Not many people stay organized at work. They continue working on a cluttered workstation and a messy office space without realizing how an unorganized space can affect them physically and mentally. According to research, only 10% of people can say that their work environment is clean and organized, in contrast to about two-thirds of people claiming to be feeling overwhelmed due to clutter. This means that many people are bothered by unorganized workspace, but only a few actually do something about it!
You may not know this, but a cluttered and unorganized workspace can affect you physically and mentally. You won't understand it now, but as you continue reading this blog post, you'll know how exactly staying organized at work can benefit you.
This blog post explains the many benefits of staying organized at work and also lists down some of the best ways to make your workspace more organized. Let’s get going!
Why Should You Stay Organized at Work?
First things first, what does it mean to stay organized at work? It simply means to ensure that you keep the things where they belong and keep your work desk and your surroundings clear of clutter. For example, instead of making a pile of files on your work desk, you should keep them back in the filing cabinet so that your desk doesn't look cluttered. It's as simple as that.
Although staying organized may simply mean having a neat and tidy workspace, you’ll be surprised when we start telling you the tremendous benefits of staying organized at work.
1. Helps You Accomplish Goals
Imagine coming to work to a messy workstation. Your brain will instantly feel overwhelmed with everything that's lying all over the workstation. Now, you may either take a few minutes to organize it or you can choose to start working without bothering about the clutter. If you opt for the former, you'll be constantly distracted by the clutter. Your mind will wander off to everything around you every now and then, affecting your focus. You'll also struggle to find things when everything is unorganized and messy. Now, whatever your goals are for the day will get delayed because of it. Let's say your goal was to complete a presentation in the first half, but can you really accomplish the goal if you've got to spend several minutes looking for reference documents? If everything was organized and in place, retrieving what you need wouldn't have taken any time at all!
2. Helps You Build a Flow and Streamline Tasks
Another benefit of staying organized at work is it helps you build a smooth flow and streamline tasks. As we said above, an unorganized workspace causes distractions and slows your progress. Every time you get distracted, the momentum will break, and you'll have to get back in flow all over again. As a result, there will be delays, and with one task delayed, all the preceding tasks will get delayed too. Staying organized at work, therefore, helps you maintain momentum. Staying organized isn't limited to a physical organization only. It also means having a to-do list right in front of you so that you know what's exactly on your plate for your day. This way, you're able to streamline the day's tasks to ensure you complete them well in time.
3. Boosts Productivity and Efficiency
When you're organized at work, there will be fewer distractions, better momentum, and more streamlined tasks. As we said earlier, staying organized at work helps you streamline your tasks. All of this means you'll be more productive when your workspace is organized and neat. An unorganized workspace is a major distraction that can really come in the way of your productivity. With this bit sorted, you can work at full throttle and complete your tasks on time. Not only are your tasks completed on time, but you're also able to deliver higher-quality results.
4. Helps Relief Stress
One of the biggest benefits of staying organized at work is it helps relieve stress. When you aren't distracted at work and can focus fully on your work, you're less likely to miss deadlines or even come close to missing them. You'll be able to complete tasks within the set timeframe, and this reduces stress. You can't deny the fact that coming too close to a deadline with an unfinished task can stress you out severely, and this doesn't make things any easier (or quicker) for you. However, with everything properly streamlined, you'll be able to stay ahead of your deadlines and complete your tasks before the stress starts to settle in.
Not only this, a visually organized workspace has a positive impact on the brain and helps relieve stress almost instantly! Your brain perceives clutter as a lot of work that stresses you out even before you get to work!
5. Helps You Sleep Better
You may wonder how staying organized at work helps you sleep better. Well, the two are indirectly connected. If you aren't organized at work, you're highly likely to miss deadlines due to poor productivity. This can stress you out big time. The thing with stress is that it stays with you. The pressure and stress of piled-up tasks will stay on your mind even after you go home, and this can result in trouble falling asleep. Your mind will keep wandering off to pending office work that you've got to do the next day, even when you're in bed for the night. However, knowing that you're on the right track with your timelines will help you sleep better and sleep deep!
6. Gives You More Time in Hand
Staying organized at work will give you more time to focus on other things you may not have time to think about when you're falling behind your timelines. Since staying organized at work boosts your productivity and ensures you get your work done on time, you'll have a lot of extra time, which you can use to add more value to the business.
7. Improves Your Relationships
Stress tends to make you irritable and edgy. If you're under a lot of stress at work, you may not be in your best mood and may even snap at your coworkers. As we said, work stress stays with you even after you go home, which may also affect your personal relationships. However, when you're organized at work, stress levels are significantly reduced and this reflects in your mood and behavior. Your relationships at and outside work are both improved.
How to Stay Organized at Work
Now that you know the many benefits of staying organized at work, here are some tips to help you get organized.
Organize Your Workstation
Start with organizing your workstation. Your workstation is what you'll be in direct contact with; if it's messy and cluttered, your day will start badly! Use desk organizers like the Bamboo Set BBS01 to keep everything in place. A cable organizer will help you keep all the cables organized. Cluttered cables look plain bad, in all honesty! You can also use an under-desk drawer if you think you need extra storage to keep your desk clear.
Clean Your Workspace Regularly
Clutter can build up on a day-to-day basis. You keep a lot of things around, thinking you may need them, but you never really use them. Cleaning your workspace regularly, like once a week, will ensure that you don't have anything around that you won't need in the future. Clutter only makes your workspace look bad as it continues to build over time.
Make To-Do Lists
Start your day by making a to-do list so that you know what you've got to complete in a day. It's also quite possible to forget important tasks when you're too engrossed in any one task, and to remember it at the last minute will result in panic kicking in. So, make a to-do list every day so that you can stay organized all day long.
Avoid Multitasking
Multitasking not only stresses you out, but it also makes your workstation cluttered and messy. Instead of trying to do a lot of things at a time and not being able to do anything properly, do one thing at a time and do it the best way possible.
Final Word
Staying organized at work isn't rocket science. It's simple. It just requires your time, attention, and conscious effort. Once staying organized becomes a part of your personality, you'll do wonders that will even leave you amazed! Staying organized at work offers tremendous benefits – there's no denying that. So, if your workspace is poorly organized, it's not too late.
