SPRING CLEANING: DECLUTTERING FOR PRODUCTIVITY
Lauren Hager, Director of Culture and Engagement
The first day of Spring is officially behind us, which reminds me of one thing…spring cleaning. Personally, I find spring cleaning to be a great opportunity to purge from the previous year and get settled into what this year has in store. I am currently moving homes, so decluttering and spring cleaning have taken on a whole extra meaning this year, such as, what do I want to unpack and keep in my new home? As I began this process, I realized that decluttering isn’t only helpful at home – it’s a wonderful way to increase productivity at work as well. In this article, I’m going to give you some of my best tips and tricks to get you through spring cleaning your workspace in 2021.
The Importance of Filtering the Clutter
First, let’s start with why a decluttered space actually helps us increase our productivity. I’ll give you a hint, it has to do with our amazing brains and the way we process the world around us. For each object in our environment (a room, desk, or workstation), there are two options for our brains to process and choose from:
- Disregard the item and filter it out to protect our focus for the work at hand.
- Direct our focus towards this thing in the form of thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
The first option is used the most often by our ever-active brains. Imagine if we didn’t have this filter – we would be just like a cat, distracted by every shiny thing in view. The brain works hard to filter out objects to protect our focus. However, this filtering process drains our energy. According to scientific experts at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute, the more cluttered our physical and digital (phones, computers, TVs) environments are, the more energy our brains spend on this filtering procedure. The energy we use in this process is a limited resource that our bodies have, and the more we use it on disregarding objects and things, the less we have for activities such as thinking, focusing, and solving difficult problems. In converse, if there isn’t much that needs to be filtered, more mental resources will be available for productive matters.
The second option, however, is the most distracting of all. Things in our environment can cause thoughts, feeling, and/or emotions to surface as our brains direct their attention towards it. For example, seeing your smartphone tempts you to check your messages “really quick”, which leads to thoughts completely unrelated to what you were originally working on. According to research done on Attention Residue, most people assume they’re able to shift from a distraction back to their work quickly, without any negative consequences. However, that’s not true. In fact, most people never reach their full focus potential. This concept implies that some of your attention is ‘left behind’ at the previous task or distraction it was dealing with. The brain can’t shift effortlessly from task to task — or from distraction to task.
Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Workspace
Now that we know why it’s important to have a decluttered space, here are my tips for spring cleaning your way to greater productivity at work.
- Your Desk or Work Station
- Determine what you need on the top of your desk, the actual working space, to successfully perform your job.
- Create a pile of need and don’t need. This can be physical piles or lists of what you have.
- Figure out where to store the things you don’t need. A drawer or shelf? Or, the trash can.
- Move on to your drawers/shelves. The items you use the most will go closest to you while everything else can be further away.
- Make sure cables for electronics are organized and tidy.
- Limit items on your work surface (this includes photos and decorations). Think about only including what motivates and inspires you to do great work.
- Your Workspace
- Determine if you have any extra pieces of bulky furniture in your way, you should be working with clear and defined pathways.
- Next, take a look at your layout. Are you constantly startled by people coming up behind you? Is the sun in your face, making it hard to focus? Time to move things around.
- Your Computer/Inbox
- Create a labeling system for your inbox using folders and/or rules to organize your incoming email
- Think of a consistent way to label and organize your documents so that they will be easy to search and find.
- Regularly clear your recycle bin and your downloads folder. This is a great opportunity to move any important documents into your new filing system.
- And last but not least, my favorite, unsubscribe from emails you don’t want or need anymore.
Whether starting at home or at work, decluttering your space is a great way to help you save valuable mental resources and get your important work done.
