Its the start of another new year, and its the time of the year where everyone makes all manner of resolutions that they will have forgotten by the first of February. I’ve never been fond of resolutions as they always end too lofty and vague to actually keep going. Not to mention that my needs and goals tend to shift throughout the year anyways. Rather than making resolutions for things I’d “like” to do this year, I decided to sit down and restructure some things and actually make some changes right now. I look at this as an evolutionary process. This will probably change as the year progresses, so I’ll make every effort to update this as things change. For now, this is how I’ve structured things.
1. My desk for the last few years has been a wasteland of junk, randomness, and various stuff. About 3 months ago, I realized that it was just not working for me and I cleaned. I mean, really cleaned. Blew it up and started over would not be too strong a description actually. I moved shelving around. Organized paperwork, cleaned out filing cabinets, and generally finally got around to throwing out items that I’ve been saving “just in case”. I realized that I do not need computer parts from 10 years ago. Technology has changed and those parts are truly obsolete so they were dumpstered. I also realized that piling paperwork up on the desktop was not actually accomplishing anything. Things just got stacked up higher and higher and I never actually looked at them once they went into the pile. So I changed all that. Paperwork got filed. filing cabinets were cleaned out and organized. And while I still have one cabinet to go through and tidy up, I ended up with huge amounts of space. I have a desktop I can use for actual work now. And anything that is not currently “in process” is put away. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot. But I have discovered that I *feel* like I’m more efficient. (Which may just be a placebo effect to justify the effort cleaning.) Either way, It seemed to help.
2. I figured if a little neatness helped the physical desktop, maybe it would help the computer desktop as well. I’m not sure I’m ready or willing to dive into re-skinning the desktop or any of the really exotic things that can be done with programs like Rainmeter or Samurize. I figured it would be best to start small and work figure out what I needed. So I decluttered my desktop. I moved all of the common applications that I use to a RocketDock application launcher bar. Again, its only anecdotal at this point, but it *seems* to make a difference. I seem to be less tempted to wander off and tinker with other things in the middle of a project. And I’ve discovered that it seems to be faster to actually get to where I want to go. I’m either using the application bar, or the built in search in Win7. And more surprising, I’ve discovered that I don’t really need all of the random text files laying around on the desktop that I used to have. I’m currently playing with OneNote and trying to keep all of my work related notes there so I don’t have to go looking when I need some information.
I’m sure that I’ll end up making some adjustments moving forward, but so far, restructuring has helped me feel like I’m accomplishing more. And even if my productive has not actually change, at the very least I have more room to work, which is always a plus.