You’ll be more prepared in the morning, and it’s also a good method to detach from work and clear your brain.ģ. Shut down smarter Take 15 minutes at the end of the day to tidy up, organize your space, and make a list of what needs to be done tomorrow. This makes you more productive, and also keeps the small things from piling up and adding to the clutter.Ģ. If you’re looking at it, deal with it right then and there-file it, finish it, delegate it, or discard it. Touch tasks only once This applies to routine tasks, uncomplicated emails, and hard copies alike. Ready to declutter your physical and digital spaces? Here are some strategies that can help-and help free up some mental space to boot.ġ. And that leads back to lost time, frustration, and distraction from what you were trying to do in the first place. Without some kind of logical system, it’s as hard to find what you need on your company’s servers as it is to find in a stack of paper on your desk. After all, who needs the hard copy when you have it stored on your hard drive? But with all of our devices and accounts, it can still get mighty messy. And in that same survey, 87% admitted that when their workspace is disorganized they feel less productive.Ĭlutter can be digital, too Those of you with neater desks probably have digital technology to thank. One survey estimates that the productivity lost while we’re looking for misplaced items is costing companies $89 billion a year. Recent experiment reveals that a neat environment encourages people to stick with a challenging task 1.5 times longer than those exposed to a messy environment, suggesting that clutter can reduce our self-regulation-the ability to direct ourselves to do the things we know we should. Less brain space for filtering information, switching between tasks, and maintaining focus. Princeton Neuroscience Institute found that when we have a larger amount of visual stimulus, like a messy desk or office, it creates competition for our attention-so, whether we’re conscious of it or not, our brains are trying to make sense of all that visual “noise.” And while our minds are occupied with clutter, it leaves us And he got a lot accomplished, so clutter must be an OK work environment for the rest of us, right? Well…not so fast.Ĭlutter isn’t doing us any favors A study done by the Albert Einstein, as famously disheveled as he was brilliant, quipped, “if a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” While he’d clearly taken to heart the grammar rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, Einstein was more of a rule-breaker when it came to organization.
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