Monday was National Clean Your Virtual Desktop Day...SO be sure to take a moment to ask yourself, would your virtual desktop benefit from some tidying up?
This semi-silly, unofficial holiday is a great annual reminder to take time out of our week to go through our virtual desktop (and the rest of our virtual workspace) to decide what’s important enough to keep, and what we can toss in our virtual trash bin.
It also gives those operating in the work from home (WFH) space a chance to assess our current home workspace to ensure that we’re as organized as possible and are maximizing our productivity by removing clutter that can cause unnecessary stress.
So, let’s all take advantage of this day and get things tidied up!
Why clean your virtual desktop?
Are icons taking over your home screen?
Can you even see your background image?
What about your documents folder?
Is everything organized by appropriate category?
How much storage space do you have left on your computer?
For most of us working virtually, we spend much of our day looking at our computer screens. We’re all aware that a messy room can be overwhelming, but we may not consider that a cluttered computer can have the same impact.
Here are some of the psychological effects that a computer packed with bookmarks and folders bursting to the brim can have on us:
Increased Stress
A cluttered desktop makes it more difficult to complete tasks for a few reasons:
Things are harder to locate
A cluttered screen is a constant remember that we are “too busy” to clean our desktop
Both of which can cause increased anxiety and undue stress.
Imagine being in the middle of a meeting while everyone is waiting for you to find the document you want to share, and you’re anxiously scanning your screen struggling to locate it.
And even if you don’t realize it, every time you open your computer and see your cluttered desktop and think: “I should really clean my desktop, but I just don’t have time” we are getting a ping to our brains that reminds us of all the things we don’t have time to do, further inducing stress and anxiety.
Negative Impact on Memory
Clutter can also overwhelm our senses. This has a proven negative impact on our memory. If we are bombarded with too much to look at when we open our computer at the beginning of the day, we are starting our morning in overdrive trying to process too much and setting ourselves up to forget important things later in our day.
Negative Effect on Focus
When we see clutter, and more clutter piling up faster than we can remove it, this can be incredibly distracting. I’m sure you’ve felt this when trying to get through your daily emails and watching your inbox fill up faster than you clear it. You can only do so much, so staying on top of the incoming clutter is the best way to ensure you remain focused on the tasks that are truly important.
WFH Organization Tips
To help you get started, here are some simple ways you can keep your virtual workspace tidy, boost your productivity and improve your stress.
File your documents: Any remaining documents lingering somewhere they shouldn’t be? Take a moment to go through your documents, delete anything you don't need and filing away anything you need to save.
Update your to-do list daily: Make sure to clear tasks you’ve completed, and prioritize tasks based on order of importance. Still writing your to-do lists on paper? Consider a web-based list maker like Trello.
Declutter your email inbox: Save important emails and delete everything else! Also, the simple act of unsubscribing from junk mail can be quite therapeutic, give it a try. Also, if you have more than one email to manage, be sure to have them all linked to a single system like Microsoft Outlook so that you can see everything at once.
Back up files: There is no reason that everything needs to live on your computer. Take advantage of an external drive or upload files you need to the cloud so that you can remove them from your virtual workspace. A Google Drive is a great cloud-based option for file storage.
And remember, freeing up space also is likely to increase the speed of your system! Win-win, right?
An organized desktop = an organized mind! Don’t ignore this reminder to get your virtual space nice and squeaky clean so that you can reduce stress, maximize your mental space and improve your focus during the work day.
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