Organize Your Computer
It may sound outlandish but organizing your office space gives you clarity. Working in a clutter-free environment allows you to focus and be more productive. And once you’ve tackled ways to make the exterior (desk, office files, cubicle, etc) of your office workspace look new and fresh, you need to turn to the place where a surprising amount of clutter accumulates: your computer. This “invisible” clutter can certainly take a toll on office productivity. Straightening your digital files to better organize your computer will allow your computer to run faster and enable you to find documents more efficiently.
Look at these simple ways to organize your computer right away.
Reorganize:
Make it easy to access the files that you use every day and store away files you’ll need for later reference. Set up the main folders on your desktop. Label them for business documents, necessary forms and other things you need to access every day. (I make a folder and label it by client name, and then inside the folder make sub folders for content related to that particular client). Remove everything else from your desktop background for less visual distraction.
Empty Trash:
Even though you may delete something from your computer, it doesn’t actually disappear. It simply moves the document to that ominous trash can icon, so all the extra fluff that you tried to get rid of is actually still weighing you down. Get into the habit of emptying your trash every week, quickly freeing up the space on a regular basis. Don’t you love to hear that satisfying sound of crumbled paper indicating the trash has been cleared from your computer!?
Clear Your Downloads:
Clutter saved in your “downloads” can build up fast. Every time you click on an email attachment, download a document, picture, or video online, that item stays saved in your downloads file. Your download folder is the default folder for anything you saved to open and reference. It’s not likely that you’ll need many of these documents long-term. (I like to sort the downloaded files by “type”, and then move along deleting or saving documents to my main desktop folders).
Erase Browsing History:
Your computer retains a huge amount of your daily Internet browsing history. Each website you visit, every search you perform and all the transactions that take place are held in its memory. I routinely clear cookies and delete my browsing history. And yes, that will erase the stored login and password information so just make sure that you’ve remembered the login information to the websites that are important to you.
It may not seem like much, but organizing your computer will definitely lift some weight both mentally and physically from your digital area. Take time to clean up your computer once a week, it will be well worth the reward of productivity.
