How Can I Better Organize My Workspace to Maximize My Productivity?
Your goal is to keep the most accessible areas in your office, like your desk and middle shelves of your book case, least crowded, and the least accessible areas, like the very top and bottom shelves of your bookcase and lowest file drawers, most crowded.
Begin by creating an in-basket for mail and everything else that flows into your office: Don’t let it grow higher and higher. Set aside an hour or so each day to process the information in the in-basket. Sort it into three piles—material to discard, material to route, and material to keep. Throw the discard pile out. Send the route pile immediately on its way. Papers that you don’t feel confident about discarding or routing—but that don’t require immediate action—belong in the "someday" file for later reference.
Now get to work on the material you’ve kept. You should handle everything in the pile at one time. If you haven’t enough time to do so today, focus on that correspondence that demands immediate attention. Place that material that can wait until tomorrow in a file folder. Your goal should be to clear that file out by then, along with new important mail you receive. This same system can be adapted to the handling of e-mail.
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Books and magazines that you seldom use yet want to keep should be stored at the top and bottom of your bookcase. Place books, notebooks, and magazines to which you refer regularly on the second and third shelves where they will be more accessible. If these shelves become crowded, rethink their position in your bookcase and your office. If others have need for some of these books or policies and procedures and other materials in binders, consider having a bookcase in your department that can serve as the department library, with materials there that all may refer to at one time or another.
What about paper—printed e-mails, reports, correspondence, and the like—that you want to keep? File them. To minimize filing, organize your folders by project name, and stuff the file folders with as many papers as fit. This advice runs contrary to conventional teaching, but it makes good sense. There is less chance of misfiling, and there are fewer folders to handle when you retrieve or put papers away.
For that special document—the one that you always seem to need but can never find—set aside a special folder.
Tear out articles from magazines that you want to keep because they suggest ideas. Put them into a special "ideas" file. Keep course brochures and self-development plans that a manager needs in a "self-development" file. And for any papers that you don’t need but are reluctant to part with, put them into a "someday" file.