This needs addressing. Be honest and ask yourself whether you are super organised or not. If you are then great. Your living space will be uncluttered. You’ll have everything in its place. No tripping over things left on the floor for you. Nor having to wade through mountains of paperwork to find that research for your new blog.
For the rest of us a bit of organising will go a long way. You want to be efficient when you write. Inspiration should be free flowing, so that you can get your thoughts on paper. If you’re surrounded by mounds of paperwork and clutter, things won’t flow in quite the same way. Believe me. I’ve been there!
So you’re itching to get started and suddenly I’m telling you to tidy your house instead. Well not quite. But what I am saying, is that if you organise your work area now, it will save you heaps of time and frustration in the future. It will avoid unnecessary distractions and mean that you are in a work state of flow.
Don’t rush out and buy a new organiser. You may not need it anyway. Do you really need all that paperwork? Many documents can stored electronically. In fact, there are very few documents that are best kept as a hard paper copy. This was one of the first things I tackled when starting out. I bought a compact scanner and worked my way through masses of papers. I literally emptied an entire storage unit.
There were bank statements, utility bills, insurance documents, old CVs, course notes going back decades. The list went on and on. Much of it was out of date, but a fair amount could be scanned into my PC. I kept things like the deeds to the house, my will, exam certificates and photographs. But the rest was shredded and recycled.
Imagine if I’d thought the answer was a bigger storage unit! The pile would have grown since, whereas now I scan everything as it comes in and get rid of the paper. Easy!
So first get rid of clutter. Only then can you truly get organised. It doesn’t happen all in one day for most of us though. Yes the paperwork can be dealt with in a day, but it’s likely you have too many clothes also. Don’t you?
I’m not suggesting you declutter your entire house before writing your first blog. The rest can wait as we’re only interested in your workstation right now. Once you start you may wish to carry on and if you do, you’ll find a new surge of energy that will envigorate your writing no end. But for now…back to the workstation…
You want to be able to find information quickly and easily. As you are now storing all info on your PC or laptop, you need to make sure you have a good computer filing system that works. Evernote is really useful for quickly finding stuff. At least set up your computer folders logically. Now, whenever you read something useful, you can quickly store it. More importantly you can find it again.
We get inspiration every day, so make your storage work for you!
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