8 Things That Improved My Workspace

I looked at my workspace last week to find things I can get rid of and reduce clutter. Surprisingly, all I have left is a small manual (I use for my current task), a few business cards, and a paper filer with no paper. Here’s what I found I didn’t really need:

1. Old printouts, reports and drafts. At this day and age,I always have a soft copy anyway. Chances are, you do too. I suggest to take them out to the shredder after their usefulness has been consummated or it’s been untouched over a week, whichever comes first.

2. Speakers. I never use them because they disrupt everyone else. I’ve always listened to my weird, loopy, dreamy music on my headphones at work.  Everybody else uses headphones too so away with you speaker-doo!

3. Toys. Honestly, they never made my workday more cheery. If anything, they disturb me. This one’s a little tricky to get rid of. Most of the toys are little gifts from co-workers (they just love handing this stuff out,) so I can’t really throw them in the trash or give them away along with everything else. I instead put them in a bag, pretended to take them home and threw them out on my way there. That feels so wrong, somehow.

4. Books. I had a bunch of technical books I borrowed from friends. When people see them, it pretty much hides my nasty, little secret: I’ve never read a single tech book from start to finish. I always just turn to the index, find what I need for my tasks, write them down and move on. Having the internet handy pretty much obliterates this task too so I finally returned the O’Reillys and the CompuPresses.

5. Old business cards. I was amazed at how many old business cards I kept. These are people I wouldn’t even bother calling anymore. And chances are, they didn’t even work for those places anymore. So I ran through them, kept the ones I’ve contacted in the last 12 months and threw away the others.

6. Dust. My workspace, with all the books and papers, has turned into a dustbin. Now it’s clean as fuck. Hah!

7. Disks - old installers, diskettes, blank discs. I never use them for anything but they’re just….there. I use my flash drives to transfer files between PCs and all installers I use here, we keep a copy in server. I debated whether to throw these away, so I just asked who wanted which and gave them away.

8. Broken Stuff. I had 5 broken earphones, 2 USB cables for gadgets I don’t have anymore, contact lens holders (I used to wear contacts, not anymore.) Like the disks, I asked who wanted them and gave the stuff anyway.

After that cleaning, my workspace looks like a godsend. I computed and I just got rid of three years worth of office clutter. The work is just a hard, the people you deal with are still the same, but something feels changed.

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