Is your work space organized in a way that hinders or contributes to your productivity?  Consider the cost to your productivity when you can’t find what you need or don’t have enough clear space on which to work.  Maybe you can’t get started with a task because you’ve lost things on your desk.  Perhaps you can’t finish a project because you need to keep something and have no place to put it.  A disorganized workspace, whether at the office or home-office, negatively impacts your work and productivity.

If you’re ready to increase your productivity by improving your workspace organization, consider taking a zone approach.  A zone approach to workspace organization means assigning areas of your office or work surfaces for specific purposes. The zones listed below are based on the COTA approach to email and paper management co-developed by Mike Song.  COTA (Clients, Output, Team and Administration) is framework for sorting and filing electronic and paper resources.  Considered more broadly, COTA is one effective way to designate zones in your office and desk.

Typical workspace zones include:

• Current or active clients or projects.
• Administration – Activities related to running your business or to the company you work for.
• Output – Activities related to mailing, marketing and routine business functions.
• Storage and reference – A place to store supplies and reference and archive materials.
• Work Surface – The place where you can work on a task.

Organizing your workspace into these functional zones means being able to find what you need and having a place to put things away for each of your particular job functions in one place.  This helps you know where to go to get started on a task, stay focused and complete the task without the distraction of having to move to a different part of your workspace or having to stop to find what you need.

Before you can get started organizing your workspace into highly productive and functional zones, start by clearing the clutter to identify what you need to have and then how and where to store it to best support your work.  Need some more ideas, hands-on help or accountability to get your workspace better organized to support your productivity? Contact us.