Successful Time Management For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7

Setting Up and Maintaining a Productive Workspace

In This Chapter

• Designing a productive workspace
• Taming your desk and limiting clutter
• Halting the paper parade
• Making a home office work

I wish you could've heard my staff and my wife when I started writing this chapter. They howled. Okay, I admit it: What I share here is easier to write about than to do. Nonetheless, even if you're not 100 percent successful with every one of the techniques, tools, and strategies in this chapter (I'm speaking from experience here, folks), adopting even some of them can increase your productivity and vastly improve your overall time management.

One study I saw indicated that most people waste an hour per day trying to find papers lost on their desks (at least, that's where they think the papers are lost) or files and documents misplaced in their computers. That's not so bad, you say. But an hour per day adds up to 260 work hours per year, or more than 32 wasted days per worker annually.

Multiply that by the number of executives, professionals, and sales and administrative employees in this country, and you're talking a significant loss of time. (And that doesn't include hours spent at home trying to find misplaced eyeglasses, scissors, library books, keys, needle-nose pliers, cell phones, gym shorts, earrings, pacifiers, and so on.) Think how productive you'd be if you spent all that time, well, being productive!

If your work area is a parking lot for everything from C-level “someday” ...