Time to Clean my Desk

You can tell when I have been incredibly busy as my desk doesn't get cleaned. I was looking at my desk in the office this morning and thinking that I really need to clean it up. I have mentioned before how a good work environment is critical to helping focus on a project. This morning I have some extra time and so I will clean up my desk.

I am trying to figure out why my desk gets so messy. Part of the problem is that I think I am afraid to throw anything away. The moment my trash has been emptied is exactly when I realize that I shouldn't have thrown something away. The sad thing is that what I really need is a note scribbled in the margin of an unimportant and unrelated paper.

Another reason my desk gets so messy is that I take a lot of notes. Generally I try to use an engineering notebook for all of the important stuff. If I know I won't need the information in the future, I will write on a yellow tablet and then throw it away when I am done. Unfortunately I will write one of those super-important and unrelated notes in the margin and end up keeping the paper and cluttering my desk.

Finally I like to create piles. If I don't know what to do with something, I will put it in a pile of other stuff I don't know what to do with. It is a practice that drives my wife crazy. She will walk around the house questioning me about piles of junk in various corners. Eventually the piles get moved to my office which is where they needed to go anyways. I guess that means I am good at getting my wife to clean up after me. Now I just wish she would come hang out in my office at work.

A Good Desk

I have been fighting a cold since last Thursday and so when I went home over the weekend, I didn't do much but rest. Snowbird was still open and so I could have gone skiing, but didn't. I had some friends that wanted to go sailing, but I didn't. About the only useful thing I did do was clean off my desk in my office.

Yesterday I flew back out to the Bay Area feeling slightly better but still under the weather. When I got back to my boat last night, I made dinner and then sat down on the couch in front of the TV. I thought about doing some work on a project my son and I are collaborating on, but decided against it. My boat normally has a great desk to work at. When my family came out to visit San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, we turned the desk into a bed. This involved partially dismantling the boat. Normally the desk should turn into a bed with a minimal amount of work. However, due to a busted screw, the process turned into an hour long process. I have yet to repeat the equally lengthy reverse process. First I would like to fix the broken screw.

Thinking back to my clean desk at home versus the non-desk on the boat, it made me realize how important a good work environment is. If you don't have a clean desk or a proper area to work, it may be hurting your performance. So if you find yourself putting off working on the computer, take a look at your work environment. Perhaps you might want to clean up the area and then it will be easier to do your work.

There is a Home Depot near my office and so I stopped in on the way to to work. Now I have the tools to fix the desk on my boat. Afterwards maybe I can work on my son's project. All that is on TV are reruns anyways.