Before reading any further, stop, scoot your chair back, and take a look around.
What does your reading environment look like? Where are you right now? Are you at work taking a few minutes to browse the web? Are you outside catching up on some news and reading while enjoying the fresh air? Have you been sitting too long in the bathroom while glued to your phone?
Twenty years ago, if you were reading a blog then most likely you would have been tied to a desk somewhere, looking at a big and bulky CRT monitor with an actual trackball inside your mouse.
Now, chances are, you are sitting there swiping with a finger on a 6 inch screen with more resolution than that massive CRT monitor had those 20 years ago.
Yet even with the change in technology and habits over the past two decades, the concept of a “desk” and “work” still go hand in hand.
It doesn’t matter that the location has changed. Instead of a formica tabletop in a soulless gray cubicle, in 2020 you could be working from reclaimed old barn planks in a trendy coffee shop. You could be banging away at the keys on a cheap plastic table in your basement.
However, in every case the area around you that you are performing “work” has the makings of a “desk“.
This concept is an important one to understand because it directly influences how effective and efficient we can be while getting things done.
For this notion, perhaps a better word to use would be workspace because we are defining the area in which work is being accomplished. Nonetheless, in most cases, this will involve a flat horizontal surface at which one can do work. So to keep this a little simpler, we will use the term desk here for this discussion.
So how do desks work?
They are your main workspace area. While each desk will be a little bit different, in general, there are common elements across the majority of desks out there.
There will be a main work section. For many of us that will hold a laptop or other primary tool for getting work done. Everything else radiates away from that.
There will be secondary areas for current projects, notebooks, maybe a few post-its.
Also don’t forget the area wholly dedicated to coffee or other liquid beverage. For some reason drinking liquids on the job is something we all seem to end up doing.
And then stepping back and gazing at your desk workspace, amongst the electronics and monitors, pens and paper, pictures and tchotchkes, and coffee you see the one area that you don’t want to see.
The corner of your desk.
This spot may be more metaphorical than an actual, physical, ninety-degree bend of wood and formica.
However, we all have a corner of the desk. This is the spot or area where unwanted and/or unneeded problems and projects come to rest.
This is where that new piece of tech sits that you intend to check out per a co-worker’s suggestion that you never seem to get around to. This is the spot where that document that needs your signature languishes in despair while you ignore it day after day. This is the spot where your personal project sits after you got excited for it for about an hour one day and just barely got it started before being interrupted and never seeming to find the same motivation to pick it up and run with it again.
The corner of your desk is where projects and tasks are pushed into the doldrums of obscurity, the purgatory of your workspace.
This corner is nothing more than a waiting room for projects hoping to catch your attention and be called up to the big leagues.
This is not the area where you put your current work. This is where interruptions are dumped. When someone brings you a problem it will most likely end up on the corner of your desk.
The truth about this limbo space is that you will never have success running a project from the corner of your desk. It is too messy. It never receives your full attention.
Strangely enough, a lot of people place a trash can next to this corner, right where it would be easy for things to “accidentally” be pushed off into the bin to be whisked away as trash and never be seen again.
These projects and problems are interruptions. Getting back to the metaphorical corner of the desk, they might not even be physical. We have folders and inboxes full of stuff that we aren’t dealing with right now. There are stacks of mail and other flotsam somewhere in your house or office.
How excited are you to tackle these random piles?
What decisions need to be made in order to set up conditions for success among these accumulated heaps?
There are ways to manage this pile, and below are four easy steps to do just that.
Step 1: Review & Recognition
As is usually the case, the first step in solving a problem is the recognition that there is a problem.
Things put on the literal or metaphorical corner of your desk are out of your main area of focus. They are side projects and distractions.
When was the last time that, without a healthy dose of luck, that a side project was completed effectively and to everyone’s satisfaction?
Therefore, the first step in addressing these complications is to realize that they are an interruption and a disturbance and are not something that should impact our main focus.
This realization show occur when some time is set aside for review of this pile of random stuff.
Most of the time we sit back and simply let things accumulate. We all have jobs to do and the type of stuff that gets pushed onto the corner of a desk is not typically part of normal operations.
However, if we let these piles get too big and out of control they can threaten to overwhelm us and topple over, making an ever bigger mess.
Setting aside some dedicated time each day or week allows for a proper review of each item in the stack so that the next steps in the process can be appropriately considered.
Step 2: Categorization & Prioritization
The second step in cleaning off the corner of your desk revolves around categorizing each of the issues and projects in the pile..
This is especially important as it contains an aspect of prioritization. Is this issue critical? Or is it an annoyance that isn’t worth the time. Who are the stakeholders? What impact will this have against other projects and time for regular work?
The step where a recognized issue is categorized may be the most important as it creates order out of the chaos and starts to build context around each item.
Is it time sensitive? Will the company lose a customer over a support issue if it is not resolved in a timely manner? Is this simply someone not wanting to take responsibility for something and throwing the hot potato to the next person in line?
Assigning the item into general buckets like ‘Important’ and ‘Irrelevant’ along with a prioritization against business objectives and current, ongoing projects allows us to move forward in the process to the next step.
Step 3: Planning & Transition
The third aspect in achieving success for problems that get dumped onto the corner of your desk is to migrate the critical items.
These need to be moved into the main work area so that a full focus can be made on these problems and projects. If these are deemed important and relevant, then they deserve your full attention.
For the ones that get moved, we need to do a little bit of project management and planning to ensure that these incoming items do not upset the apple cart and that we are setting ourselves up for success.
The planning can be as simply as scheduling some time to focus on the issue. It could be as complex as calling a meeting to get additional feedback and team review.
Either way, some forethought into how the new project will be handled and stacked against current, ongoing projects is necessary.
Now we have identified, categorized, and planned on how to solve the most demanding problems and projects that get dumped into this corner wasteland.
For all of the leftover flotsam, bugaboos, and conundrums, see step four.
Step 4: Throw The Rest Into The Waste Bin
And thus, we have a solution for everything else!
Harsh? Yes, but if you followed the above steps then what is left over isn’t very important and will only serve to distract you going forward.
So chuck it. Move on. You have more important things to do!
Thanks for reading.
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