Minimal Mac

Hotel at Home - Minimizing The Workspace

My friend travels quite a bit for his job. By quite a bit I mean that 3-4 days a week is not unusual for him. Recently, we were talking about how productive he was on the road versus home. Being a productivity nut, I naturally asked him why that was. When he was on the road, he got to his hotel room and had a nice, clean empty desk awaiting him. His laptop bag is his “office”. Therefore, he could take out his laptop, notes, etc. setup on the nice empty space and focus on the task at hand. My response:

“Why not set up a hotel desk at home?”

The problem was, his desk at home had become a giant inbox. Being home infrequently meant that he tended to use his desk as a dumping station for all of the things that needed to have decisions made about them:

When he got home, he did not have the same empty desk space where he could set up his office and do the same thing as the hotel, unpack his bag and get to work. That needed to change. More importantly, that desk space had to stay sacred to those ideals. If you need a very large inbox to dump stuff, the desk would no longer be that place, Get a big box, rent a dumpster, find another.

Step one was to clear everything away. All of it. Even stuff that “needed” to be there. If it needs to be there then it will come back but, for now, everything must go:

Once everything was cleared away, the next step was to look at the goal – Pretend this is the hotel, you get here and you need to set up your “command center”. What needs to be here to make that a reality. Everything else is either “nice to have” or “not needed”.

The reality was that not a whole lot of what was there before, outside of basic desk supplies (pen, paper, etc.) was needed. I mean, even that is sometimes a “nice to have” at the hotel but was not always supplied.

OK, so then, what would be nice to have? Well, a monitor, keyboard and mouse would fit that bill. As would a calculator (which doubles as a 10 key pad via bluetooth) and scanner for the job he does. Why not have a stand for the laptop to get it off of the desk and out of the way. Also, some pictures of the family to personalize the space. Here is what we ended up with:

Everything else was not needed. Sometimes, all you have to ask is “Where does this belong?” if the answer is “Not here” then put it where it does belong. If the answer is “I don’t know” then the next question should be “Do I need it?”. Here is the deal, everything you need should have a place. That place is called “Where I need it”. If something does not have a place in your home, office, life, etc. then perhaps it has a home outside of those things. Perhaps it has a home away from you.

Another tip, and I got this from Erin Doland’s excellent Unclutter Your Life In One Week, if you are dealing with sentimental stuff, do not touch it. Have a friend by to pick it up for you. The reason being is that when we touch things we form a relationship with them – an emotional bond – and that makes it harder to let go. Besides, it really does help to have a friend simply to ask you questions you think you already know the answer to like “Where does this belong?”.

Pro parenting tip, and this is one that was all my friend’s idea but I thought it was brilliant – Meet Mr. Shut-up:

If you ever work out of the home, and you have kids, then you know that sometimes you may need to take a call and not have it sound as if you are working out of your home with kids. That is where Mr. Shut-up comes in. Let your critters know that, when Mr. Shut-up is on, it is time to be quiet or face the wrath of Mr. or Ms. Puts-a-roof-over-your-head.

The upshot to all of this was to show you that, even if you think the task is too big, even if you think you could never do this whole minimal/unclutter/power of less stuff, the truth is that you can. We all can.

Posted November 4, 2009 at 4:57pm || home