How to organize your office? How to organize your workspace? The important thing is that everyone feels good in their environment and can mobilize all their resources to work effectively.
Order vs disorder: everyone has their own workspace.
At work as in everyday life, the profiles differ: the followers of disorder face the most orderly. If the square arrangement does not necessarily represent a more effective engine to be productive at work, if disorganization favors intellectual stimulation in some, some basic principles apply to all profiles in order to improve in one’s professional activity.
1. Vacuum sorting for immediate space saving.
Creative or not, organizing your office well necessarily involves a sorting phase. By sorting, you identify the superfluous to get rid of the elements that unnecessarily litter your workspace. In order to gain useful space… This first sorting step can be carried out very easily and quickly by asking the following questions:
- Have I recently used this document / object?
- Does this hardware work?
If not, store, repair or discard depending on the nature of each item that occupies your office.
Please note: certain legal or accounting documents must be kept for a minimum period. Store them in a dedicated filing cabinet, which you keep in a closet or on a shelf.
Beyond the necessary space saving, sorting will have allowed the “ordered” profile to find a clean workspace, for clearer ideas. With this in mind, make sure you always have a wastebasket close to your desk.
2. Clean: assurance of credibility at work
Organizing your office requires cleanliness. Coffee cup circles and sandwich crumbs don’t necessarily look the best in a co-working or corporate context – and especially in an open space. Whatever your profile, cleaning your workspace regularly is therefore essential to appear credible and not suffer from a degrading label.
3. Tidy up to save time
Not being able to get your hands on that post-it of central importance, looking for minutes for an essential piece of paper or not finding a pen that works: all these well-known inconveniences do not have the only disadvantage of promoting nervousness at work. They contribute to wasting time and productivity. Unless you can better find your way around a desk full of scattered papers and materials, tidying up is therefore essential in a productive work environment.
Label systematically, file by date and subject, then put everything in its place. It is also possible to organize your office by work areas according to the due dates of the files, their level of urgency or their state of progress. Office equipment such as sorters, a pencil holder, filing cabinets, drawer units or storage boxes are all accessories that allow you to sort intelligently, to better find your way around.
Note: to allow optimal and immediate storage, avoid procrastination! Do you receive a mail? Treat it right away. Have you finished your coffee? Go put your cup away. Is your phone charged? Unplug it and put your charger back in its place in a drawer.
4. Plants on your desk to reduce work stress.
Because organizing your office also involves its layout, why not take advantage of your workspace to promote a relaxed atmosphere? A green plant, a photo of your children or a Japanese garden can help reduce your professional stress, so that you can be more efficient. A study has also shown that plants, beyond improving well-being, contribute to productivity(1).
5. The right brightness to increase its strength.
Organizing your office is an opportunity to provide yourself with useful comfort. Your workspace does not receive outside light? Do you work late at night? To limit your fatigue at work, equip your desk with a sufficiently illuminating lamp. In the same perspective of comfort, it is useful to buy a suitable office chair: to avoid back pain and thus increase productivity.
6. Organize the office… from your computer!
Because most of the work is now done by computer, it is essential to organize your computer desk and your mailbox in the image of your physical workspace. Organize your documents by folders and sub-folders, throw away your drafts and regularly empty your trash can, choose a wallpaper that promotes stress-free work: so many rules to follow to gain in professional efficiency!
Note: to avoid making duplicates, at the risk of not finding your way around, make sure to use a single diary – paper or digital format – and to group together your reminders and task reminders on a single medium.
If you do not know how to arrange your workspace, we invite you to look at the 5S method. Borrowed from Total Quality, this method is based on 5 principles (defined in Japanese): Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, Shitsuke.