Once you have a clear idea of your priorities – that is your values, goals, and high leverage activities, organize around them.

— Stephen Covey

You will spend a pretty good amount of your time in your office space!

That’s why it is crucial to organize it well! Whether you work in a regular office or your home, there are several ways of organizing your office space.

Why organize your office space

As a start, remember that a bright office implies a clear mind. Also, when you look at it, an organized office space shows a lot about your professional profile and activity. For instance, if you are productive if you have a clear vision of your activity and work if you are more creative or more serious.

So how can you organize your office space well?

There are many aspects for an office space to consider: the room, the layout, the lighting, the files organization, the computer, the layout.

Thinking about your office space organization will certainly help you with concentration and production. To do so, first, ask yourself what you could improve.

How do you want your space to look and make you feel? It depends of course on your activity, your schedule, the tools you need for your work. Write it all down, and you will know better where to start.

Learning to know yourself and adapt your office space

You must take time to learn about yourself, how you operate, and so on. Indeed, each of us has our habits, ways of managing, working, feeling, and being more productive. Being productive considers your personality and the organization you set up for your office space.

Some people need to have everything under their eyes, a space full of stacking files. Others prefer an office space, almost like a sanctuary—a room where all is ordered and empty as possible.

Wherever your preferences, don’t forget that a real office must be dedicated to your professional activities. If you don’t have a full room to do so, an office corner can also do the job! Ideally, it must be a minimum “closed” so that it doesn’t interfere with the room’s original function. 

How to organize your office space

To enter more into the heart of the process of organizing your office space, you should first be able to answer the following questions:

• Do I have quick access to my records?
• Is everything properly organized?
• Is my office location suitable to my needs?

Our main advice is to work and set up your office in an efficient way: work in a quiet environment and remove physically every evidence of work, once it is done. This way, you remove it also mentally at night and during the weekends.

The organization of your office depends on whether it is a punctual or a regular place of work. Indeed, if you use this space for working from time to time, you will need just a table in a calm, preferably closet space.

But if you use your office to work full-time there, then you will need, or at least, it will be more pleasant for you to set up a convenient office—it means a bigger desk, with room for a printer—all the usual supplies such as pens, envelopes, stamps, and paper and toner cartridges. Wi-Fi access will offer the advantage of not seeing cables running all over your place.

But in both cases, pay attention not to store too many supplies that will overstock your desk and office unnecessarily.  To avoid filling in, both your desk and mind, try not to postpone the paperwork to be done, and its file folder, either on related files to be easily found or to be thrown away, again not to encumber unnecessarily. You will see how satisfactory it is to have a tidy desk, and all data updated. A special effort must be carried out for the archival of each year. It Is preferable to wait until the end of January to do so, to make sure that all relevant papers for the year gone are being considered.

Office space and files

Have a unique process for each type of document. The first category of electronic records is emailed! Organizing your email box with several folders will be of great help to follow your actions and prioritize them: ongoing, pending, urgent, and done, fill in the customer or relevant field directory. Then physical mails: bills, flyers, legal papers. Can be also be sorted out according to their deadline. In both cases, sorting the unnecessary documents by throwing them away will bring you great satisfaction as it will lighten so much your desk and computer.

Let’s note that more and more papers are received or sent electronically so that the quantity of physical documents tends to diminish drastically. But then, you must create several files of following up, like excel sheets to report all information, dates, amount of bills, invoices paid, dates for legal declarations, etc.

Digital time has arrived; paper disappears in favor of digital, but that means that it is compulsory to be even much more organized than before with paper documents.

It is of the utmost importance to sort well your files and directories. Otherwise, you will soon get quickly overwhelmed and not be able to retrieve quickly and easily the paper you are looking for! This rigor is essential to ensure efficient work and avoid mistakes or more critical errors (especially in the financial field that could put your job at risk if some invoices were not sent or payments are now checked.

There is now an increasing amount of software that can be of great help in the subject.

As you see, the right conditions of work are the key to carrying out your activity successfully. Excellent surroundings of work start from a well set up office, with a unique physical and digital organization.

We hope our advice has given you some ideas on how to improve, or at least make more pleasant your daily working time.