Sep 08 2006
Kill the clutter
I don’t like clutter because it demotivates me in every way. It’s the paperwork which gets me first. The seemingly endless pieces of mail, some of which have needs just particular enough where they languish on my desk forever. It took awhile but I plowed through most of it and the last remnants are in a small pile to be read, filed, and shredded.
Even though my desktop was clear of extraneous paper, something still wasn’t right. Then it hit me while I was browsing Rig of the Day at TUAW: equipment clutter. As shown in the photo consumer electronics take up a lot of real estate. Here’s what I have:
- Windows box
- Firewire drive
- Logitech speakers
- Monitor with riser and assorted knick-knacks
- Two cell phones
- PowerBook
- KVM, keyboard, mouse
- Phone
- Post-It notes and stapler
This doesn’t account for the clutter under the desk by way of cables and power strips. The stuff on top takes up nearly half of the space. The other half is my work area comprised of Levenger letter organizer (a recent addtion) and photos of Junior.
I’m not sure what changes I’ll make but it’s time to reclaim space and streamline the gear. I’ll post a follow-up when I’ve made some progress.
Related posts:
- How to make your desk clutter-free
- Getting Things Done - Part 2
- Props to Mobility Electronics’ customer service
- Final Cut Pro, keyboards, and reducing the strain
- Nesting turns dangerous when it involves office equipment
[...] In September I wrote about killing the clutter in my personal workspace. How did it go? I cleared up all of the gadgets except the most important: LCD monitor, PowerBook, speakers, and cell phone. I needed to add an external Firewire drive for data backup and things like a 50+ GB iTunes library and rapidly expanding iPhoto library. [...]