Whether you are a Student, Employee, Work at Home Mom or Entrepreneur, having a specific designated place to work or in your house or office, is vital to increase your productivity. A well-organized, functional work space will create a more constructive, practical, and, professional environment for work and will benefit in your professional and academic life.
The suggestions and ideas listed below can be used to set up a Study Desk for a Student or a Work Space for an Employee or to set up a Home Office.
1. Figure out what the space is going to be used for. Ask yourself if it is going to be used by a student or an employee or as a home office. It is important to take note if the space is going to be used by a single person or by multiple people. The type of desk and, the essential items necessary to set up such work/study area will vary according to the needs and the preferences of the person or persons using such work/study area.
2. Choose a good quality Desk that can be used for a long time. Make sure that the desk is, sturdy, versatile and can be used for multiple purposes. Therefore, as your experience changes in your lifestyle (such as transitioning from being a student to a working professional) you can adapt desk space to suit your current lifestyle without having to buy brand new furniture. Buy a desk with drawers so that, what you don’t need to use for the current project can be kept out of site. For students these drawers can be used to store text books, binders or extra school supplies, and, it will help you keep your desk surface clear and minimal.
3. Place the Desk in an area where there is good natural lighting, and, in a place with minimal distractions.
4. Get a desk organizer and keep only the most essential items on top of your desk. Remove everything else.
5. Stop or limit keeping personal photos and, numerous little ornaments on your desk. It is taking up valuable space on your desk surface. If you feel that you need to keep personal items such as photos, I suggest you digitize some photos of your family and, make set it as the wall paper in your Computer or Laptop. That way you can see your family photos without taking up space on your work surface.
6. Set up an organization system which is functional and easy to maintain in the long run for your workspace.
7. Focus on one project at a time. This is important especially if you are working in an office that uses a lot of paper documents. It will prevent an important document ending up in the wrong folder and, limit the chances of misplacing important paperwork.
8. Clean and organize your Work/Study desk, at the end of the day.
9. Limit the number of school supplies you keep on your desk - dear students, I can safely tell you now that you really do not need to keep 30 black pens, 15 pencils and, multiple sets of colourful highlighters on your desk to help you become a better student. Even if you have organizers to store them, it will become virtually impossible to maintain the clutter in the long run. A messy study area makes it harder for you to pay attention to what you are studying and will only be a distraction. You will tend to spend more time cleaning and organizing your desk, wasting valuable time you should be using to do the actual studying. Remove all clutter from your study area. I suggest, you buy only a minimal amount of school supplies. Buy only what you need, and before you go shopping for school supplies at the beginning of every school year, look through and take stock of the supplies you already have and buy only what you absolutely need. As a bonus, this will help you to stop wasting school supplies and save you same money on back to school shopping.