Your home office makes a big difference to your productivity. A cluttered, poorly organized home office causes a lot of wasted time and lack of inspiration. A well-organized home office, designed to facilitate work, will instead boost your energy, concentration and even inspiration levels. Here are a few quick and easy strategies for organizing your home office.
Put Everything You Need within Reach
The goal of having a well-organized home office is to facilitate productive states with little to no interruptions.
If you have to leave your chair to get something or turn something on or off every ten minutes, it is very difficult to get into a good workflow.
Telephones
Have your landline telephone on or near your desk. If you have a handheld phone, your phone’s base should ideally be near your desk; when you need to concentrate, it often helps to be able to completely disconnect your phone. Your cell phone charger should also be on or near your desk so that you may use it without having to get up.
Files and Other Resources
Have all your files organized in an easy to use manner. The way you organize them is really up to you. Some people prefer to organize files by subject, others by alphabet, still others by the chronological order in which they will need the files. Try out a few different ways of organizing your files. Invest in a labeler instead of writing labels by hand; it makes a difference and allows you to re-label files quickly and easily without making a mess.
Inbox
Almost every corporate employee has an inbox. Many successful work-from-home entrepreneurs recommend having one for your home office. An inbox is a physical box that sits on your desk, with various papers in it that you need to process later. If you write a phone number on a scrap piece of paper, you can just toss it in the inbox instead of having to create a new contact right immediately. The same is true for receipts. Just about anything that can be processed later can be tossed into the inbox instead of being done immediately, which helps avoid interruptions from small menial tasks.
Clean Your Office Once a Week
At least once a week, clean your office. Clear off the desk, organize the files and clear your inbox. So many home-based entrepreneurs let too many items pile up. It may not seem to be a big deal at first, but in a few weeks or months, so many things get piled up that it becomes an insurmountable task and it becomes a drain on energy.
Having a well-organized home office can be the difference between constant interruption and constant work flow. Organize your office around reducing distractions and increasing flow, and you will find your productivity rising.
