By the looks of his laptop, Robbert Van Els could be mistaken for a secret agent.
His screen is an explosion of urgent files a master control center for managing clandestine operatives.
Just looking at his desktop can raise your blood pressure.
But Van Els is not a secret agent.
In fact, Van Els LinkedIn profile says he is in the custom made earplugs business.
Apparently, there is no correlation between the mayhem on ones laptop and the adventure in ones life.
Van Els decided hed had enough.
He realized if he was going to grow his business, he would have to regain control.
Fewer distractions, more time to focus, he told me.
I learned later that Van Els took my presentation to heart.
After inspiring Van Els with my talk, I found he had inspired me as well.
Heres why clearing your workspace can increase your productivity and the steps I took to achieve laptop zen.
The Cost of Clutter
A cluttered computer doesnt just look ugly, its also expensive.
For one, there are cognitive costs.
Unsurprisingly, our brains have a tougher time finding things when they are positioned in a disorganized manner.
Furthermore, extra distractions act as triggers coaxing us to do unimportant tasks costing uswasted timeand focus.
With so many triggers, its easy to mindlessly click away from the task at hand.
This residue makes it harder to get back on track once we get distracted.
Removing unnecessary triggers frees the mind to work on whats really important.
Then I reminded myself the idea was to remove visible distractions that could take me off course.
Now I start my workday with a blank slate the color of actual slate.
Desktop cleared, I looked for more ways to declutter.
I decided to disable all notifications on my laptop, making sure no apps could interrupt me.
The first problem was how to deal with all those open tabs?
I needed a new way of doing things.
Next, articles Id like to read later arenever read in the web app.
The idea is to get stuff out of sight and out of mind until its needed.
But what about email and social media?
These services are like chocolate theyre best kept hidden because the more we nibble the more we want.
