Waking up to a clean desk

5 June 2025

A few days ago, I walked into my office to get started working and the desk was covered with stuff. It was de-motivating to put it lightly.

Here’s how it looked.

Some days I’ll just push the stuff aside and get busy dealing with my YNAB spending plan or with email. But that day. I decided to see how long it would take me to clear the desktop off. I set the stopwatch on my phone and started tidying.

In only 2 minutes and 45 seconds my desktop looked like this:

Less than three minutes to a clear desktop that made me eager to get to work. It was fantastic.

You know what would have been even better? If I had cleared my desk off the night before so I walk into an office with a clean desk. That clean desk really helps me feel motivated to get some stuff done.

At the day’s end, I almost walked away with the day’s stuff all over my desk. But knowing that it would probably take less than three minutes to clear it off, I decided to do it right then. (It took less than two minutes.)

Over the years I’ve blogged about this many times. Taking a few minutes at the end of the work day to clear off your desk reaps huge benefits to your productivity. When there is just one day’s worth of stuff to put away (assuming you have a place to put it away) clearing your desk takes very little time. And that is time well spent!