START Planner: How Decluttering Your Office Can Help You Get More Done

In today’s busy and fast-paced world, it’s important to monitor your habits in order to stay on top of things. Seemingly small behavioral changes can greatly impact your level of productivity. Your work environment plays a huge part in your attitude and efficiency, and one of the ways to make this work in your favor is to keep a clean, clutter-free work space.

Decluttering your office can promote a better sense of self-organization. Each piece of clutter on your desk is attached to some sort of thought or experience, meaning that clutter is distracting. When you see these reminders sitting in your office, they begin to distract you with unrelated thoughts, and ideas. As a result, they pull attention away from your work and put you into a more scattered frame of mind.

The more visual cues you surround yourself with, the more topics will be battling the task at hand for your consideration. The more thinly your attention is spread, the more overwhelmed you’ll feel and the less efficient you'll be. You may find yourself switching between too many tasks, unable to keep focus and finish what you’ve started. Clearing out the clutter from your work space will streamline your focus and direct your energy into your projects far more effectively.

Benefits of Decluttering

On top of lessening the number of distractions around you, cleaning clutter out of your office can also help maintain a mindset of efficiency and organization. People use their environment to express themselves, but it can backfire if they’re constantly looking at messy surfaces that exhibit a lack of organization.

The work environment that you put yourself in will tell both others and yourself what your work ethic and efficiency level are. If your desk is covered in clutter and misplaced papers, then it communicates that you don’t know how to handle your items or workload. Making sure to surround yourself with a clean, clutter-free work space each day will remind you that you are already on the road to being more efficient. If your desk is neatly arranged, then your thoughts and work will be more organized as well. Keeping a clean, streamlined work space will help reinforce the knowledge and belief that you are an organized worker, and will motivate you to set the bar higher for yourself.

Finding Things Easier

Alongside helping you feel less mentally cluttered, removing excess items from your desk will simply make things easier to find. When items and papers pile up in your office, it becomes far easier to misplace things, mix up assignments, or lose important memos. Missing deadlines or losing assignments and other materials will take a serious toll on your state of mind and your reputation as a worker.

A simple move like removing excess clutter from your desk can do wonders to make you more capable and respectable in the eyes of your peers. When you clear your desk of all but the essentials, far less time will be wasted each day searching for papers, notes, and pens. Instead, you’ll be able to devote this newfound time to making your ambition reach further. Reducing the amount of clutter in your work area will make you more productive simply because you’ll waste less time.

Not only will cleaning up your office reduce the number of items you have to look through to find what you need—it will bring about beneficial changes in your mindset and attitude as well. Streamlined work spaces represent a streamlined thought process, so clearing away excess items will do wonders to help you increase your efficiency and productivity.