by Eileen Roth
As for that devilish distracter, the mail: Emergencies arrive by phone, fax, or overnight delivery, but whatever the U.S. Postal Service or interoffice mail brings can wait. Keep mail and its messengers out of your hair by posting two wall pockets outside your door or cubicle to serve as your in and out trays, as you see in Figure 15-1. If you can’t get your mailbox out of your office, move it to a file cabinet or credenza far from your desk and as close to the entryway as possible.
Figure 15-1: Pockets hang on the wall or over the top of cubicles to keep your mail off your desk.
Everyday use? Remove items that you don’t use everyday. Consider sticky notes, the memo pad, staple remover, paper clips, binder clips, rubber bands, tape, scissors, ruler, highlighter, markers, calculator, and disk tray, and put away those that don’t pass the everyday test. Staplers and calculators are questionable contenders. If they get daily use you can keep them on the desk, but if they don’t and you have room in a drawer, off they go. And though you probably use pens and pencils every day, you may find that moving them from a desktop holder to a drawer makes them less likely to disappear. See Table 15-1 for an everyday use checklist.
Move to the preferred side. For fingertip management, put everything you reach for on your preferred side: the hand you write with. Relocate pens, pencils, notepad, calculator, and disk tray to your writing side. The telephone is the big exception to the rule. Pick up the receiver with your preferred hand and you’ll see why: With your writing hand busy, you can’t take notes. Switching to the other ear leaves you with a phone cord strapped across your chest (or around your neck on really bad days). Move the phone to the opposite side.
If your computer is on your desk and you use it less than 50 percent of the day, you can move the monitor and keyboard to the preferred side too. Raise your computer up with a stand or computer arm and you have even more desk at your disposal, or get the space hog off the desk altogether with a separate computer stand. If you’re on a desktop computer more than half the day, you probably want to keep the keyboard and monitor dead center.
Organize together. Create mini-desktop work centers for the phone, computer, and time. The telephone center includes the phone, a message pad or log alongside, and the address and phone index slightly farther back. If you have an answering machine, that would be the item farthest to the back. Put disks next to your monitor to form a computer center, and group your calendar and clock (coming up) to create a time center.
View your time with a desktop clock and calendar/organizer. Simple but effective, a clock on your desk saves you the extra motion of glancing at your watch and provides a constant time cue to cure a case of the lates. (Get a clock that displays the date and day, too, and one quick glance tells all.) Try viewing your time and see, literally, what I mean. Whatever written medium you use to track your appointments (see Chapter 18 on time management for more), I recommend keeping a calendar/organizer on your desk, open to today, to get you on your way. If you use a computer program to track your schedule, keeping your calendar in sight can be tough, which is why I don’t recommend this method for visual folks and there are enough of you out there.
Learning experts recommend that you utilize all your senses. So if viewing your time doesn’t keep you on schedule, buy a meeting reminder alarm at an office supply shop. You can set the alarm for multiple meetings in a day and the ringer goes off for each one. You can also use computer calendar or contact-management programs to set meeting alarms.
Empty the center by moving the few items that remain to the perimeter. Remember math class? That means the edge, including all those empty corners. Now your desk is open for work, and you’re open for business!
To help smooth your way through the R-E-M-O-V-E process, use Table 15-1 to help you decide what to keep on top of your desk. Things you use several times a day are the best qualified. Everyday items may be better in a drawer, and anything you use less than once a day definitely moves. Check off the appropriate column for each item, and then use the list to relocate excess desktop items.
Table 15-1Desktop Decisions Item Use Every Day? Several Times a Day?
Pen and pencil holder
Sticky notes
Memo pad
Phone message pad
Stapler
Staple remover
Paper clips
Binder clips
Rubber bands
Tape
Scissors
Ruler
Highlighter
Markers
Calculator
Disk tray
If your drawers are too crowded to receive everything you try to get off the desktop, just put it aside onto a file cabinet or shelf for now and read on.
An answering machine, even if you use it several times a day, doesn’t qualify for prime desktop real estate. All you need to do is view the flashing light and punch the buttons, so move the machine to the back of the desk, or off onto a nearby credenza or low file cabinet. To save space, purchase a shelf that will raise the telephone above the answering machine as pictured in Figure 15-2.
Figure 15-2: Double up desktop space with a phone and answering machine shelf.
Photo courtesy of Lillian Vernon.
Check out Figure 15-3 for a desk set up with the R-E-M-O-V-E principles.
Figure 15-3: Transformed from a mess by the power of R-E-M-O-V-E, this desk looks great now!
Downsizing your desk supplies
People can get a little giddy when it comes to office supplies, like on your first day of school when you can’t have enough freshly sharpened pencils. But your desk is not a supply cabinet, so start by returning all duplicate items to the supply room or cabinet. Done that? Great. Now take a load off your desk by sending the following stuff to the trash:
Dried out pens, markers, and highlighters
Stubby little pencils
Dried out correction fluid
Dried out glue sticks
Stretched out rubber bands and paper clips
Small sections of staples that jam the stapler
Promotional items you don’t use
Finally, figure out whether you have the right supplies for peak performance. Are you always borrowing something from someone? Go get your own. Has a notepad or purple marker or set of binder tabs been sitting in your drawer unused for the last six months? Return anything that’s still useful and toss the rest. Check out Table 15-2 for some of my top supply picks and one common office supply I don’t recommend.
Table 15-2Office Supply Secrets Supply Item Secrets
Correction fluid pen For touching up small spots, especially cancelled meet
ings in your calendar or organizer.
Phone message pads Think pink. Your messages will be easy to see. If you lose
messages, a carbon pad keeps copies. A spiral notebook
or phone log creates a permanent record and provides
ample room to write. Downside: You can’t rip out individual
messages unless you start a new page for each contact.
Fax stickies Skip the cover sheet and save trees.
Regular sticky notes Just say no! I don’t generally recommend sticky notes
for anything other than faxes and flags (such as “sign
here”) and for plotting projects (see Chapter 18). Sticky
notes fall off and get lost.
Paper clips Separate small and large into two holders of different
colors. The magnetized holders are great for fingertip
access, but keep them far away from computer disks.
Stapler Use a small one for standard jobs, a heavy-duty model
for 20-225 pages, a long-reach stapler for booklets, and
an electric stapler for multiple handouts. Keep only
everyday staplers at your desk; specialty models can go
elsewhere.
Glue Try the liquid in a tube with a sponge tip applicator,
whic
h won’t dry out like a glue stick. When you need a
removable adhesive, as when laying out a room, the
sticky note glue sticks are terrific.
Package or pocketknife A retractable or folding knife makes for easy opening of
any envelope or package.
Key tags Clear up unknown key mysteries with little white disks
that loop through the top of the key and give you a spot
to write which file or drawer it opens.
Restock a supply just comfortably before you run out. When you load the last strip of staples into the stapler, that’s the time to order the next box. If you’re in charge of buying supplies, establish a last replacement policy — 1, 5, 25, and so on, depending upon how fast you go through things — to stay stocked without overspending.
Designating Your Drawers as Work Centers
Now that you know what you want on hand while you work, just where are you going to put it? Surprise! That’s what your desk drawers are for. That’s right — not for your shoe collection or the magazines you like to read at lunch, but for the things you need to do work.
Hopefully, you have two to four small drawers and one to two file drawers in your desk. No? Can you get another desk? Put a new desk with plenty of drawer space on your wish list and proceed.
Group like things together: staples and tape, mail supplies, and so forth. Next, achieve fingertip management by putting the things you need access to often in the drawer closest to you. Contain items with drawer dividers so everything stays in place. If you have no desk drawers — perhaps you’re working at an old kitchen table in a home office — several options are available to remedy the situation:
A pullout drawer that attaches under the desktop.
A desktop drawer set. Refer to Figure 7-1 for an example, and get creative by placing the drawers on a file cabinet or credenza to keep your desktop clear.
A rolling cart of drawers, as pictured in Figure 15-4.
A two-drawer file cabinet under the desk or within reach behind or to the side of you.
Now turn each of your drawers into a work center:
The central drawer is the pen/pencil center: Pens, pencils, ruler, scissors, markers, clips, tape, correction fluid, staples, staple remover, and so on.
The top small drawer becomes a mail and filing center: Stamps, address labels, envelopes, business cards, hanging file tabs, file labels, and blank address cards.
The second small drawer turns into a stationery/paper center: Letterhead, stationery, and note pads.
The file drawer is the project center: Take Action File and current major project files.
Adapt placement of each item or of entire drawers according to frequency of use. Do you reach for letterhead more often than mailing supplies? Swap locations.
Figure 15-4: Rolling carts make up for missing built-in drawers.
Containing the contents
With your drawer floor plan in place, the time to divvy up the space is upon you. Drawer divider options include
A sectioned flat tray, usually designed to fill most of the pen and pencil drawer.
A deep drawer organizer, which is the same as the flat tray but with higher sides for a deeper drawer. This is great to contain tall items, such as correction fluid, or if you’re short of space and need to stack — paper clips on top of a box of staples, and so on.
Separate rectangular containers — narrow for pens and pencils, wider for other supplies.
Built-in, movable vertical dividers. You can also buy your own (see Figure 6-2 in Chapter 6).
Sturdy cardboard boxes and tops work just fine as drawer dividers. Try the top of a business card box to hold rubber bands.
Sort supplies into your drawer dividers by like type. Look at that — no more traffic jams on your way to the correction pen.
Personal possessions
Sure, you’re a person, and you naturally need a few personal things at work. That doesn’t mean your file drawer should store a shoe collection worthy of Imelda Marcos (believe me because I’ve seen it!), or a full cosmetic and manicure set. I recommend having the following on hand:
Aspirin, ibuprofen, or acetaminophen. Where are you more likely to get a headache than at work?
Ladies: A spare pair of nylons, and a pair of plain pumps if you wear street shoes to the office.
Gentlemen: One neutral, go-with-everything tie in case yours takes a dip in the salad or soup. (I know, it wasn’t your fault; you forgot your tie bar.)
Parents: A school phone directory (you can use last year’s) so you can call a parent if you’re running late to pick up your child. Use different colored highlighters to mark each child’s friends.
Keep your briefcase or computer bag under the desk in the spot farthest from your feet. Gym bags can also go here if space allows, or into a coat closet.
The Computer Workstation
In today’s workplace, people at every level of all sorts of careers use the power of computer technology to leverage personal and team potential. Many let their cyberstuff get out of control in the process. More computer equipment and software isn’t necessarily better. Like anything that takes up space and time, target your computer setup to the tasks you need to perform with any excess pared away.
Organizing your computer setup
If you have a dedicated computer workstation, reserve the area strictly for computer supplies and keep everything else at your desk. If you share functions, allocate computer supplies among your desktop, drawers, overhead bins, and/or bookshelves by grouping like items together and placing them for easy access.
When choosing a computer workstation, whether as part of a desk or a stand-alone unit, measure all your components — monitor, CPU tower, speakers, printer, scanner — then look for:
Enough surface area to hold what you need on the desktop. This definitely includes your monitor and enough space to open up files, books, and reports to work from. You may also need room for a keyboard, printer, speakers, and disk holder.
A pullout drawer to get the keyboard off the desktop.
A drawer for pens and pencils.
Shelves for reference books and/or disk trays.
Another shelf for your printer or speakers. You can also use a pullout drawer in a cabinet below to hold the printer.
A built-in disk holder if you need a lot of disks on hand.
Floor space or a shelf for the CPU. Skip the closed cabinet, which is one more door to open every time you want to swap disks or reboot.
Organizing your computer supplies
A mess at your computer workstation can create such a mess in your mind that no amount of electronic intelligence can compensate. Use organizing principles to keep everything in its place as you work at the computer, and you can take full advantage of technology’s awesome power.
Media
P-L-A-C-E is good news to computer users suffering from disk disorder. Rather than rummaging through CDs, diskettes, and DVDs trying to find something you know you have in there somewhere, set up a system for keeping them all organized once and for all. You not only save yourself time finding what you need; you also save yourself the stress of wondering whether you lost an electronic file. Here’s how to make sense of your computer media:
Purge: Remove all computer disks that you no longer need. If you sent those graphic files over to the production department and the newsletter is already in print, you no longer need to keep the originals. Toss or recycle the disk.
Like with like: Use the color of disks and/or labels to categorize your media — perhaps graphics disks are yellow and financial are green, or corporate files go on blue and clients on red. See the next chapter for more on color-coding files and apply the same principles to your disks.
Access: Keep your most active disks, backups, and program disks you use regularly, closest at hand. Old backups, programs you’re not using, and installed programs you don’t need to support by
disk can be stored somewhere else, which may be off the workstation if space is tight.
Contain. All disks can go into holders, with dividers or separate trays to distinguish between different types. Start by separating programs from backups, and then arrange by the categories established in the previous step. You can get a multimedia tray to keep different formats (floppy, CD, Zip, and so on) together. Some workstations have disk holders built in; make sure you have the right size.
Don’t store your floppy disks or tape backups next to or on top of loudspeakers, computer monitors, CPUs, cellular phones, or even magnetic paper clip holders, all of which emit electromagnetic fields that could scramble or erase your data. Want to make your data even safer? If you have a CD writer, switch to compact discs as your storage medium. They remain unruffled in the face of magnetic force.
Evaluate. Are you keeping too many disks? Would color help you distinguish graphics from word-processing or spreadsheet documents, or quickly spot client files or research information?
Reference shelf
Your workstation should have a shelf for reference materials, from . . .For Dummies books about programs to other books and binders specific to your project, and software and hardware documentation. No shelf? Position a bookcase close by and designate a shelf for computer materials.
If you have more than one booklet for any piece of hardware or software — printer, motherboard, programs — group them together in a resealable plastic bag. Add an empty print cartridge box to the bag for your printer. Even if you know the cartridge and printer model number, some office supply stores stock by their own numbers so having the box can help you spot and buy the right one fast.