MY THOUGHTS

After reading the “The Power of Less” by Leo Babauta last weekend, I decided to make some real changes at work this week.  I knew that that this would be one of those “hell” weeks, due to being gone to a Conference in San Francisco and then going vacation whenever I left work Thursday (July 2nd) with several deadlines due before I could leave.  Usually this would be one of those weeks where I am completely stressed and not someone anyone else wants to be around.

The first thing that I did last week was clean off my desk, then clean it again and then re-organize it once more. Below is the result.

What I had left on my desktop were the planner and a phone.  I have re-done my filing system and attempt to work on one thing at a time (multitasking is a difficult thing to avoid) and then the work folder back in the proper drawer.  This system was really valuable when I was attempting to meet my Grants submission deadline by the end of the day Thursday, which I did meet and didn’t feel nearly as stressed as last time.  The touch it once, read it, file it, forward it, or trash it method is helping me to keep things this way.

As a result of these two relatively easy and minor changes, I just felt much more focused on what I was doing last week.  I found another minor distraction that I had never really thought about until after I moved my phone to the desktop.  The little red blinking light, it kept causing me to look at while I was working which would cause me to loose focus on what I was doing (I covered it up). It really is amazing how many little distractions there are on your desk that you don’t even realize until you eliminate the clutter and move things around.

I came out this week in a much better space and relatively unstressed.  I was definitely much nicer to be around and even smiled and laughed a lot, which I believe is very important.  The work got done and yes 3 of the 4 nights this week I worked quite a few extra hours and didn’t get to exercise per my agreed upon daily schedule.  But I didn’t get all upset and actually had some energy still at the end of the week.

Even though there are some other things that I am doing in addition to this (which I am going to blog about later), cleaning off my desktop is by far the most visible and has received the most comments from Co-workers.  The clean desk idea is seems, is part of the solution for me.

Thanks Leo.

Those are my thoughts, what are yours.  Please remember to comment at the bottom of this post.