My Top Three Habits for an Organized Office

From time to time, I give advice about good habits in a particular area of life. This is the third of such posts.

I haven’t looked, but I’m sure that there are many (many) books and articles that give advice on how to organize your office. I have not read them. I have not read them because I don’t need to read them. My office is organized. Everything has a place. There is no clutter. My colleagues constantly compliment me on my office. They ask me how I do it. So, here are my top three habits for an organized office. These habits are listed in order of importance:

1. THROW EVERYTHING AWAY (Well, not everything . . .)

. . . but you get the point. When I am in a colleague’s cluttered office, I notice that the clutter consists mostly of things that he or she will never look at again. There are outdated memos, circulars from publishers, and the like. My colleagues, and you, need to throw all of that away. But what if, gasp, you throw away a piece of paper that you later need?

Here’s a question: Do you own a Gutenberg Bible? The Dead Sea Scrolls? Probably not. In this age of information proliferation, there is a lot of redundant information. Do you honestly think that that memo on your desk about textbook purchases (or software, or what have you) is irreplaceable? In my experience, most information that you accidentally throw away is easily recovered from elsewhere within minutes. And, this will come as surprise to some of you pack rats: I rarely throw things away that I need again. Certainly, I’ve never thrown away something that I couldn’t recover within a few minutes. If you doubt me, get a box. Put it in an out-of-way corner of your office. Dump all of your clutter in it. Then, over the next few weeks, count the number of times you go rifling through it. Not too many, I'll bet.

Once you’ve thrown everything away, it will become much easier to:

2. RE-ORGANIZE OFTEN

Over the course of four years, a colleague of mine had a stack of papers and books, relevant to a particular project, on his desk. The stack never moved! My colleague did not recognize an important fact about office life: THINGS CHANGE. We start certain projects and finish others. We take on new roles and leave others. Why, in the name of all that’s good and true, would we not change our office organization to reflect our current work demands? Think of your office as a room in a museum.

Exhibits last for a while, but not forever. The same should be true of your office. When you’re changing over to your new ‘exhibit’ look at everything in your office and ask yourself, “Do I really need this?”

3. GO ELECTRONIC WHEN YOU CAN

Electronic files take up no space and they are usually more up-to-date than are their paper counterparts. There is absolutely no reason for you to retain copies of prior drafts of documents etc. If you’re nervous about throwing away particular drafts, hang on to them (put them in that box). I bet you won’t look at them again. If you are in a business where prior documents are important, keep an electronic paper trail. A program like Apple’s Time Machine is a great option here.

I hope you find these recommendations useful. Please post comments with your own suggestions. You will be a more productive person once you organize and stay organized. Maybe you'll inspire one or two others to do the same.