The Minimalist Workspace

I have already done this to my work space. That is, unclut­ter and make it as min­i­mal­ist as I can. I only have the barest of essen­tials: a desk cal­en­dar, the land­line phone, and the Mac. I also have a makeshift cork­board on the wall beside my desk for reminders, phone num­bers and other notes. The rest of my stuff–ballpens, notepads, I have hid­den in the mobile pedestal beside my table. And even that I have kept to a minimum–office sup­plies like scis­sors, scotch tape, and sta­plers are things I just bor­row from Lhanie, our accoun­tant, who seats just a few steps away.

It feels good to come to the office and see a very bare desk. And it feels great to go home at the end of the day and leave the desk bare. It’s almost like a shout-out to the world that I have done every­thing that needs to be done that day, and I am going home with con­science and table clear.

By the way, the pic­ture below is not my work­space, although it approx­i­mates what I have in the office. I’ve been try­ing to trans­fer a pic I took of my work­space the other day. Unfor­tu­nately I couldn’t trans­fer it to my com­puter via blue tooth, and the cable isn’t work­ing, so you will just have to deal with this ver­sion by Sante.

Here’s an arti­cle from unclut​terer​.com that I would like to share with you:

What’s a min­i­mal­ist work­space?
That ques­tion will have dif­fer­ent answers for each per­son. There can be no sin­gle def­i­n­i­tion. The ulti­mate min­i­mal­ist work­space, I think, would be to have no desk or papers or com­puter or any­thing of the kind — just your­self. You’d think, and talk, and maybe sit on the floor.

Of course, that won’t work for most of us, so it’s more use­ful to look at our min­i­mum require­ments, and focus on cre­at­ing a work­space that addresses these essen­tials and noth­ing more.

So the first step is for you to con­sider your require­ments for work­ing, and what’s essen­tial to your work­flow. If pos­si­ble, stream­line and sim­plify that work­flow and those require­ments. Then, once you’ve got that down to a min­i­mum, see what the min­i­mum setup would be for those essen­tials and your work­flow. Elim­i­nate every­thing unnecessary.

What are your require­ments?
It’s inter­est­ing to note that what you think your require­ments are might not be the min­i­mum. They might just be what you’re used to doing.

Tak­ing myself as an exam­ple: I used to work with tons of paper, files, sticky notes, and all the usual office tools (pens, pen­cils, note­books, pads, sta­pler, hole puncher, white­out, cal­en­dar, per­sonal orga­nizer, etc.). But then I real­ized that it’s pos­si­ble to work with­out paper, and I’ve elim­i­nated the need for all that stuff. In fact, as I’ve elim­i­nated paper, I’ve elim­i­nated the need for drawers.

Now, you might not have that lux­ury, and I’m not say­ing you need to go that extreme. Your needs may be dif­fer­ent than mine — but the point is to see if it’s pos­si­ble to change the way you work, so that you still get the essen­tials done, with­out all the same require­ments. It’s worth some thought at least — and if you make changes, as I did, you might find that chang­ing things in small incre­ments is bet­ter. I didn’t do away with paper alto­gether. I did it in steps, elim­i­nat­ing dif­fer­ent needs for paper one at a time.

Tips for Cre­at­ing Your Own Min­i­mal­ist Work­space
You won’t need to have my setup, but once you’ve deter­mined your min­i­mum needs, here are some tips for mak­ing your work­space as min­i­mal­ist as pos­si­ble. Not all tips will work for you, so pick and choose which ones will work best for your workflow.

1. Have one inbox. If paper is a part of your life, keep an inbox tray on top of your desk and make sure ALL papers, includ­ing phone mes­sages and sticky notes, go into this tray. You might have to train your co-workers if they’re not already used to this. Don’t leave papers scat­tered all over your desk, unless you’re actu­ally work­ing on them at this moment. You might also have a “work­ing file” folder for papers you’re work­ing on but not at this moment, but put this work­ing file in a drawer, so that it’s out of the way. Clear out your inbox each day — noth­ing should go back in there after you process them. It’s not a stor­age bin, but an inbox. Read more on clear­ing your inbox
2. Clear your desk­top. Aside from your com­puter, your inbox tray, your phone, and maybe a nice photo of a loved one, there should be noth­ing on top of your desk. No papers (again, unless you’re work­ing on them), no notes, no sta­pler or pens or other junk. Clear as much of it off as humanly pos­si­ble. If you want to include a cou­ple other essen­tials, you should, but be sure they absolutely must be there. Keep it as clear as pos­si­ble, as a clear desk is a relax­ing workspace.
3. Get rid of knick-knacks. This goes with the above item, but many peo­ple don’t even think about all the lit­tle trin­kets they have on top of their desk. They’re usu­ally unnec­es­sary. Toss ‘em!
4. Clear the walls. Many peo­ple have all kinds of stuff posted on their walls. It cre­ates visual clut­ter. Get them off your walls. If it’s a ref­er­ence guide, put it on your com­puter and set up a hotkey so you can call the guide up with a key­stroke when needed.
5. Clear your com­puter desk­top. Many peo­ple also have tons of icons on their com­puter desk­top. It’s the same prin­ci­ple as a real desk­top — clear it of every­thing unnec­es­sary, so you can have a nice sim­ple work­space. Keep­ing icons on your desk­top is usu­ally inef­fi­cient. It’s hard to find them among a jum­ble of files. If they’re nec­es­sary to open many times a day, file them away and use a hotkey to call them up. Quick­sil­ver for Mac or Auto­hotkey for Win­dows are my favorite pro­grams for this.
6. Re-examine your paper needs. I started doing this a lit­tle over a year ago, and one by one, I real­ized I could elim­i­nate my dif­fer­ent needs for paper. I stopped print­ing stuff out to read (duh!) and just kept it on the com­puter. Yeah, that’s obvi­ous. I also stopped keep­ing paper copies of files I had on the com­puter, as they just took up more space. Also fairly obvi­ous, per­haps. I also asked peo­ple to stop fax­ing me stuff, and to email it instead. That should be obvi­ous, but I think a lot of peo­ple ignore this step. I also asked peo­ple to stop send­ing me paper memos, and use email instead. Stop cir­cu­lat­ing doc­u­ments by paper. I stopped bills and notices com­ing in by paper that I could get online. I stopped cat­a­logs and newslet­ters com­ing in by mail. I still get some mail, but for the most part I toss it. You might not be able to elim­i­nate paper, but you can prob­a­bly reduce it.
7. Elim­i­nate unnec­es­sary tools. Think about each tool you have in your desk, in your work area, and even in your office. Do you need a sta­pler and hole puncher? Do you need all those pens? Do you really need a fax machine? Or a scan­ner? You might not have con­trol over all these types of tools, but if you do, elim­i­nate the ones you don’t really need, maybe one at a time.
8. Sim­plify your fil­ing. As men­tioned above, it’s unnec­es­sary to keep paper copies of files you have on your com­puter or can access online. Back stuff up online if you’re wor­ried about los­ing them. Hav­ing stuff dig­i­tally makes them search­able, which is much bet­ter than fil­ing. Just archive, and search when nec­es­sary. If you do need paper files, keep them alpha­bet­i­cally and file imme­di­ately, so that you don’t have a huge “to be filed” pile. Once every few months, weed out unnec­es­sary files.
9. Go through each drawer. One drawer at a time, take out all the con­tents and elim­i­nate every­thing you don’t need. It’s much nicer to use draw­ers if you can open them and see order. Have a des­ig­nated spot for each item and make sure to put those items back in that spot imme­di­ately, every time.
10. Use a min­i­malisk desk. As men­tioned above, I just use a table, as I don’t need draw­ers. While you might not want to go to that extreme, you can find desks with­out too many draw­ers or con­trap­tions or designs. Sim­ple as pos­si­ble is best.
11. Clear the floor. There should be noth­ing on your floor but your desk and chair. No files, no boxes. Keep it clear!

Read the orig­i­nal entry.

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