My desktop is about as minimal as I can get it while still allowing me to work:

• No Spotlight icon - I use Quicksilver
• No Quicksilver icon - the preferences are only a Cmd+Space away
• No clock - I wear a watch
• No Airport status - I’ll know if my wireless connection dies
• No battery indicator - I have one on the side of my MacBook Pro
• The DropBox icon is only there because I can’t disable it.

My Dock only has four things (Safari, my Fluid shortcut for Google Reader, iChat and Tweetie) because I have all four open all day long anyway, but I keep the dock hidden.
Everything else I need gets launched from Quicksilver and I never keep files on my desktop, relying instead on the Mac’s default folders and a group of folders I created years ago that serve as templates when I start a new project. Makes finding things a breeze.
Cheers!

(Submitted by Joshua Marshall)