Organize Your Laptop Desktop

I’m just going to jump right into it. Clean up your computer desktop. The reality is, our desktop is our virtual workspace, and maintaining organization and format helps to increase productivity. Benjamin Franklin once said, “For every moment spent in organizing, an hour is earned”, and I believe that. The obvious piece to that is organization helps you find things easier, and waste less time searching for that file or folder that you need. But, that doesn’t actually account for that much time in the day. What I think Franklin was alluding to is that taking the time to look for things serves as a major disruption to your work-flow.  

As we get going on an assignment or project, we build momentum. Our thoughts start stringing together to align everything into one vision, helping our work to naturally layer on top of itself. When you’re in the groove, and you have to spend extra time and energy in preparation, it breaks up that momentum and makes it harder to seamlessly continue where you left off.

Lastly, if you’re the kind of person that gets stressed out with clutter and extra stimulation, then a clean desktop will help you to be more effective with your work just because it is more comfortable for you.

So, there are a few ways to get organized. My technique is to create folders and put my miscellaneous documents and images in those folders. This helps decrease the overall volume of content on my desktop. My rule of thumb is I like having two thirds of my laptop desktop empty. It seems like the right balance for me, but I’m one of those people who can’t stand clutter.