Leo Babauta, author of The Power of Less, says "clear off your desk!" http://www.socialmediaexaminer...hts-from-zen-habits/

I used to have a boss who kept every piece of paper, magazine, file folder, etc., in teetering piles on his office floor.  In order to find something, you had to estimate how many months (or years) ago it went into the pile, and like an archeological dig, peel down to the correct strata of documents to find it.  It worked for him, but for me, being in his office was always stressful.

You may have heard that we are in the process of moving to Charleston, SC to open an East Coast office.  This has necessitated a massive declutter, so I thought I'd share some of my own tips for creating a decluttered (and de-stressed) office space.

The Big Sort

The first thing to do is sort through the "stuff" that's in your office and place it into piles.  I created areas for:

• Shredding - tip: have everyone in the office gather their shredding and have a security company come to shred it all at once; you won't have to do it 3 pages at a time.
• Tossing - let's face it, if you were going to do anything with that box of business cards from 2003, you would have done it by now.  Time to let go.
• Recycling - think beyond paper and plastic; how about old electronics? There are lots of places that will come and pick up your old electronics for recycling, often free of charge. Let your fingers do the Googling. Oh, and you can also probably recycle the stack of printed customer surveys from 2007; those are in a spreadsheet, anyway, right?
• Office scrapbook - someone thought to save that old 70's photo of Bill Gates and crew.  You're going to change the world, so you should save a few mementos of your journey.  My personal talisman is the last known remaining Infopop gluestick.
• Filing - as much as we all want to go fully paperless, there are certain things you need to keep.  You might want to check with your accountant and/or benefits manager to be sure you're keeping the correct paper records.

Organizing What's Left

Your pile of "stuff" that's left after recycling, discarding, and shredding should be pretty small.  If you really think about it, you don't need all of the paper anymore. Some of it can be scanned into applications like Evernote.  Michael Hyatt has written an outstanding explanation of how to organize Evernote for maximum efficiency.

Some things to consider with your remaining paper:

• What are the paper records requirements for tax purposes?
• Security - personnel files, etc., what are HR requirements?
• Access - who has keys to the cabinets?
• Schedule a periodic purge - as the requirements for keeping the paper expire, plan to shred and dispose of old records every year.

A Zen-Like Future

So your desk and the area around it is now pristine and organized.  Time to think about having an environment that helps you be creative and stay organized.

• Think about some feng shui - a plant, a small fountain, color schemes can all add to your daily effectiveness.
• Ergonomics - is your chair, desk, and keyboard positioned for pain?  Maybe you could benefit from a footrest.  Maybe you could sit on a balance ball.  It's good to give some thought to the work position that helps you function best.
• Get out once in a while - even if your desk/office is perfect, you can get an immediate boost from a change of scenery.  Go work in the lunch area, go across the street to the coffee shop, visit your colleague down the hall instead of IMing him all day.  

That's how I've tackled our decluttering project---do you have any great tips to share?  What does your desk space look like?