Benefits Of A Clean Workspace (A Personal Experience)
2009
Like many creative people, I find my self all too often surrounded in messes of my own making. This drives my wife nuts since she is, by nature, a clean and orderly person. Over most of my adult life, I have made efforts to try to be clean and orderly, most of the time failing. This does not mean that I have not experienced the creative rush achieved by a newly cleaned work area.
I will probably never be one of those people who is always cleaned and organized, and that is ok with me, but I do enjoy the feeling of a freshly cleaned work area. It seems to me that when I clean my work area, I am more focused on work and less focused on being, well, less focused.
I believe that for me, personally, there are a few key reasons for this. First of all, having a clean work area reduces my distractions. I can’t obsess and think about the insurance bill laying on my desk that I have to pay next week or the book I haven’t put away yet that I pick up and thumb through, for four hours.
Another reason is very similar to the last, a clean area eliminates the thought of having to clean my work area. That is one thing that I have accomplished that is no longer an excuse for getting other work done. Now I can sit down and write what needs to be written.
A clean area keeps eyes from wandering. Again, this is related to the distractions theory, but instead of focusing on stuff that needs to be done, I focus on the ‘pretty colors I see floating around on the sea of chaos that is my desk. No clutter, no colors to draw the eyes away from where they need to be focused.
A clean area instills a sense of feng-shui. I never used to be a big believer in feng-shui, but more recently, I find that I am agreeing with it more and more; I can tell its benefits from the way my furniture is arranged in my office. That reminds me, I need to move my desk back to where it was, it just isn’t working where its at.
I wish I were an orderly person, I like the feeling I get from order, but I am not. I suppose that is human nature, we always want to be someone we’re not.
Thoughts or opinions are welcome.
aaron
July 22nd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I couldn’t agree more. Simply pausing to reorganize and clean up my office makes me feel 1,000 times better when I am feeling overwhelmed.
I sit outside, most often in my car, and read over my lunch break. I was having a particularly stressful day yesterday, so instead of reading over my lunch break I clean my car. Wiped the inside down, vacuumed, and ran through the car wash. I still had a few minutes to read when I was done. It turned out the be a very therapeutic time. There is something magical about a clean and organized space. I returned from lunch feeling quite recharged.