5 simple tips to organise your desk for maximum productivity

One of the things I always say to people is that a tidy desk helps to have a tidy mind. There’s nothing worse than trying to get work done and all you see around you is an overwhelming mess. Whether you know it or not, that affects your productivity, so it’s important to be intentional with that.

In this blog post, I’m going to share with you a few simple tips to help you organise a messy desk and become more productive.

 

5 tips to organise your desk and become more productive

 

Everything that’s on your desk should have a purpose and should help you get your job done, whether it’s your 9-5 or your business.

 

So what are 5 things you can do to organise your desk? Let’s see them below!

 

• Take an inventory

 

You first need to evaluate what is on your desk and if those things are contributing to your productivity or killing it.

 

Before you can organise your desk, you need to clean it up from all the things you don’t need. I’m pretty sure every desk has some rubbish that can go straight in the bin, and some other things that even though they may not be rubbish, they’re not needed on there.

 

• What is your goal?

 

As deep as it sounds, before you can organise your desk, you need to decide what you want to achieve by doing so. Are you only going to do work there? Or will you work on your business/side project too? Will you want to use your desk to work on some hobbies?

 

Answering these questions will help you decide what needs to stay as you start thinking about how to organise your desk.

 

• Develop a ‘storing’ system

 

This will be important no matter what your goal is, but it’s especially relevant if you know you will be working on different things at a time.

You need to develop a system on how everything will be stored on your desk, so you avoid building up clutter and also wasting time looking for what you need. Consider using drawer dividers, labeling your items, and using desk organisers.

 

• Try to reduce the use of paper

 

Trust me, as a lover of all things paper and handwriting, I know how hard this can be. However, what’s even harder is having loose papers all over and even if they’re not loose, you just have lots of paper clutter on your desk.

 

Try to limit yourself to one paper item, such as a paper planner (which I love and have, by the way, you can read my review here). For most of your work, consider using a digital tool like a project management platform, so you can reduce your use of paper but still stay organised. 

 

You can read my review of Asana, my favourite project management tool!

 

• Do regular maintenance

 

The final tip for organising your desk is to do regular maintenance. The steps highlighted so far will only work if you’re intentional about keeping up with them.

 

At the end of every work week, clean up your desk from anything that may not be supposed to be on there. Then wipe and clean the surfaces and put everything back in its place following the system you have developed.

 

This will help you to actually keep your desk organised and ensure it’s a long term strategy rather than a quick fix.

 

You may also like: how to become more productive with these smart productivity methods

 

 

 

How to organise a small desk without drawers

 

What happens when your desk doesn’t have drawers? How do you organise that?

 

The two key things I’ll say are:

 

1. Keep things to a minimum
2. Storage, storage, storage

 

Basically, I encourage you to look into some minimalist desk organisation ideas, even more than I would do if you had drawers. This will be the first step to keeping things simple and tidy.

 

Then you need to find storage solutions that will help you organise your desk without having drawers. I’ll list some options in the next paragraph that may be useful to you.

 

 

The top items you need to organise your desk

 

Here are a few items that will be very beneficial to organise your desk and keep it tidy and neat.

 

• Floating shelves

 

This can be particularly useful if your desk doesn’t have drawers, as you can store things on floating shelves by your desk. However, it can be useful even if you do have drawers in the instance where you have too many things you can’t get rid of and you want to spread them evenly.

 

• Laptop stand

 

As strange as it sounds, a laptop stand can help create more space on your desk. By choosing a good one, you can create space to store your phone, planner, or other items you need nearby.

 

Plus, a laptop stand helps with your posture and ensuring you don’t put too much pressure on your back.

 

• Desk organiser

 

There are many options out there, and depending on the size of your desk, you’ll be able to choose among many different types of organisers.

 

I personally choose to keep it simple, especially because my desk isn’t huge. So I have a desk organiser to exclusively store all my pens, pencils and highlighters, my sticky notes, blue light glasses and work phone.

 

You can choose one that best suits your needs as long as you don’t fall into the trap of buying the prettiest organiser that will only lead you to pile up more clutter along the way.

 

• Cabinet

 

Another solution you can try if your desk doesn’t have drawers or if you just have too many things to store, is a cabinet.

 

This can go right next to your desk or under it – which is even better to save space.

 

You can choose to dedicate one drawer for each of your projects, or just develop a system to ensure that the cabinet stays tidy over time.

 

 

Related articles

• How to stay organised at work and at home to have peace of mind

• The best productivity tools to try now

 

 

Final thoughts on how to organise your desk for maximum productivity

 

Do you feel more zen already? Good! Because the days of feeling overwhelmed about the state of your workspace are about to be over!

 

Try these tips to organise your desk and you will see your productivity soar!