The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

The rea­son why it’s there

The peo­ple I help in my work have doc­u­ments and fold­ers lying about on their com­put­er desk­tops, for instance, because:

• they have put them there so that they will remem­ber to do some­thing with them soon.

• the doc­u­ments have just been left there after being down­loaded at some point and been used for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose at the time.
• they placed them there tem­porar­i­ly since they want­ed to make sure they could access them when they knew they were going to be some­where where the inter­net con­nec­tion was not reliable.

Let noth­ing stop you

You want to ensure that you are mak­ing things as easy for your­self as pos­si­ble while work­ing. Every dis­trac­tion and unwant­ed inter­rup­tion of what you are doing steals time, focus, and ener­gy — and for noth­ing. If your com­put­er desk­top is clut­tered by all kinds of objects, one of these objects could eas­i­ly remind you of some­thing else you also have to do soon. You will start think­ing about that oth­er thing and per­haps even drop the task you were in the mid­dle of to do this recent­ly remem­bered task instead. A while lat­er you ask your­self: ​”Now, what was I doing?”.

There is, of course, a point in hav­ing the files you need at the moment eas­i­ly avail­able on your desk­top, just a click away. But, if there are piles and piles of dig­i­tal doc­u­ments, it will still be hard to find what you need right now. It takes time, you get dis­tract­ed, and you fall out of pace with that love­ly flow you were just in.

If this feels remote­ly famil­iar, clean up your com­put­er desk­top today.

Do this

Since clean­ing and clear­ing things out are activ­i­ties some of us tend to post­pone as we think they will take too much time, get your phone or watch ready, and actu­al­ly time your­self this once so that you know for sure how fast you can clear your desktop.

1. First, open the timer on your phone and start it.
2. Then, take one file at a time from your desk­top and decide what you will do with it. I could be:
   • Throw­ing it away
   • Putting it back where it belongs
   • Writ­ing a to-do-task con­cern­ing the file or doc­u­ment on your list, since the doc­u­ment was actu­al­ly saved on the desk­top to remind you of doing some­thing special
3. Keep going for as long as you either can or have the ener­gy to.
4. When you feel that it will do, stop the timer and see how long it took you to get as much as you got done, done.
5. If there are still doc­u­ments and files on the desk­top to clear away, take a look in your cal­en­dar to see when the next pos­si­ble time when you have as many min­utes as it took you now avail­able. Block this slot of time in the cal­en­dar and resolve to clean some more. Before you know it, you will be done with all of it.

Bet­ter use of an impor­tant surface

If you keep your com­put­er desk­top free from clut­ter that has no busi­ness being left there, you will find the fact that you can place files there tem­porar­i­ly much more use­ful. What you at the moment need to keep eas­i­ly avail­able, will actu­al­ly be so. You will not get lost amongst all the irrel­e­vant objects and no longer have to get dis­tract­ed by what you should not be focus­ing on right now.

What’s your way?

How do you use the com­put­er desk­top in the best pos­si­ble way? Do you have some trick you use to keep it more or less emp­ty? Your ideas are very wel­come — please feel free to email me and share your tip.

(But, how do you get rid of the ​“the old desk­top” fold­er?