The blog

We need more than our com­put­er, phone and papers to do our work. Oth­er tools are impor­tant too, such as scis­sors, pens, mark­ers, paper-clips, hole-punch­er, USB-sticks, books, cheat-sheets, sta­plers, paper cut­ter, pack­ing tape, paper cut­ting scalpel, red high­lighter, stamp, busi­ness cards, charg­ers, adapters, bat­tery charg­er, laser point­er, white­board mark­ers, point­ing stick, brochures, ruler, and so on.

When we need it, we want it to be avail­able — instant­ly. We want to fin­ish the task we are cur­rent­ly work­ing on with­out being obstruct­ed in any way. But, some­times the tool we need is not where we expect­ed it to be and our flow is interrupted.

If you cur­rent­ly spend more time than you would like look­ing for things, if you just had to buy a new some­thing (even though you know the old one is around some­where), if you feel that your tools and office sup­plies tend to ​”grow legs of their own” and wan­der out of your office too often, then you will be able to make your life just a lit­tle eas­i­er by sim­ple means.

Each thing in its place
Des­ig­nate one place for every item and let every item have its own place. This way you know where to look for it, since it was appar­ent where you should return it to the last time you used it. It will be easy to deter­mine if it is in its place or not, and you will there­fore be able to search for it if it should still dis­ap­pear well ahead of that moment when you need it right away.

So what then con­sti­tutes a good place? It is prefer­ably some­where where you only keep that one item or at least where it is not sur­round­ed by too many oth­er things. Try not to use draw­ers labeled ​”Mis­cel­la­neous”. Instead you could for instance use a box for every item, a box in a box, a rack of some kind, a shelf, or a com­part­ment. You could also hang the item on the wall, screw it to the shelf, or attach it to the draw­er unit with vel­cro. To fas­ten things to the wall, you could for instance use cable nails, cable ties, screw hooks, super­glue and the new ceram­ic mate­r­i­al Sug­ru which seems to have excit­ing properties.

It is also a good idea to label the place with what is sup­posed to be there, thus mak­ing it eas­i­er to remem­ber what goes where.

Do this

1. Look around you where you are cur­rent­ly sit­ting (assum­ing you are sit­ting in your office).


2. Choose one thing which you will des­ig­nate to a sin­gle loca­tion. If you do not know what to pick, then choose your stapler.


3. Think about how eas­i­ly acces­si­ble you want it to be, that is, how often you use it.
   • if you use it sev­er­al times a day you might want to keep it at arm’s length (or per­haps you want it a bit fur­ther away, hence forc­ing your­self to get up from your chair and get­ting to stretch for a moment when reach­ing for it).
   • if you do not use it often, you will be wise to place it out of sight. The few­er things you have with­in view, the less dis­tract­ed you will be.


4. Now choose an appro­pri­ate place which from now is in the place where the item is locat­ed when­ev­er you are not using it.

Either do what needs to be done to label the new place with what it will con­tain from now on right away, or cre­ate a to-do-task which dic­tates what you need to do lat­er about it. Per­haps you need to buy some­thing or get some­thing from some­one else before you can label the place.

Find quick­ly and find peace faster
If you make sure that you have a place for every item and every item has a place, you will have more time for what tru­ly mat­ters since you do not have to waste time look­ing for things. You main­tain your high mood and no longer get frus­trat­ed by not being able to locate what you need when you need it.