How Organizing Your Office Can Increase Productivity

A train station is where a train stops. A bus station is where a bus stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

While this silly riddle is meant to make you laugh, organizing your office is no joke. Not only can a disorganized, messy office distract you, it can also decrease your productivity.

Here are six ways organizing your office can increase productivity.

Keep Things Close

Keep all the electronics, equipment and supplies you regularly use at arm’s length or within reach. This eliminates wasted time getting up to hunt for the supplies you need to complete the task at hand.

Reduce Clutter

We’ve all done it before: you go grab important papers from one room and move them to the office, tossing them in a pile that soon topples over. Institute a filing system and file your documents and papers as they come in. This is a great way to stay organized and keep everything you need in one spot.

Organizing Your Office’s Desktop and Drawers

Organizing your office should also include organizing your desktop and the drawers even though they are not in plain sight. Keeping things orderly will cut down on time you have to spend reorganizing and rearranging the contents of your office.

Create An Archive

Once you’ve completed a project, archive everything related to it in one place. Whether this is in a storage box or a filing cabinet, you should move papers and documents off your desk and keep them together in one place. You should also keep your computer desktop organized using correctly labeled folders and archiving projects to an external hard drive or specific one on your computer. By keeping current work on your desk, you will prevent the distraction that completed projects can become.

Tidy Every Night

Before you leave, spend a little time every night organizing your office. This will help you realize what you got done, what you still need to do and what you can set aside for a different day. It will also help keep your desktop clutter-free.

Reassess Often

In addition to daily tidying, scan your desk at the end of each week to make sure it’s clutter- and distraction-free. This ensures that you haven’t missed filing any materials from completed projects and gives you the chance to start the next week with a clean slate.

Organizing your office is a great way to increase your productivity and stay on track with your projects and assignments.