Set Up “Communications Central”
Author of this post: Colleen Wainwright | About Blog Authors »
Kitchen designers figured this out a long time ago: the better the flow, the more productive output. The famed kitchen work triangle—that connection between sink/stove/fridge—makes it easier for the cook to maneuver without wasted motion.
If you haven’t already, start applying that principle to your own workspace. Don’t worry about the “right” way; you’re looking for your best way to organize things so that you can take care of business. For example:
- Do you have the phone within reach, and a pen/pad of paper near it to take down messages as you get them?
- Are the supplies you use most often easy to reach, or do you have to open a series of drawers and/or boxes to get at them?
- Are things grouped together the way you actually use them, or where they “fit”?
In my experience, designers will often go for aesthetics over practicality: we’d rather use stuff that makes things look really neat than a storage solution that functions so well you can actually keep things neat—and, more importantly, keep the workflow easy and smooth.
Here are a few things that work for me.
1. Think in zones
Even with small spaces (and mine qualifies, believe me), it’s possible to cluster things into areas and groupings.
I keep all my mailing supplies in two units: a metal box with all my fancy notecard stuff, to keep it pristine; and an open, two-compartment stationery holder that holds virtually everything else I need (business-sized envelopes, stamps, pens). They live on two different shelves, but it’s easy to pull them both onto my desk when I want to do a round of correspondence.
Similarly, I have a metal box marked “adhesives” that holds—you guessed it—anything I use to stick two things together, and a magnetized mesh basket that holds my checkbooks and a calculator. The latter lives on the inside of one of the file cabs that serves as my desk supports. Not a stunning aesthetic, but it more than makes up for it in practicality.
2. File paper by use, then alphabetize
I used to go crazy labeling my physical file folders. Once I gave up and applied the zone concept to files, life got way simpler (and so did finding the stuff I needed).
Now I keep client project files in one drawer, personal project folders in another, and any kind of documentation—financial stuff, taxes, medical records, legal documents, warranties, etc—in another. I still don’t believe it, but making that simple of a change sped up my filing and retrieval time by half.
3. Before you move things around in real life, move them around on paper
No, I don’t mean draw diagrams of your desktop (although hey, if you’re into it…). What I’m suggesting is that you spend time observing your habits before you make changes to your system.
If you notice yourself making an awkward move more than once—searching for something too long or bending yourself in a pretzel to retrieve an item—make a note of it. Keep a running list called “ergonomics” or something similar in a text file or on a pad of paper. Review the list from time to time. Then, when you have some idle thinking time, you can apply yourself to coming up with a great solution—maybe while you’re perusing your IKEA catalogue or going through back posts of swissmiss.
The main thing is to rejigger your process a little: think about the way you work, then about how you need to have things set up to work that way, and then go to IKEA. That way, all that cool, Swedish stuff becomes part of the solution, not more of the problem.
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