Stuff, desks, fear, success

I have cleared my desk of every last fucking thing I don’t need. I did it about a year ago. And it is awesome.

Not mine, but close

When I started at my job, I inherited a desk filled with probably seven years’ worth of office detritus accumulated by previous occupants. The work station had been cleaned, in a manner of speaking, but the “bare essentials” left behind were in fact voluminous and unnecessary. 

I inherited piles of straight pins, push pins, pens, pencils, post-its, paper clips, binder clips, rubber bands, staples, adhesive tapes, and assorted fasteners, joiners, splicers, and sealers (I made up those last four, but the rest is true.). There was also a white-out tape dispenser thing, one or two compartmentalized plastic tray dealies, and a weird, big metal shelf thing with dividers in it where I guess I was supposed to want to put papers or files.

All of these things were left behind in the name of helping me “keep organized.” You never know when you might need to rubber-band 83 different things without any time to walk 30 feet to the supply area! You’ll want to have at least three red pencils handy, because sometimes you’ll get so busy correcting publications that you’ll need to use all three hands at the same time! Be sure to keep a tangled ball of paper clips of varying shapes and sizes in your desk, because we may someday have an emergency situation  in which numerous piles of paper of varying thicknesses must all be clipped together at your desk and your desk only!

One day I finally realized what a pain in the ass it was to see, think about, and smell all that clutter every day (Smelling clutter is hereditary, there was a study). So I got rid of it all. I sort of made it a competition with myself to see how much I could remove, and the answer was a lot. I kept only what I truly used, and of that only very small quantities. Now the insides of my desk contain just a few paper clips, a post-it pad, some files, etc., and the top of my desk has literally nothing but a small pen holder, a water bottle, a tea cup and a drinking glass, my computer, my phone, and a little wireframe organizer that holds folders for the conferences I’m currently working on.

Keeping such a fastidiously spartan workspace has several benefits, the first being that it freaks people out. Most people keep their desktops liberally sprinkled with food scraps from several days ago, unfinished projects from several weeks ago, and sticky notes from several years ago. Seeing a desk so very different from their own unsettles them. This is good. You should always be freaking people out, at least in some small way. If you’re not, you must be doing something wrong.

Another benefit of an empty desk is that it becomes a clean and convenient place to recline (if large enough, which most office desks are). Today I took my shoes off and sat on my desk with my legs all nice and stretched out, and I watched the snow falling outside. It was delightful. I’m thinking sometime I might use the area for a quick nap.

An empty desk also gives you space to work on big projects you’re not supposed to. Yesterday I brought an enormous National Geographic atlas of the world over to my desk and pored over the map of India for a good while. I couldn’t have done that if my desk was as cluttered as most people’s, and I wouldn’t have learned that Assam is in the northeast of the country, near Burma. I had always thought it was in the center, stupid me!

See the incredible rewards of a clear desk? I can only wonder what future successes it will bring.