How to organise your desk

Our desks are always a mess because we have too many things and too little space and time.

Don’t worry, I’m here to help. Here is my method:

1.       Eliminate everything that is useless: by useless, I really mean that doesn’t have a function. Pens write, staplers staple, phones ring. Nice pictures do nothing (cf. how to cope with dumb people – statue look), motivational sentences no nothing too unfortunately, nice little vases don’t cheer you up, they just take room for other stuff. Throw everything away.

2.       Choose good material: you need to look at your office supplies and throw away what you don’t need. You don’t need two blue pens, you just use one. Do you really use those scissors that much? Loose them. If you also feel that your stuff isn’t good enough or it’s too old or used, you can go the place where we keep the supplies at lunch time (when people are not around and you can take whatever you want unnoticed) and choose good and new material for you. This will also cheer you up.

3.       Reduce paper: the more stuff you print, the more stuff you have in your desk and the more you need to archive. Stop printing everything. Print just what it’s necessary for you. Not what you’re supposed to print ‘for legal reasons’. Do you really think a man from IRS will come here and check our every 65879 archive folders? Not gonna happen. Everything that is in the system can be printed later. Get used to just printing order confirmations and eventually other documents that you need to send to the customer. If customer doesn’t need, you don’t need to print – this should be your motto.

4.       Throw away office trays: these will only encourage you to keep more and more paper. The less places you have to put piles of paper the better. If you eventually feel the need to store extra paper, just try to do it on somebody else’s desk carefully without your colleagues noticing. If your look to the people next to you and he/she is dumb (cf. how to cope with dumb people – introduction), he/she probably will not even realise it and will archive it him/herself – this is, of course, the perfect situation.

5.       If everything else fails, ask for a bigger desk: if none of the above tips work, you need to ask you boss for a bigger desk. Eventually your own office (you know you deserve it!).

And as usual, here is the summary for the busy people: