Clearly, I am on a roll. Aside from dispatching my television, caffeine addiction, and material possessions, I also recently embarked on a desktop purge.
The cleansing of my desktop was spurred by a GTD-related blog post (from Zen Habits), which emphasized the importance of clearing your workspace of clutter. It championed the virtue of removing the physical and virtual knick knacks, documents, and other distractions from your desk. After all, when I sit down in front of my computer – in the office or at my desk – the point is to accomplish some tangible goals: write a post, design a screen, communicate with colleagues, do research, or even be entertained.
What often happens, though, is that after I set down in front of my laptop, I am soon distracted by an email notification, stray notepad, or instant message. I had even gone so far as to install the Gmail Notifier, so that I’d be alerted the moment an email arrived. So these interruptions invariably divert my attention from my intended goal, and next thing you know, a long time has gone by and I am no closer to having accomplished anything.
So last week, I started the cleansing: cleaned off all excess files from the computer desktop, discarded (recycled!) all the stacks of paper on my desk, and removed most pictures and papers tacked to my cubicle walls. I replaced my computer wallpaper with flat gray. I then disabled my IM and email notifiers, and even closed (not minimized) Outlook and Firefox for significant periods of time, as I engaged in other work.
It’s been only a week, and at this point the new behavior is more experiment than habit. But I must say that so far I have found myself to be dramatically more productive, less distracted, less stressed, and more focused. The extra 45 minutes between email arrival and reading has yet to cause a single problem. And I have more time to do other things.
