Each Piece of Paper Only Once
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Resolve to handle every piece of paper only once. Make a decision to do something with it when you pick it up, and don’t pick it up unless you are ready to act on it. It is better to stack it up and put it aside for appropriate action later than to continually shuffle it and reshuffle it on your desk.
How to Handle Paperwork
There are four things you can do with any piece of paper: 1. Throw it away.
One of the best time management tools at home or office is the wastebasket.
The fastest way to save time in reading anything is to simply throw it away and not read it at all. This applies to junk mail, unwanted subscriptions to catalogs, sales circulars and everything else that is not relevant to your goals.
Use the wastebasket to get rid of reading materials that have been hanging around for months. Ask yourself, “If I did not read this, would there be any negative consequences?” If the answer is no, then throw it away as fast as you can. You can also ask yourself, “If I ever needed this information, could I get it somewhere else?” If the answer is yes, throw it away.
My rule for keeping my workplace clean is, “When in doubt, throw it out!”
2. Delegate It to Someone Else
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You can refer or delegate the piece of paper to someone else. When you pick up a piece of paper, ask yourself if there someone else who should be acting on this. Is there someone else who can do it better than you? Is there anyone else to whom you can delegate this to? One of the keys to success in personal management is for you to delegate everything that can possibly be done by anyone else who earns less than you do. This is the only way that you can free up your time to do more of the things that are most important to you and to your job.
3. Take Personal Action
You can take action on the piece of paper. These are the pieces of paper, letters, proposals and messages that you must personally do something about. Get a file folder and put the word “Action” on the tab. Even better, get a red file folder where you put all of your action items and which you can see clearly.
Keep this action folder handy. When you come across something that you need to do something about, simply put it in your action file to work on later.
If it is something to be done immediately, take action quickly and put it behind you.
4. File It for Future Reference
You can file it away. But before you file anything, remember that 80% of papers filed are never needed, used or seen again. Designating something to file creates work. Before you decide to put something in your files, ask 78
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yourself, “What would happen if I couldn’t find this piece of paper?” What would be the negative consequences of not having this information available?
If there are no negative consequences, or very little would happen, or if you could get the information somewhere else, then throw the piece of paper away. Keep your desk clear, and keep your files clear as well.
When I first began using the wastebasket to clear off my excess papers, publications and reading material, I found it difficult. But with experience, I found that very little that I have thrown away has ever been needed again.
The habit of throwing things away rather than saving and filing them has been a big saver for me, as it has been for many others.
The most important thing is that you take some kind of action on a piece of paper when you pick it up. Do something, do anything with the piece of paper. Move it along at least one step. One of the greatest time wasters of all is continually picking up the same piece of paper, reading it, putting it down and having to come back to it, over and over again.